A weekly film and box office newsletter. Howdy, folks! At long last, Oscar season is over. And if you loved both "One Battle After Another" and "Sinners," it was hard to be upset with the outcome. Paul Thomas Anderson's masterful epic took home six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, while Ryan Coogler's also masterful horror film scored four wins, including Best Original Screenplay for Coogler, a historic win for DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw and the stunner of the season, Michael B. Jordan for Best Actor. Both movies are deeply American stories about the world we live in right now. Both were hits — "Sinners" grossed $369 million at the worldwide box office and "One Battle" made $210 million. And both were part of Warner Bros. Pictures heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy's year-long bet on singular filmmakers with unique visions, backed by robust budgets. A bet that paid off big time. That the two biggest winners of the night were bona fide hit movies is something of a detour for the Academy, which aside from "Oppenheimer" in 2023 has leaned towards indies or smaller critical darlings over the last several years when it comes to Best Picture winners. Whether the general public cared enough to tune in won't be known until the ratings arrive, but as overall Oscars viewership has dwindled and the telecast gets ready to move to YouTube in 2029 — something is going to change — this year's ceremony felt like a feast for all, movies beloved by critics and audiences alike winning left and right. Even "Weapons" won! At such an existential time for the movie business, I call that a win. Audiences turned out in 2025 for big, bold original films, and the Academy rewarded those movies in kind. The wrinkle, of course, is that Warner Bros. — inarguably the biggest winner of the night — is due to be sold to Paramount in a matter of months, should regulatory hurdles be crossed. It's worrisome to many that the major studio that had the resources and wherewithal to back such original visions on a big canvas for mass audiences could potentially be unrecognizable in a year. Uncertainty lingers. Will Mike and Pam get to keep doing what they're doing under David Ellison's ownership? Will WB's big wins spur other studios to take similarly risky bets on original projects? Is Timothée Chalamet on the hunt for a prestige ballet or opera-centric movie right now to finally get his Oscar? For a moment, at least, there's much to be happy about. On a night when Michael B. Jordan and Paul Thomas Anderson and Jessie Buckley and Ryan Coogler won Oscars, it was pretty much impossible not to smile. Adam Chitwood 
Box Office: 'Hoppers' Holds Strong With $28.5 Million Second WeekendDisney/Pixar’s “Hoppers” got off to a good start last weekend, but it needs weeks worth of legs to be a proper box office hit. So far, it’s... 
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