The Accountant Leads the Box-Office Books

Good old-fashioned star power still seems to be a force to reckon with at the box office, as Ben Affleck and The Accountant generated a more-than-respectable $25 million for Warner Bros. The wide release of Kevin Hart's stand-up comedy feature What Now? generated about $12 million, putting it on par with the second weekend of The Girl on the Train. Farther down the charts, Max Steel — a sci-fi film based on an action figure and co-produced by Mattel Entertainment — tanked with around $2.2 million and director Jonás Cuarón's Desierto, Mexico's official submission for this year's foreign-language film Oscar, did a reasonable 450,000 on just 73 screens. [Box Office Guru]

China's Wanda Group Lures Global Production with 40 Percent Incentive

Billionaire Wang Jianlin, reportedly the richest man in China, is opening a massive $8.2 billion movie studio in eastern China. How will he convince productions to shoot at the new Qingdao Movie Metropolis? Well, a 40 percent production rebate certainly won't hurt. The Hollywood Reporter says Wang is in L.A. today to introduce the incentive, which is being funded by Wang's Wanda Group and regional governments. Pacific Rim: Maelstrom, produced by Wanda subsidiary Legendary Entertainment, is said to be the first U.S. production preparing to shoot at the new Qingdao facility. [The Hollywood Reporter]

China Leading the World in VR Demand, Says Investment Banker

Some analysts expect 40 percent of the demand for VR headsets to come from the Chinese market, where low-cost mobile VR headsets are becoming broadly available, while shopping-mall and theme-park kiosks offer paid VR experiences. Hazel Moore, head of investmant bank FirstCapital, says Chinese Internet companies are concentrating on building VR platforms and applications rather than developing hardware, leaving that task largely to the Americans. [VR Focus]

Scorsese's Silence Getting Trimmed into Shape for Year-End Release

590_silence

Martin Scorsese's new Silence, a long-gestating historical drama about Portuguese Jesuit priests in Japan that the director has been developing since the early 1990s, is coming together quickly in the home stretch. Producer Irwin Winkler says the film now runs 159 minutes, down from more then three hours just "a few weeks ago," according to Pete Hammond at Deadline. The film is scheduled for a December 23 limited release with an expansion in January 2017, indicating that Paramount expects it to be a year-end awards contender. [Deadline] 

Putting Sony's AXS-R7 Raw Recorder Through Its Paces

AbelCine finally has the new Sony AXS-R7 Raw recorder for the F5 and F55 in stock. When used with the F55, it enables 4K raw recording at up to 120fps when used with new, higher-performance AXS memory cards. AbelCine's Andy Shipsides shows off the new hardware in this 10-minute video.  [AbelCine CineTechnica]

Adobe Premiere Pro's New Celebrity Spokesmonster: Godzilla

Editorial and VFX supervisor Atsuki Sato is featured at Adobe's Creative Cloud blog, where he describes cutting the new creature feature Shin Godzilla — just finishing up a limited U.S. theatrical run — with Adobe Premiere Pro CC. The havoc wreaked by the big guy was captured with a fleet of cameras including the ARRI Alexa, Red VFX shots, the Canon XC10, iPhones, Sony Action Cams, and GoPros. Fortunately, they didn't tear up the timeline the way Godzilla trashes Tokyo. [Adobe Creative Cloud]