{"id":229574,"date":"2026-01-09T18:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T18:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/229574\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T18:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T18:57:09","slug":"box-office-grok-ai-international-insider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/229574\/","title":{"rendered":"Box Office & Grok AI International Insider"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGood afternoon Insiders, it\u2019s a new year and it\u2019s rather chilly, but never fear, your favorite weekly roundup of the biggest entertainment biz news is here. We hope you all had a lovely break. Do read on, and sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tBox Office<\/a> Optimism<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Avatar:<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tTentpoles and indie still got it: Gower Street Analytics previously predicted<\/a> that 2026 will be the highest grossing global box office year since before the pandemic, and even with the prospect of the world\u2019s biggest streaming service buying one of the world\u2019s biggest movie studios, one can\u2019t help but enter this year with a sense of optimism. Major tentpoles like Avatar: Fire and Ash and Zootopia 2 <\/a>are lighting things up, while lower-budget fare including Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet-starrer Marty Supreme, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s Hamnet and zombie horror We Bury the Dead are proving that indie can still do it, thank god.<\/a> Deadline is always keen to see what\u2019s going on in theaters around the world and Anthony D\u2019Alessandro headed to the ever-interesting Chinese market, where the 2025 box office hit big numbers<\/a> (albeit they would have been down on 2024 had it not been for Ne Zha 2). Or how about Italy, where moviegoing has struggled somewhat since Covid, Anthony writes. That makes the latest success of the comedy\u00a0Buen Camino, starring and written by\u00a0Checco Zalone,\u00a0which is on its way to becoming the highest-grossing local-language film in Italy<\/a>, all the more amazing. There are a million caveats to a strong box office year and we all know how difficult it is so attract punters, but with heavy hitters like Avengers: Doomsday and Christopher Nolan\u2019s epic Odyssey incoming later this year, plus plenty more, we\u2019re raising a glass to cinemagoers returning to theaters around the world. Deadline, as ever, will be following each step of the way.<\/p>\n

\n\tGrok<\/a> AI Generating Headlines<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStephane Cardinale \u2013 Corbis\/Corbis via Getty<\/p>\n

\n\tStill raising billions: Imploring Elon Musk\u2019s new AI tool to respect her privacy was probably not the way that Maya Jama wanted to spend her day but the Love Island host took to X to join an ever-growing number of women trying to take action<\/a> against the invasive tool. Grok has been in the headlines over the past few days for all the wrong reasons as more and more women reveal they have been deepfaked via its Imagine setting, including a 14-year-old\u00a0Stranger Things\u00a0actor, who was manipulated by Grok to put her in a banana print bikini, and a presenter who campaigns for privacy rights after intimate photos were shared around her school without consent when she was 15. Musk acknowledged the problem publicly and has stated that action will be taken against child sexual abuse material. Earlier today, X updated its policy<\/a> so that only paying users of the platform can image edit. This came after the UK government went ham, condemning the \u201cappalling\u201d images<\/a> and urging X to move fast. The country\u2019s regulator, Ofcom, didn\u2019t rule out a full ban of the service over the issue. Depressingly, none of this intense backlash stopped Musk\u2019s xAI raising<\/a> a whopping $20B in its latest funding round, with investors including Qatar Investment Authority, MGX and Baron Capital Group. Grok Imagine offers a Black Mirror-esque window into how AI can be leveraged for harm, and yet, as so often feels the case, never-out-the-news tech baron Musk powers on stronger than ever.<\/p>\n

\n\tBaz Meets Julia Roberts<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Julia<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tThat signature gleaming smile: Someone else who has been addressing artificial intelligence head on has been Julia Roberts, who has been one of its most vociferous critics and refuses to even use ChatGPT. Breaking Baz\u2019s first big interview of the year was with the Oscar-winning Erin Brokovich star and she responded with an emphatic \u201cYes\u201d to the question of whether we are at a dangerous crossroads with the tech and its impact on Hollywood. Never fear though, as Baz writes, an AI version of\u00a0Julia Roberts\u00a0would be doomed from the start. A computer program could never replicate her signature gleaming smile \u2014 the one that lights up\u00a0Notting Hill\u00a0and\u00a0Pretty Woman\u00a0\u2014 or the inner turmoil that tortures Alma, the Yale philosophy professor she captures so astutely in\u00a0Luca Guadagnino\u2019s riveting drama\u00a0After the Hunt.\u00a0Roberts dives deep into working with Guadagnino on After the Hunt and muses introspectively about whether Pretty Woman \u2013 the 1990 romcom in which she played an escort hired for a wealthy corporate raider (portrayed by a dashing Richard Gere) \u2013 would have been made today. The piece is well worth a read.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThe Essentials<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83c\udf36\ufe0f Another One: Desert Angel, a documentary about the search for stranded migrants, has been picked up for worldwide distribution.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83c\udfc6 Awards latest: BAFTA Film longlists have just come out\u2026 One Battle After Another leads the pack<\/a> and there were a fair few snubs and surprises<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83d\ude84 Hijacked: Idris Elba spoke to us<\/a> about stepping back into a high-stakes world of hostages for the second season of his hit Apple TV series.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83d\ude0f Frontrunners: We took a look at who is leading the race<\/a> to become the next BBC Director General.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83d\udcb5 Tax credit: Europe\u2019s first rebate for unscripted shows has rolled out in Ireland<\/a>, but there are question marks over whether Fox shows filming in the Emerald Isle will benefit.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83d\udcc8 Number crunch: The Asia Pacific screen biz will hit revenues of<\/a> a whopping $196B by 2030, according to a\u00a0Media Partners Asia\u00a0report.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83d\udeaa Exiting: Lionsgate\u2019s Noel Hedges<\/a>, who leaves his international acquisitions role after eight years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83d\udde3\ufe0f The big interview: Meyer Levinson-Blount, the Oscar-nommed Butcher\u2019s Stain filmmaker, told us how he took a \u201crespectful\u201d approach <\/a>to telling a story about a Palestinian in Israel.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83e\udd1d Done deal: Universal picked up a 30% stake<\/a> in India\u2019s Excel Entertainment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83c\udfd5\ufe0f Fest latest: Petra Volpe, director behind Late Shift, will be awarded<\/a> the Zurich Film Festival\u2019s Golden Eye.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83d\udcfa Ratings: Jake dove deep into the UK TV numbers<\/a> for 2025 and found The Celebrity Traitors, Adolescence and KPop Demon Hunters had come out on top. <\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83c\udfa5 Clip: For Netflix\u2019s Museum of Innocence, a Turkish miniseries adapted<\/a>\u00a0from Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk\u2019s bestseller.<\/p>\n

\n\t\ud83d\udd6f\ufe0f RIP: Danielle Scott-Haughton<\/a>, the BBC drama executive behind shows including the upcoming Peaky Blinders series, who died unexpectedly in her sleep. She was in her 30s. Our thoughts go out to Danielle\u2019s family and friends.<\/p>\n

\n\tInternational Insider<\/a> was written by Max Goldbart and edited by Jesse Whittock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good afternoon Insiders, it\u2019s a new year and it\u2019s rather chilly, but never fear, your favorite weekly roundup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1239,458,146,13714,85,63942,46,680],"class_list":["post-229574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-box-office","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-grok","tag-il","tag-international-insider","tag-israel","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}