Starting our series of the year’s most anticipated films, we look forward to Black Panther changing the superhero script, disaster movies that will hit hard and the return of the Incredibles, Deadpool and Mary Poppins
Universal suffers a rare flop with Guillermo del Toro’s $55m gothic romance, Le Petit Prince tries to do a Paddington and Ant-Man secures hit status with strong Chinese debut
The sun has retired and the ice cream has melted. Which means this year’s city-saving, helicopter-crashing, cinematic universe-expanding multiplex-fillers have come to an end. Were you paying attention? (spoiler warning)
This year’s biggest films are populated by bad fathers transformed into superheroes to save their imperilled children, while mothers are either taken for granted or psychotic … have we learned nothing since Mrs Doubtfire?
The latest Marvel hero’s £4m opening would trigger celebrations by any other film, but the weekend broke one record – for violinist André Rieu’s live concert
In this week’s round-up of the global box-office scene:
• Hollywood’s Minions wins the battle for the second week running
• Chinese superhero spoof and CGI/live-action hybrid Monster Hunt bag country’s most lucrative weekend ever
• Ant-Man scores lowest-ever US debut for in-house Marvel film
The chairman and face of Marvel Comics’ first cameo was in a Hulk TV movie in 1989. Since 2000 the Stan Lee cameo has become a feature of each film
Steve Rose on film Ant-Man’s Agent Woo: do superhero films have a sidekick race problem?