After box office doldrums in late summer and the start of fall, Hollywood finally had a weekend it can celebrate. Hotel Transylvania and Looper debuted to great numbers, helping to end a five week slump. The top ten accounted for just over $104.4 million with the top two titles accounting for $64 million of that total. Another newcomer, Pitch Perfect also opened robustly, ranking sixth in the chart despite being in only 335 theaters. Won't Back Down, however, opened weak, providing a bit of a reality check.
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Three new titles essentially scored the number one spot, but they topped a very anemic box office that did not have any titles score anything above $13 million. The top 10 added up to almost $73.5 million, a bit of an improvement over last week's $65.36 million, but still slow. End of Watch grossed $13 million, on par for director David Ayer's previous effort. House at the End of the Street also grossed $13 million, but in more theaters than Watch. And Clint Eastwood's latest Trouble with the Curve bowed with just over $12.7 million.
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Just the words South Central will conjure up an image of mean streets and gangs, even by people who don't live in Los Angeles. The neighborhood is infamous for its hardened criminals and its gang-banger imagery has permeated the popular culture everywhere. Director David Ayer returns to the neighborhood he knows well in his latest film End of Watch, starring Jake Gyllenhaal (who is also an executive producer) and Michael Peña who give gripping performances as LAPD cops Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala tackling a better armed group of very tough group - both guys and gals. Ayer grew up in the neighborhood and knows the people he's brought to the big screen well. South Central was the setting for his first directorial feature, Harsh Times back in 2005. And LAPD cops were at the heart of his 2008 pic Street Kings. Ayer told ML that he initially wanted to move away from the cop-crime scenario after working on those films, but headed back to the genre even as he was trying to talk himself out of it.
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It says something about how the LAPD tends to get portrayed in the movies that when Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) are introduced on screen at the beginning of the surprising cop drama End of Watch, it feels like it's only a matter of time before they plant evidence on someone, steal drugs or money, beat or kill someone without warrant or let loose with something terribly racist. more »
Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña spent months developing the brotherly rapport they share as LAPD officers under fire in End of Watch, out Friday from director David Ayer. Channel a fraction of that effort in composing your best haiku ode to the Gyllen-Peña cop drama and you could win a T-shirt and signed poster from the film. Unholster those typing fingers!
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Actor Michael Peña is set for what is likely his biggest starring role to date in director David Ayer's End of Watch. In the pic opening this weekend, he plays opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as a pair of good-guy but rough-and-tumble L.A. cops who face the complicated mean streets of the city's gang-ridden South Central neighborhood. At the Toronto International Film Festival where the film debuted earlier this month, Peña recalled his life growing up in a similarly rough are of Chicago, crediting sports and a former girlfriend who landed him a job at a bank for keeping the lure of gangs at bay. And, he hinted that his ego may have also played into his decision for a different life, which quickly took him to Hollywood.
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Thrown together for five months of real-life training and preparation — during which time they witnessed some harsh times, indeed, while preparing to play LAPD officers — Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña put in extraordinary dedication to bring authenticity to David Ayer's End of Watch. In an exclusive featurette, the duo (along with Ayer and co-star Anna Kendrick) share their experiences making the gritty found footage cop drama (and love for one another): "[Peña] and I spent over half a year together, going through some of the scariest situations that I’ve been through in my life," says Gyllenhaal. "Mike’s my other half."
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The Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña starrer End Of Watch appears to have hooked audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the police drama premiered. The fast-paced story of two LAPD officers who form a powerful bond as they patrol the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles required both actors to go through months of training and "ride-alongs" with L.A. and Inglewood police officers; the movie itself unfolds a liberal dose of gun fire, fights and some gruesome scenes. But on one patrol in the lead-up to the shoot, Jake Gyllenhaal experienced a true-life horror — a murder.
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Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña are two Los Angeles cops on patrol, though they clearly see more action than most. The two are on a hit-list after they after they happen upon a drug kingpin's stash of bling, guns and cash. The Toronto International Film Festival premiere just debuted its Red Band Trailer and a day-in-the-life of these policemen clearly does not involve traffic stops and jaywalkers - at least not that much.
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Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña are two L.A. cops who are on a hit list after they confiscate a drug gang's cache of bling, firearms and cash during a traffic stop in one of the city's most notorious precincts in the upcoming crime drama End of Watch. In this first clip from the film, a clean-shaven (and smooth skulled) Gyllenhaal and Peña share a moment of levity while on patrol with some chatty back-and-forths about each setting each other up on dates.
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Magic Mike’s Cody Horn probably could have taken a more direct line to acting – her father is former Warner Bros. president Alan Horn, the veteran studio exec who recently took the helm at Disney – but life took her on a more circuitous path. A passion for movies early on (“I read my first script when I was 9”) led to internships and script reading, and she also earned a degree in philosophy at NYU and modeled, but it wasn’t until she met Joel Schumacher that she was cast in her first film, at 22. Now, coming off a turn opposite Channing Tatum as the pragmatic Brooke in Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike, Horn has a host of intriguing roles ahead of her – and she’s determined to avoid being the traditional leading lady.
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"From the writer of Training Day... and The Fast and the Furious..." Yeah, OK. The first trailer for the thriller End of Watch is all that lead-plated machismo and more jammed through the chaotic handheld prism of Crank and distilled with the essence of Jake Gyllenhaal until the potency has you lapsing into a cop-buddy-shoot-'em-up swoon, faceplanting helplessly into writer-director David Ayer's oversaturated L.A. grit. And it's got Michael Peña and Anna Kendrick. What could go wrong?
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