Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp is looking at an $82 million haul by Sunday night. My first thought was “that’s all?…a piddly $82 million over three days including the Thursday-night haul?” Then I stepped back and said, “Well, maybe that’s not so bad. It’s making $25 million more than the $57.2 million earned by the original Ant-Man three years ago.” If a sequel’s first-weekend haul is 44% higher than what the original managed, that’s cause for celebration.

Why, then, did that $82 million make me feel slightly let down? I guess I was thinking of Solo‘s first-weekend haul of $84 million. Solo was regarded by pretty much everyone as a major bust, right? Almost everyone hated it or felt bored or burned, nobody could stand Alden Ehrenreich trying to be Harrison Ford, etc.? And yet Solo, a piece of shit by any fair-minded yardstick, made almost $2 million more than Ant-Man and the Wasp, which is a much more entertaining film…c’mon.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro: “Any fanboy cynic attempting to make an argument that Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s weekend is less than Solo‘s $84.4M 3-day, or under the $93.8M domestic debut of DC’s Justice League, is missing the point. Ant-Man and the Wasp wasn’t an off-the-rails production like those movies which were hindered by their $300M-plus shooting costs. Sources tell us that Disney kept the shooting cost for Ant-Man and the Wasp around $162M net. That’s lower than other Marvel sequels like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($200M net), Thor: Dark World ($170M) and Thor: Ragnarok‘s ($180M) with a global P&A spend around $154M.

“The first Ant-Man profited close to $104M off a $519.3M worldwide gross and $130M net production cost. Wasp was hatched to do the same and should be in the black at around $600M or $650M worldwide.”

Nonetheless Solo‘s advance word was dreadful while the pre-opening buzz for Ant-Man and the Wasp couldn’t have been better…go figure.

Here’s a list of not-yet-released, not-yet-produced, possibly top-drawer scripts that a friend is looking to get his mitts on. Remakes, reboots, sequels, prequels with a light sprinkling of original storylines. I’ve put asterisks next to my favorites, but tell me which ones stir some level of intrigue or at least mild interest. I’ve typed an X next to those I’m reluctant to even glance at, much less read or even skim. Please send PDFs of all asterisk scripts to gruver1@gmail.com.

If Irving Thalberg returned to the earth in the body of a young script reader working for Warner Bros., he would take one look at this list and hang himself:

6 Underground by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese X
24-7 by Sarah Rothschild
355 by Theresa Rebeck
Aladdin by John August
Alita: Battle Angel by Laeta Kalogridis and James Cameron X
The American by Michael Mitnick * (“authentically GREAT,” a filmmaker friend says)
Aquaman by Will Beall, James Wan
Archer & Armstrong by Terry Rossio
The Art of Fielding Mellish by Tripper Clancy

Baby Nurse by Austin Winberg
Bad Times at the El Royale by Drew Goddard
Battle of Britain by Matthew Orton X
The Beauty inside by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
Between the Earth and Sky by Veena Sud
The Book of Luke by Craig A. Williams X (awful title)
The Bride of Frankenstein (Dark Universe Remake) by David Koepp *
Bumblebee by Christina Hodson

Cannonball Run by Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant *
Charlie’s Angels (remake) by David Auburn
Charlie Johnson in the Flames by Justin Haythe
Champion by Gary Scott Thompson, rewrite by Brad Ingelsby
Cointelpro by Leon Hendrix and Ajani Jackson
Coming to America 2 X
Commando (remake) by David Ayer X
Cowboy Ninja Viking Samurai Street Fighter Fucknose Bare-Knuckled Stud by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch
Creature from the Black Lagoon (Dark Universe Remake) by Will Beall, Jeff Pinkner (Son of Shape of Water?)
Creed 2 by Sylvester Stallone X
Cumulus by Matt Silverman

Detective Pikachu by Nicole Perlman and Alex Hirsch X
The Devil Has A Name by Rob McEveety
Devil’s Night by Leo Benvenuti
Die Hard (prequel) by the Hayes Brothers (young John McLane, rookie detective…get outta here!) X
Domino by Petter Skavlan
Dumbo by Ehren Krueger X (blend of CG and live-action, right?)

Empty High-Velocity Popcorn Jizz-Whizz Jasper Johns Paint Splatter by Clyde Barrow and Glenn Bunkowski *

Fast and Furious 9 by Chris Morgan X
The Favourite by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
The Force by David Mamet *
Fire Me by Jacob Meszaros and Zach Taylor *
Five Feet Apart by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis

The Girl in the Spider’s Web by Steven Knight X
Glass by M. Night Shayamalan
Grant by David James Kelly
Godzilla: King of the Monsters by Michael Dougherty & Zach Shields
Godzilla vs Kong X
Goosebumps 2

It’s 3:20 pm, and I’m facing the most surreal iPhone episode I’ve ever been stuck in. It’s like quicksand. I feel like Sterling Hayden in The Asphalt Jungle as he’s driving back to Kentucky with Jean Hagen.

As mentioned, my iPhone 6 Plus was stolen yesterday. Last night I bought an iPhone 8 Plus, but now I can’t use the damn thing because of a two-step verification process that’s part of the 8 Plus software. Owners are required to input their Apple ID and password (no prob), and then a six-digit passcode that Apple would normally text me. However, the thief who stole my iPhone has also hacked into it, and given it a new phone # or SIM card, and he’s the one who’s receiving the six-digit code from Apple, not me. Somehow this d-bag has convinced Apple that he’s me. Apple believes that his phone # is one of my trusted devices.

Notification emails from Apple tell me that the last two digits of the thief’s phone # are “14” plus that his initials are “S S.” No use of periods tells you he’s not well educated. If he called himself “SS” it could be interpreted as a perverse Nazi thing, but no.

Believe it or not four Apple senior-level techies have tried to crack this problem, but the last guy told me I’m out of luck. Me: “What do you mean I’m ‘out of luck‘? Are you telling me to return the phone and become an Android person?”

As I mentioned the only suggested Apple solution is to dump my Apple ID and password, but that would be horrible in terms of being unable to synch all my photos, music, notes and whatnot. This is starting to feel catastrophic. I’ve spent the last two and a half hours writing iPhone hackers (shady guys who will only accept Bitcoin payment) and talking to a couple of private investigators who might know how to sidestep this two-step verification, six-digit-input process.

HE to thief (a.k.a. “S S“): “I know you’re going to keep my iPhone 6 Plus and that I’ll most likely never hear from you, but I just need that six-digit code. Email or text it to me — hell, post it on the comment thread — and I’ll be out of this awful situation. You’re several hundred bucks richer with your new stolen iPhone, right? Do me this small favor and I’ll forget about trying to hunt you down. Seriously.”

A 7.5 Indiewire article by Zack Sharf reports that Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has offered stern words to a certain sector of Star Wars fanatics. Gunn was affected by a 7.3 Wrap article in which Ahmed Best, the actor who played Jar-Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace, confessed that the Jar-Jar hate was so intense 20 years ago that he actually contemplated killing himself. Some fans apparently replied that George Lucas was the guilty party and not Best, as Lucas was Jar-Jar’s creator.

Gunn’s reply: “Star Wars may be important to you, but it doesn’t belong to you. If your self-esteem depends on how good you think the current Star Wars is, or if your childhood is ruined because you don’t like something in a movie, GO TO THERAPY.”

HE to Gunn: There are very few critics or columnists who feel less in league with Star Wars loonies than myself, but if you want to be fair about it two truths need to be acknowledged.

One, fanboy fervor cuts both ways. The sputtering anger that fed haters of The Last Jedi or The Phantom Menace came from the same emotional gas tank that has propelled the reputations of other fanboy flicks and made them into super-hits. Fanboy ardor can obviously turn toxic, for sure, but it’s slightly hypocritical for filmmakers to deplore fan-bile on one hand while winking at fanboy worship and profiting handsomely when the reviews are good and the winds are favoring.

And two, fans who’ve responded to certain films with crazy intensity arguably own the film as much as the filmmakers, and perhaps even more so. When The Big Lebowski was surprise-screened at Sundance in January of ’98, it was nothing more or less than an offbeat Coen brothers entry — a deadpan stoner comedy that some critics liked and others not so much. But the crazy fans of Joel and Ethan’s eccentric paen turned it into a cult phenomenon. That special popularity is owned by them, not the Coens. Ditto the fanatical love of the first two Star Wars films, A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, between ’77 and ’80, and how all of that flipped into rage when the prequels came along 20 years later.

Last Jedi haters probably could benefit from a little couch therapy, but Hollywood types never allude to fan psychology when the money is pouring in.

If you’re speaking to senior-level Apple tech support person (as I am right now about an iPhone problem), you’re probably wasting your time if the technician says “I’m very sorry that you’re having this problem.” I’ve been dealing with these guys for over a decade now, and no one who’s sagely and confidently solved a problem has ever apologized for anything. Problem solvers assess and fix, period. But there’s always a first time, right? Open your heart and wait for divine providence. Then comes the second death-knell chant: “I’m just trying to help you, sir…I’m just trying to work with you.” Those are guillotine words. If you hear them you need to gently thank the tech for his/her assistance, wish him/her a good day, and start all over again.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that yesterday I misplaced my iPhone 6 Plus while visiting the Beverly Center. I reported the loss to the security and guest services guys …nothing. I went home and used the “Find My iPhone” app on my Macbook Pro…no signal. By all indications someone put it in their pocket, went home and tried to hack it. I know because I was forced to buy a new phone (8 Plus with 256K memory), and while retrieving my apps, photos and contact info from the cloud (no problems on that end) the 8 Plus software subjected me to a two-factor authentication process, which means providing not just my Apple password but a six-digit code that Apple has sent to “your other iPhone.” Huh? The bottom line is that the Apple network now believes that my current phone number ends in “14,” which it never has. The phone number ending in “14,” I suspect, was submitted by the thief in the process of hacking the iPhone 6 Plus and installing a new SIM card. The long and the short is that I’m currently unable to double-authenticate my identity, at least as far as the iPhone 8 Plus’s software is concerned.

One of the senior-level Apple support reps told me that the only way she could make the problem go away was for me to erase my longstanding Apple ID and password and create new ones. “But I’ve had that Apple ID for years and years,” I said. “I’ve bought all kinds of songs and albums with them, and if I switch out all kinds of problems will result. Why should I abandon my Apple ID because a thief has tried to hack my phone and give it a new number?” She said she had to recommend this because she couldn’t fully authenticate my identity over the phone. “But there’s a ton of information I could supply…historical background stuff, bank account #s, purchasing history,” I said. “Why can’t you verify by asking these questions?” She said her protocol didn’t allow for this. I said thanks anyway, etc. A second senior-level tech support guy pretty much said the same thing.

My next move will be to consult with a nearby Apple store “genius bar” person.

Posted on 6.27: Peyton Reed‘s Ant-Man and the Wasp (Disney, 7.6) isn’t a problem unless you’re determined to complain about it not being as good as the original Ant-Man (’15). Which it’s not.

It nonetheless has good, occasionally amusing work by Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly (Hope van Dyne / Wasp), Michael Douglas, Michael Pena, Walton Goggins (fated to play pain-in-the-ass, low-rent villains for the rest of his life), Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost), Abby Ryder Fortson (Rudd and Greer’s daughter Cassie), Randall Park, Michelle Pfeiffer (Janet van Dyne — rescued in Act Three from the sub-atomic, micro-quantum realm or whatever you want to call it), Laurence Fishburne (punching the clock), etc.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is fleet, funny, disciplined, carefully honed, occasionally dazzling, light-hearted, pleasingly absurd…112 minutes worth of cool cruisin’. And those 112 minutes feel like 80 or 85, by the way. There are no significant downshiftings or speed bumps, or none that bothered me.

Please don’t let any other sourpusss types stop you from seeing it, but I’m telling you straight and true that Ant-Man and the Wasp is not quite as affecting, highly charged and/or sink-in good as I wanted it be. You may feel the same way when you see it, but you’ll probably survive.

Why should anyone care if Ant-Man and the Wasp registers as a slight letdown that’s nonetheless entertaining? There are bigger fish to fry and meditate upon. See it or don’t see it. But don’t weep for the Marvel and Disney empires — they’re fine. On top of which the Rotten Tomatoes whores have given it a 96% approval rating.

The dopey subversive humor in Reed’s three-year-old original felt fresher, for one thing. And the story was more emotionally affecting as far as Paul Rudd‘s Scott Lang was concerned. He was in a fairly dark and despairing place as it began — ex-con, low-rent loser, not much of a role model for his daughter — so morphing into Ant-Man by way of Michael Douglas‘s (i.e., Hank Pym’s) brilliance and reluctant largesse really meant something.

A message from your President @realDonaldTrump on Independence Day pic.twitter.com/O2PwZqO0cs

— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) July 4, 2018

Now this — this! — is truly great television. A performance that felt like something else. Nine years and change. I was living in New York at the time, and I don’t think I was even watching as it happened. Letterman to Phoenix: “Joaquin, I’m sorry you couldn’t be here tonight. We’ll certainly keep you in our rolodex.” Phoenix looks like his 2009 self in Garth Davis‘s Mary Magdelene, which got caught in the Weinstein collapse and may or may not open in this country.

18 months later (9.22.10):

Six days ago a video clip surfaced of Stanley Kubrick explaining the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The footage was recorded 38 years ago by filmmaker Jun’ichi Yaoi. It was part of a documentary about paranormal experiences, blah blah. Yaoi’s doc was never released but a VHS of the raw footage was reportedly sold two years ago on eBay. Somebody evidently decided to upload the video to YouTube. Why did they wait two years? Why didn’t they upload it immediately? Or why didn’t they wait until 2001‘s 60th anniversary in 2028? Or the 70th in 2038? Who cares?

The Great Stanley K., in his own words: “I’ve tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it. But I’ll try.

“The idea was supposed to be that [Keir Dullea‘s Dave Bowman] is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.

“They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture….deliberately so, inaccurate…because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but weren’t quite sure. Just as we’re not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment.

Scott Pruitt, the most malignant Environmental Protection Agency chief ever, has resigned. EPA deputy Andrew Wheeler, almost certainly another anti-environmentalist, will take over in the interim. Pruitt impressed many in the media as the dirtiest, swampiest cabinet chief in government history, his actions having reportedly inspired 14 separate investigations. (Here’s a list of 13.) Pruitt, 50, had been very popular among conservatives for his absolute indifference to the health of the planet, but his ethical scandals were overwhelming.

From N.Y. Times: “Pruitt began the largest regulatory rollback in the EPA’s history, undoing, delaying or blocking several Obama-era environmental rules…among them was a suite of historic regulations aimed at mitigating global warming pollution from the United States’ vehicles and power plants.”

Midwestern liberal-progressive TV personality and talk-show host Ed Schultz, who hosted The Ed Show on MSNBC from 2009 to ’15 and who’d recently hosted a daily news show on RT America, has died at age 64. “Natural causes,” the report says. What exactly is “natural” about succumbing to an eternal black void at age 64?

Ed began as a North Dakota sports guy on radio, and then became a conservative talkshow host on North Dakota’s WDAY. He gradually evolved into the progressive camp in the mid to late ’90s. The Ed Schulz Show (radio) ran from ’04 until ’14.

Ed was quite the MSNBC host during the Obama years. I was a regular follower. He left MSNBC in ’15, largely due to political censorship from management.

Since being with RT America Schulz had told one and all that MSNBC’s Phil Griffin initially (and to some extent persistently) suppressed coverage of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, and in one particular instance Schulz’s attempt to cover Sanders’ official announcement of his presidential campaign in Burlington, Vermont, on 5.27.15. This happened, Schulz believed, because Griffin and NBC news president Andy Lack were in the tank for Hillary Clinton, et. al. Here’s Schulz’s oral account of what happened when he tried to cover Sanders’ announcement. Seriously…listen.

45 days after this incident happened, Schulz left MSNBC.

John Sturges The Great Escape (’63) was shot on sound stages near Munich, and to some extent in a Bavarian town named Fussen. The real-deal Stalag Luft III, the P.O.W. camp from which P.O.W.s actually escaped in March 1944, was located 100 miles southeast of Berlin, in what is now the Polish town of Żagan.

In the comment thread that followed yesterday’s Great Escape post (“Independence Day Doldrums”), a discussion arose about the logistics of the escape, which led me to riff about the whys and wherefores of the escape itself.

The Great Escape P.O.W. camp was built in what looks like a 15-acre area not far from the Munich sound stages. It consisted of 16 P.O.W. barracks, which could theoretically hold 50 guys each or 800 total. The actual Stalag Luft III was spread over 60 acres and housed 11,000 POWs.

I noted yesterday that Sturges’ P.O.W. camp had the atmosphere of a leisurely, not-hugely-unpleasant work camp, and that the German guards were like testy high-school teachers (who’s been throwing spitballs?) and that the inmates conveyed military decorum while being casually impudent, or the attitude that TV audiences would later associate with Hogan’s Heroes.

The actual Stalag Luft III was not a hell hole. A bit grim but certainly tolerable. The men were adequately fed and housed. Bunks, blankets, pillows. Holiday dinners were served. The atmosphere was almost collegial, to go by the Wiki page. POWs organized theatrical shows and published two weekly newsletters. Mail and parcels from loved ones arrived. All kinds of recreational fitness options (including weights, fencing and table tennis) were available. The camp even had a small swimming pool.

As noted, the escape happened in the late stages of WWII (i.e., March 1944). Any sage assessment of how the war was going told you the Germans were doomed. The coming Eisenhower invasion, the disastrous Russian front, constant Allied bombing. Albert Speer wrote that events turned against the Germans in ’42, and that he knew they were sunk soon after. A 9.8.09 Guardian article by Richard J. Evans (“Why Hitler’s Grand Plan Collapsed”) asserts that “ordinary Germans knew by the end of 1943 that the war was lost.”