More Talent News. Werd, Cha and All That.

A busy weekend at the box office saw four films enter theatres, meaning that four movies had to exit. And that means that the director and top four talents of each film compare the domestic receipts with what they were expecting and Talent Scores increase or decrease. Were there any big movers this week?

The Milliner 1919, the Lucian-produced prequel to, naturally, The Milliner, stayed low key for its run and the results reflected that. Barely missing the 60 million dollar mark, the arthouse film pleased all involved except for star Paul Bettany. His TS lowered to 5.745, meaning he now commands $5,745,000 for a top slot in a big screen production. Not bad, but not as good as the $6,068,000 that he was getting before.

LHF's Picnic Time barely made enough cash to please star Ethan Hawke, but he and his costars managed to accept what the short horror film received.

Sparks: Post Mortem, Mac's independent release of LL Cool J's bomb squad antics, didn't manage 60 mil either. The lower-TS cast was fine with this, except for John Cusack in the number two slot. His score dropped from 10.743 to 10.255. Will approximately half a million in a starring role hurt the actor? Who knows. Probably not. But that's a lot of pizza change.

Fortune City, on the other hand, scored well at the box office with just under 195 million, despite some criticism of its summary format. Most pleased was actress Eliza Dushku, whose TS rose to 4.333. Generally placed in films that raise her score slowly, is the dark-haired beauty on her way to bigger things?

No further word has been given by the HTG talent administration concerning penalties for lowered scores for talents due to exiting films. Will an announcement be made soon?