Is Wakanda Forever or is it fleeting?

After a mammoth first weekend, “Wakanda Forever,” the sequel to “Black Panther,” slowed down considerably on Monday.

The Monday box office was a respectable $11 million — believe me, any movie would be happy to have that number.

But Exhibitor Relations points that after a $181 million weekend, the 72% drop is a surprise. It’s much less than Mondays for this year’s previous Marvel releases, “Thor Love and Thunder” and “Dr. Strange 2.”

What does it mean besides kids were doing their homework? Word of mouth may not be so enthusiastic after the first wave saw the movie and realized that the Black Panther was really dead and so was Queen Ramonda. And Killmonger’s pop up seemed slack to say the least.

Stay tuned this week…

The big mystery at the LA premiere of Netflix’s sequel murder mystery “Glass Onion; A Knives Out Mystery” last night: where was star Daniel Craig, aka Benoit Blanc?

Director Rian Johnson explained to the crowd at the Academy Museum that Craig was “heartbroken” but had come down “with a bug.” The massive cast — which includes Kate Hudson, Edward Norton, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr and Janelle Monae — had to carry on without their leader. (And you thought James Bond was impervious to all ailments!)

Stuber introduced director/writer Rian Johnson as a “filmmaker who continues to grow, continues to entertain and continues to deliver great part for his actors and great entertainment for you the audience.” Rian then thanked the packed house and brought out the all star cast. He noted, “There’s two people who are missing from here. up here. Dave Bautista who is shooting right now. And Daniel Craig — I’m wondering if we can record just a little video and say we all love you Daniel. Is everyone down for that?”

When the audience (which included Kate Hudson’s famous mom Goldie Hawn, “Game of Thrones” producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, and Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon) enthusiastically shouted ‘Yes,’ Johnson then instructed the audience, “everyone all together say, ‘we love you Daniel.’” Johnson ended with “this is insane right? Pretty crazy, just have fun.”

At the after party, Craig’s lovely daughter actress Ella Craig, who was with the powerhouse producer/actress Colleen Camp, told me that, “My dad has the flu. This is the first time in 10 years he’s missed something like this. He’s really upset about it.” But Daniel should know that the audience was loving the movie. The film played beautifully with raucous laughter from the crowd. With a clever script and terrific actors, “Glass Onion” is a dazzling and delightful whodunit.

“Glass Onion” will be in theaters on November 23rd, and will start streaming on Netflix Dec 23. 2022.

Will there be a “Top Gun Maverick” sequel? On Friday night, I got the answer.

Director Joseph Kosinski is ready. So is producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Star Miles Teller told me: “If you’d asked me when we finished this movie, I’d have said I needed a break. The whole cast did. But now it’s just about Tom.”

He added, it’s also about the cast. After all, he’s the only who didn’t — to use his word
“puke” — when they got back from flying the planes. The actors, as we’ve been told before, were up in those planes flying at speeds that were treacherous. Luckily, someone from the Air Force was up there with them, too. But no green screens. It was all terrifyingly real.

And Tom Cruise, the lightning rod for “Maverick”? Everyone was talking about him at Friday night’s screening and Q&A for the film, which had made $1.4 billion around the world, is beloved, and guess what? In a second viewing, it holds up to the hype. “Maverick” is an old fashioned Hollywood hit in the best way. Teller, Kosinski, and Bruckheimer were joined by Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly, who gives “Maverick” an unexpected gravitas. She is also — not PC to say anymore– gorgeous.

“It’s the wig,” she told me. “Everyone loves the wig.” No, it’s Connelly. (See below.)

Now the trick is, can it get Oscar nominations? My feeling: it must, or no one is going to watch the Oscars. The rest of the 2023 Oscar slate is high quality but has no blockbuster. Having “Top Gun Maverick” in the mix would give the Academy a needed jolt.

And then there’s Bruckheimer, who’s never won an award even after making five decades worth of blockbusters including the original “Top Gun.” He doesn’t even have a Producers Guild Award, which is kind of ridiculous. Famous with his late partner, Don Simpson, from their skyrocketing success early on. Bruckheimer has gone on to triumph after triumph.

In the Q&A with Fandango’s Erik Davis, Bruckheimer was low key and eloquent when asked about that this movie means to him:

“Well, first of all what is meant to the industry. A large part of our audience that came out to see Tom had not been out to see a movie in at least two years. So we brought a large audience from age 8 to 80 back to cinema and theaters. Around the world! It’s not just a movie for this country. Our grosses foreign were larger than our grosses in this country. This is a movie that brought people together. It’s not a red state or a blue state…it’s a movie for everybody…It’s because of the expertise of Tom Cruise and these amazing people on the stage with me and all the wonderful technicians who work so hard and smoothly to make it as good as it is… So it shows when you make a movie right it shows the brilliance of the people who make it.”

Well put.

When could we see a sequel? Cruise has to finish “Mission Impossible 8,” the second of two “MI” movies coming in 2023 and 2024. But I think “Top Gun M 2” will start up sooner than later, before everyone who made the first one loses their nerve!

By the way, I asked Connelly, how does it work when you’re in a film that starts breaking weekly records? If you’re the actors do you just read the Sunday headlines? Or does someone call and say “you’re making history”? Jennifer said, in this case, “Chris McQuarrie, our director, has us all on group chat. So he’d say, Look at this!” She shook her head. “And you can’t believe it!”