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distribution president Jeff Goldstein. “It’s not about one particular season and for a studio, it’s about opportunistically dating your movies in a way to maximize your box office on any given film.”
Beyond “Ocean’s 8” there are a num-
ber of gender-flipped reboots and bawdy female-led comedies, like “Overboard” (May 4) with Anna Faris, the “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” remake “The Hustle” (June 29) with Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, “Book Club” (May 18) with Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, and “The Spy Who Dumped Me” (Aug. 3) with Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon.
And action fans can look forward to Mark Wahlberg as an intelligence officer trying to smuggle a police officer out of the country in “Mile 22” (Aug. 3) and Jason Statham fighting a shark in “The Meg” (Aug. 10).
Audiences thirsting for more uncon- ventional fare may just have to look a little deeper for the potential hidden gems, like
“Uncle Drew” (June 29), a comedy about an aging basketball team competing in a street tournament, with Lil Rel Howery, Kyrie Irving and Shaquille O’Neal, and “Hereditary” (June 8), a trippy horror about the strange things that start happen- ing when a family’s matriarch dies.
Sundance breakouts coming this sum- mer include “Eighth Grade” (July 13) from comedian Bo Burnham, which follows an eighth grade girl around her last week of middle school, “Blindspotting” (July 20) about a police shooting in Oakland, and “Sorry to Bother You” (July 6) also Oak- land-set, but with a quirkier sci-fi edge.
There’s the almost too-strange-to-be- true “The Happytime Murders” (Aug. 17) from Brian Henson and starring Melissa McCarthy, where puppets and humans co-exist and a private eye takes on the case of a puppet on puppet murder.
And then there’s “Hotel Artemis,” the directorial debut of “Iron Man 3” screen- writer Drew Pearce. It’s an original ac- tion-thriller about a hospital for criminals
set in a dystopian, near-future Los Angeles with a star-studded cast including Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown and Jeff Gold- blum that Global Road Entertainment is releasing on June 8. Pearce said there was no way he could have gotten it made in the studio system.
“Hopefully this is a rallying cry. It’s not a sequel, it’s not based on a comic. It’s not a reboot. It’s its own eccentric and hopefully loveable beast of a movie,” Pearce said.
“I think what we’ve seen in the last year is movies with real personality are actually what an audience is crying out for, whether that’s tiny movies that made good like ‘Get Out’ or taking the superhero blockbust-
er like ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ and essentially making a quirky New Zealand comedy out of it,” he said. “I think there’s a real appetite for something that’s just a little different and a little less cookie-cutter.”
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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr
ABC appoints Robach as ‘20/20’ co-anchor
NEW YORK (AP) — ABC News says Amy Robach will be David Muir’s new co-anchor on the “20/20” newsmagazine.
Robach has reported for the news- magazine and is best known at ABC for her work on “Good Morning America,” where in recent years she has detailed her own battle with breast cancer. ABC News President James Goldston said Monday that Robach will continue to report for the morning show.
She replaces Elizabeth Vargas on the newsmagazine. Vargas recently left ABC News and has signed a production and anchoring deal with the A&E Networks.
Robach has conducted interviews with Tonya Harding, Gretchen Carlson, Hulk Hogan and Monica Lewinsky for ABC News.
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