MOVIES

Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/ Apple TV+

In a movie match-up almost as unlikely as “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” Martin Scorsese took on Taylor Swift in cinemas over the weekend. And while the box office belonged for a second time to “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” got off to a strong start in Apple Studios’ first major theatrical gambit.

Photo Credit: Tony Gutierrez

A miniature X-wing Starfighter used in a “Star Wars” film sold for over $3 million during an auction over the weekend of items both collected and created by longtime Hollywood model-maker Greg Jein.

The collection amassed by Jein, who died last year at the age of 76, brought in about $13.6 million during an event at Heritage Auctions in Dallas. The auction house said that everyone from model-makers to collectors and science-fiction fans attended, making the event its best-attended in years.

Photo Credit: Chris Pizzello, File

Fran Drescher has steered the actors guild through its monthslong strike. On the heels of Hollywood studios abruptly breaking off talks with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists this week, the actor and union president says she’s baffled and disappointed.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced Wednesday that they had suspended contract negotiations, saying the gap between the two sides was too great to make continuing worth it and characterizing their offer as good as the one that recently ended the writers strike. Drescher told The Associated Press in a Thursday interview that she did not understand why negotiations collapsed but that her union’s resolve has not weakened.

Photo Credit: Joel C Ryan / Invision

The filmmaker Raoul Peck was sitting in a Toronto hotel lobby talking to a reporter when Barry Jenkins beelined over to embrace him.

The two know each other, though it had been years since they saw one another. They also share a mutual affection for James Baldwin. Peck made the incisive, incendiary Oscar-nominated 2017 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.” Jenkins, following his “Moonlight,” made the 2018 Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

Photo Credit: Chris Pizzello

Hollywood writers have voted almost unanimously to approve the contract agreement reached by their union leaders that ended a strike after nearly five months, while actors remain in negotiations to find a way out of their own strike.

The Writers Guild of America announced Monday that 99% of the 8,525 members who cast ballots voted to ratify the deal.

The agreement was widely touted as a win by leaders, and widely praised by members, with major gains in payment, size of show staffs and control of artificial intelligence in scripts. The result of the vote taken over the past week was never really in doubt.