Weekly Digest: 06.15.2026
Weekly Digest For Recent Film Industry News That Caught My Attention For The Week Of 06.15.2026
Introduction
This is your weekly digest for recent film industry news that caught my attention for the week of 06.15.2026.
This Past Weekend In New Movies
Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, which I gave an A- review to that you can read, is looking at a worldwide opening of a little under a hundred million, with more than forty million of that coming domestically. However, I fear the legs for this movie could prove weak. While the critical scores have been solid, the audience scores are among the most middling I’ve seen for a Spielberg film. Among critics, it holds an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 74 on Metacritic. Among audiences, however, it has just a 73% on the Popcornmeter, a 3.3 on Letterboxd, a 6.8 on IMDb, and a B CinemaScore. I’ll speak more on the podcast about what might be driving these divisive audience reactions, but you can also listen to the segment I recently did with Howard Monroe on The Watchdog Morning Show regarding the film.
One film I forgot to touch on last week was the new international action flick The Furious, which has been generating some strong word of mouth and putting up a respectable showing at the specialty box office. Among critics, it boasts a whopping 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 85 on Metacritic. Audiences have responded just as enthusiastically, with a 95% on the Popcornmeter, a 3.8 on Letterboxd, a 7.9 on IMDb, and the rare A CinemaScore. I’ll definitely be trying to check this one out in due time.
Netflix’s straight-to-streaming animated feature I Am Frankelda has also been earning strong notices from both critics and audiences. Among critics, it sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 75 on Metacritic. Among audiences, it currently holds a 7.1 on IMDb. I caught this one over the weekend and thought it was a decent little movie that’s worth checking out if you’re looking for something new to watch on the app.
This Next Weekend In New Movies
The biggest release of the upcoming weekend is, without a shadow of a doubt, Toy Story 5, which is looking at a massive box office debut if pre-sale tracking is to be believed. Reactions have been better than I anticipated so far, and I’ll be catching this one with general audiences as Disney continues its recent trend of not offering press screenings in my market. I actually binged all four Toy Story films over the weekend, and every single one still ranks among my favorite movies of its respective years, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what this latest installment has to offer.
A24 will be providing some indie counterprogramming with Michael Sarnoski’s The Death Of Robin Hood, a return to original storytelling for the filmmaker after he dipped his toes into franchise material with 2024’s A Quiet Place: Day One prequel. The film centers on the legendary outlaw’s final days and boasts a pretty impressive cast, led by Hugh Jackman in the title role.
Netflix will be releasing another one of its straight-to-streaming romance films, Voicemails For Isabella. These movies tend to be pretty middling but generally inoffensive, though I’m hoping this one pulls an Office Romance and ends up working better for me than most of the streamer’s offerings in the genre.
Last week I mistakenly reported that the comedy Never Change! was heading straight to Disney+ and Hulu over the weekend. It turns out I had confused its release with a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. The movie will actually arrive on those streaming platforms this coming weekend. While we’re correcting mistakes, I made the same error regarding Netflix’s In The Hand Of Dante, which is not debuting this week and will instead arrive on the streamer in two weeks.
Recent Film Industry News That Caught My Attention
Legendary Today Show film critic Gene Shalit, instantly recognizable for his iconic look featuring the big hair, big mustache, and oversized glasses, passed away this past week at the age of 100. Shalit was a bit before my time compared to Siskel and Ebert, whom I caught near the end of their run when I was a kid. That said, he was still popping up in segments on the Today Show into the late 2000s. Every time I came across clips of him later in life, he always struck me as one of the more fun film critics, someone who never seemed to let pretentiousness color his criticism. Interestingly enough, he began his career as a press agent for Dick Clark before eventually transitioning into entertainment journalism and criticism. Over the decades, he became one of the most recognizable faces in film criticism and a fixture of morning television. I really hope future generations of film critics can capture some of the same sense of fun and personality that Shalit brought whenever he appeared on screen. May he rest in peace in be in eternal light.
The Academy Awards have announced this year’s Governors Awards honorees, with Glenn Close and Ridley Scott among those set to be recognized. Both Close and Scott have accumulated multiple Oscar nominations over the course of their careers without ever taking home a competitive win, and if it were up to me, both would already have multiple statues on their mantels. The Governors Awards were once presented as part of the main Oscar telecast, but that changed several years ago. They are now held at a private ceremony each November, an event that has effectively become the unofficial kickoff to awards season campaigning. As a result, it has also become one of the key networking events of the year for stars and filmmakers hoping to position themselves in the acting and craft races that follow. I should add longtime Disney animator Floyd Norman will also be receiving a statue, a man who worked on two of my all-time favorite animated films, Sleeping Beauty and Mulan.
The Art Directors Guild fired back at Martin Scorsese’s recent endorsement of generative AI being used for storyboarding and production design. You can read their entire response here, and I will be going more in-depth on this on this week’s podcast.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson recently opened up in an interview with Esquire about a cancer scare that ultimately turned out to be a false alarm. He also made some candid remarks about his awards campaign for The Smashing Machine, which ultimately resulted in a Golden Globe nomination but failed to translate into Oscar recognition.
Of the experience, Johnson said, “It would have been incredible to get nominated for an Oscar. I realized very quickly that it’s a rare thing to reach this pinnacle where you’re even having these conversations. And it’s exciting! It would have been amazing. I wish it happened. But it didn’t. But in no uncertain terms did I ever think, ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter.’ I always thought it mattered. And it has lit a fire in my spine, which is, let’s go back to work.”
I’ll have much more to say about this on this week’s podcast, but my take continues to be that Johnson would have had a better shot had The Smashing Machine not ended up being as divisive as it was. It’s difficult to secure an acting nomination when voters are mixed on the film itself, and that challenge was compounded by the fact that last year’s acting races were absolutely stacked with contenders. Even getting into the conversation just a little was an accomplishment given the level of competition he was up against.
Jennifer Lopez recently took a swipe at Nomadland, the 2020 Best Picture winner, saying, “It’s not why I go to the movies. I like musicals. I like romantic comedies. I like thrillers, you know? And Nomadland is a slow-moving thing about grief, and there’s no escapism to it. And I do like some movies like that, but that one I just didn’t. It’s just a taste thing. And I know we need movies about grief! I understand.”
Nomadland was my preferred winner out of that year’s Best Picture lineup and remains one of my favorite films of 2020. That said, I honestly understand where Lopez is coming from. Quite frankly, the film was helped by the fact that 2020 ended up being a relatively weak year for cinema due to the pandemic, and I’m not convinced it would have won Best Picture had it been released in most other years.
And, if we’re being honest, this headline is probably the first time many people have even thought about Nomadland in quite a while. It increasingly feels like one of those Oscar winners that will age into being generally forgotten, not because it’s bad but because it emerged from what many consider a lost year for movies. The film lacks the kind of lasting pop culture footprint that other Best Picture winners have had.
I still consider Nomadland one of the best films released that year and a tremendous achievement by Chloe Zhao. Its blend of documentary-style realism and deeply human storytelling worked for me in a way that few films did during that year. But at the same time, I completely understand why someone looking for entertainment, escapism, or a more conventional narrative experience might bounce off it. In that regard, I get where JLo is coming from.
However, I’m a bit less forgiving of Luca Guadagnino, who recently decided to take a shot at Top Gun: Maverick, saying, “It’s a very bad movie… people liked it because the economy of nostalgia right now seems to be the only commodity that can be dominated by all types of markets.”
With all due respect to Guadagnino and his biggest fans, this is coming from a filmmaker who directed After The Hunt and, in my view, has yet to make a film anywhere near as strong as Maverick. And yes, I would include Challengers in that assessment as well.
That said, I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by his dismissal. Guadagnino has always struck me as someone with, shall we say, fairly high-brow tastes, who tends to look at more populist cinema with a skeptical eye. Which makes his near-miss involvement with a DC project all the more surreal in hindsight.
And speaking of filmmakers putting their foot in their mouth, Jane Campion, who has developed a reputation for occasionally making tone-deaf public comments, may have delivered one of her more controversial remarks yet.
In discussing her past working relationship with Harvey Weinstein on The Piano and yes, THAT Harvey Weinstein, she said: “Can I say one thing that’s going to be very disturbing? Harvey Weinstein, as we know, did some horrific things, but he also did some great things for the arts and for getting audiences. He was bold in that way. He loved films. I have to admit, the marketing strategy was his vision.”
Comments like this from Campion are not exactly new. She has made a number of remarks over the years that have, fairly or unfairly, complicated aspects of her public perception, including during The Power Of The Dog’s awards campaign, which, along with its divisive audience reception, contributed to one of the more dramatic shifts I can remember between nomination morning and Oscar night.
It’s just another reminder that she has a tendency to create avoidable distractions in moments where a bit more precision and restraint would go a long way. I’ll try to dig into this more on this week’s podcast.
What Else Is On My Mind
Well, the 2026 NBA Finals have wrapped up, and I have to congratulate the New York Knicks on defeating the San Antonio Spurs in five games, including pulling off back-to-back major comebacks to close out the series. I was personally rooting for San Antonio, but it has been surreal to watch the Knicks finally win the big one. It was especially cool to see Spike Lee celebrate after more than forty years as a season-ticket holder. I also spent months watching Ben Stiller basically turn his X account into a Knicks fan page, so I’m happy for him as well. I do have to wonder about some of the more obvious bandwagoners who suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but props to the actual Knicks fans; their long national nightmare is finally over.
As a Miami Heat fan, I’ve gotten to see my team win three championships while also losing four NBA Finals, so I understand both the adulation New York is experiencing right now and the heartbreak San Antonio fans are feeling. Especially considering the amount of head-scratching basketball that young Spurs team played down the stretch in those games they choked away.
Meanwhile, the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals also came to an end as the Carolina Hurricanes came back from down 2–1 in the series to win three straight games and defeat the Las Vegas Golden Knights in six games. I warned Knights fans last week that a 2–1 series lead in a Stanley Cup Final is never something to feel safe about and well…here we are. Congrats to the Hurricanes on their second championship. It also looks like we now have teams from California, Carolina, and Florida that have all won multiple Cup titles since the last time a Canadian team won.
The 2026 World Cup has officially kicked off, with North American countries serving as hosts and plenty of U.S. venues staging matches. As I watched social media erupt with excitement over the opening weekend, the biggest story to me wasn’t anything that happened on the pitch, it was how cheap the concession prices are at Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Stadium! They’re offering hot dogs for just two bucks and liquor for under ten dollars. It immediately made me think about how I had to pay double or even triple those prices when I went to see Metallica at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa last summer. Anyhow, I’m not going to pretend to be a soccer guy, care all that much about the World Cup, or be performative about my rooting interest in Team USA’s chances. But more power to those who are excited for the event, and I hope you Atlanta folks appreciate just how good you have it when it comes to concession prices at your local football stadium.
Father’s Day weekend is coming up, and for me it will be a special one because it will be my first time getting to celebrate it as a dad. At this point last year, I had no idea I was going to become a dad, so it’s kind of wild to think that here I am a year later with a four-month-old little woman to take care of. My best wishes to all the dads out there this weekend. Whether you’re a new dad like me, a seasoned veteran, or somewhere in between, I hope you have a great Father’s Day.