The US box office got off to a good start for the first quarter of the year by which time the Will Smith and Martin Lawrence movie Bad Boys For Life was the surprise top movie, then in March everything changed.

When the pandemic hit hard cinemas closed for 4 months and although there were weekly charts it was mainly from drive in theatres and studios started shifting release dates hoping things would get back to normal by the end of the year.

Tenet opened in August and it was considered Warner Bros. opened it too early and the movie despite taking $58 Million was considered a flop.

Studios have moved their films around even more since cinemas started to re-open and have gone into 2021 or been moved to streaming, but Warner Bros. again have tested the water at the end of the year with Wonder Woman 1984 which got a release on Christams day 2020 at cinemas and on HBO Max.

Disney has bypassed cinema all together on 2 of their potential biggest movie with Mulan going direct to Disney+ (for a premium price) and the Pixar movie Soul released on Christmas Day.

As it stands the top 20 movies in the US took a reasonable $1.6 Billion but compared to 2019 the top 20 took $5.8 Billion.

Here is 5 top grossing movies at the US box office in 2020.

Bad Boys For Life

Starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence who return as the Miami cop duo in the third in the Bad Boys series.

The movie was a surprise box office hit on its release on 17th January and took $204.5 Million at the US box office making the top movie of the year.

1917

Released on the 10th January (wide, it cam out in 2019 on limited to catch the Oscar deadline) the movie is based during World War one and is film as if it was a continuous single shot.

Despite not winning the best movie Oscar the film took $158 Million at the US box office and is the second best movie of 2020.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

The last movie in the Skywalker Saga was released in 2019 where it took $362.1 Million and was the 6th top movie.

Because of the pandemic the movie managed to be the 3rd best film of 2020 after taking $153 Million.

Sonic the Hedgehog

After going through a strange redesign for its main character Sonic when fan feedback was not too good about his look in the trailer the movie moved to February 14th release date.

The film was a surprise hit and took $146.2 Million at the US box office making it the 4th top movie of 2020.

Jumanji: The Next Level

The sequel movie the 2017 smash hit Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle was released in 2019 where it took $175.4 Million and was the 11th top film in that year.

In 2020 the movie took $142.5 Million and is the 5th top grossing of the year.

See the full US top 20 of 2020

Deadline are reporting that director Stephen Daldry has left the screen adaptation of hit stage show Wicked.

The film has been in development since at least 2016, but due to scheduling conflicts and other problems it is still in pre-production hell.

The movie was originally scheduled for release on December 20th 2019, ironically the same release date as Cats, another stage to screen adaption which was hit with a very harsh critical panning.

Universal, who own the screen rights, will still go ahead with the adaptation, but they wanted to proceed faster than Daldry was moving ahead with development, and as Deadline reports there is currently no sound stage in the UK free for production to start, and the director was keen to film in England.

There is no need to worry as there are a number of high profile directors ready to take over, including Steven Spielberg who is keen to adapt another stage show after he directed West Side Story, which has been delayed until December 2021.

Source Deadline.

The Sonic The hedgehog movie didn't have an easy start with its first trailer, but current tracking is suggesting the film will open to $50 Million in America.

Website Deadline.com is reporting the Paramount is tracking the movie for a far better than expected debut weekend, a massive turnaround as the character of Sonic was largely criticised when the first trailer was released.

The films director Jeff Fowler then decided to delay the release from November 2019 to February 2020 to redo the blue hedgehog and give him more of a look that compliments the Sega video game.

This worked, and when the new trailer was released fans were happy and the turnaround for the movie has been fantastic with excitement generating for the film.

Jim Carey stars as Dr. Robotnik, and to be fair his performance was praised right from the start, while Ben Schwartz voices Sonic.

Will this excitement be reflected in the UK? The movie is also set for release on February 14th and with little competition, First Love and the horror remake of TV series Fantasy Island are released the same day, a debut gross of £2.5 - 3 Million could be on the cards.

Like a bad migraine that simple wont go away, after the release of a new Bond movie the rumour mill starts on the next, until such a time that lead actor, Villain, Bond girl, director and script writer has been confirmed, and to make it all the more "interesting" Bond 23 has been hit with the bankruptcy of MGM, opening it up even more to the gossip.

With fears that Daniel Craig might leave and attached director Sam Mandes might also abandon the project Bond 23 looked like it may have to take a whole different turn, and with seemingly no money to make it, would it actually be made at all, well that was never going to happen.

With all the legal ramblings over MGM out of the way, Deadline are now reporting that the film is well on track and even give a release date of November 9th 2012 (isn't Peter Jackson releasing a film around then as well?) in theatres. Craig will be on board as Bond and Mandes will direct, all good so far.

And the cream on the cake, and this is clearly just a coincidence, is that 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the release of a certain DR. No, or the first Bond movie to all those unfamiliar.