🎬 Year's Biggest Opening

👋 Good morning! Twenty-three years after 'The Room' taught us all how not to throw a football, it's getting a remake. Sort of. 'The Room Returns' has Bob Odenkirk stepping into Tommy Wiseau's shoes as Johnny, performing the original script against a green screen of the 2003 sets. The whole thing was shot in just 12 hours, and it’ll premiere this Friday at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the perfect resting place for cinema's favorite disaster. Proceeds go to charity, so you can feel good about laughing this time.

Happy Monday. Whether you're rubbing elbows on the Croisette at Cannes Lions or easing into the week from your couch, we've got box office numbers and all the latest news. Let’s get into it. 👇

The big picture: 'Toy Story 5' posted the biggest debut of 2026 so far and accounted for more than two-thirds of the weekend's domestic haul on its own. Summer 2026 is now running just 1.8% behind pre-pandemic 2019, and it looks like we're on track to top $4B for the season for only the second time post-COVID. And for once the growth is coming from people, not prices: tickets sold are up 7% this year while the average ticket has only ticked up 3%, a turnaround from the last couple of years when higher prices did most of the lifting.

Up next: DC's 'Supergirl' and Paramount's 'Jackass: Best and Last' both open next weekend, followed by 'Minions & Monsters' over the July 4th holiday and the live-action 'Moana' remake the weekend after.

The International Festival of Creativity (which absolutely no one calls it), also known as Cannes Lions, kicks off today on the French Riviera. The 73-year-old fest, sometimes called the "Oscars of advertising," has grown from an insider ad-industry gathering into a sprawling cultural phenomenon, drawing CMOs, tech leaders, celebrities, athletes, and creators. It's long been a crystal ball for where Hollywood's ad dollars are headed, since what wins here tends to shape how brands spend all year. Expect five days of beachfront panels and a heroic amount of expensed rosé.

This year there's some drama, though. Lions are often won on the strength of case studies showing an ad's real-world impact, and last year several high-profile entries got caught using manipulated or misleading evidence. So Cannes brought in strict new integrity rules, including tougher fact-checking and sign-off from senior execs, and entries fell more than 25%.

Creators, in particular, have become a centerpiece of the festival. They come to land brand deals, score paid speaking slots, and rub shoulders with the marketers who write the checks. There was some worry creators would thin out this time, since the brands that usually pay their way were cutting costs and conflict overseas had pushed travel prices higher, but that didn't happen. More than 250 creators are expected to attend, and about 75% are coming on a company's dime.

Looking ahead… The festival runs through Friday, with awards handed out at ceremonies each evening along the way.

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Amazon MGM just walked away from 'Artificial,' Luca Guadagnino's nearly finished, $40M biopic of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, with Andrew Garfield in the lead. The film covers a 2023 boardroom coup that briefly toppled Altman as OpenAI's CEO before he was reinstated days later.

Officially, Amazon says the movie would simply be "better served" at another studio, and that it's helping the team find a new home. The subject matter had nothing to do with it, the studio insists. Scout's honor.

The timing has people talking, though. Amazon dropped the film just months after committing $50B to OpenAI as part of a cloud partnership. Reports also say Prime Video and Amazon MGM chief Mike Hopkins made the call after screening the film, which reportedly took a darker turn in post, with the portrayals of Altman and Musk (played by Ike Barinholtz) landing somewhere south of flattering.

So far the buyers' line isn't exactly forming. Netflix, A24, Focus Features and Warner Bros.' Clockwork have all taken a pass after screening the film. Some of them have their own AI ties to weigh, too. A24, for one, is backed by Thrive Capital, which holds a seat on OpenAI's board. That leaves Mubi as the front-runner, with Neon possibly circling. Mubi is the same indie distributor that picked up 'The Substance' after Universal bailed.

The French really do love a festival. The Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the world's largest and most prestigious gathering for the animation industry, kicked off yesterday in the lakeside French Alpine town it calls home. It's the field's standard-bearer, equal parts showcase for the biggest studio and streaming projects and launchpad for the next wave of talent.

This year's edition (its 50th) is a milestone in more ways than the number. Annecy is now a "Class A" festival, a designation from the international federation of film producers' associations that seats it at the grown-ups' table alongside Cannes, Venice, and Berlin. It's the only animation festival ever invited. A few things to watch this week…

Looking ahead… The festival runs through June 27 and caps off with the top Cristal awards on Saturday. The town is also cutting the ribbon this week on the Cité internationale du cinéma d'animation, a permanent year-round campus (museum, cinema, the works) that keeps Annecy an animation hub long after the festival crowds leave.

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