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Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks, held up especially well in its second week- end with $11.4 million from 2,811 theaters

of $43.7 million. The movie also earned $5.8 million from 24 offshore markets for an early foreign cume of $9.2 million and worldwide total of $53.1 million.

In its fourth weekend, Fox’s sci-fi drama The Martian narrowly beat out Sony’s horror comedy Goosebumps to reclaim the box-office crown. Martian took in another $15.9 million from 3,504 theaters for a domestic cume of $166.4 million.

By Pamela McClintock

W idespread carnage

struck the pre-Halloween box office as four new films

bombed — including offerings from Vin Diesel and Bill Murray — while Danny Boyle’s critical darling Steve Jobs hit a glitch when expanding nationwide.

Instead, Ridley Scott’s sci-fi pic The Martian, family entry Goosebumps and Steven Spielberg’s Cold War drama Bridge of Spies topped the chart.

Fox’s Martian reclaimed the crown in its fourth weekend, narrowly beating Sony’s Goosebumps with $15.9 million from 3,504 theaters for a soaring domestic total of $166.4 million. It also dominated abroad, earning another $30 million from 72 markets to zoom past the $200 million mark for a global payload of $384.4 mil-lion, according to Rentrak.

Domestically, Goosebumps grossed $15.5 million from 3,501 locations in its second outing for a strong domestic cume

Martian Back on Top Amid Weekend Box-Office Misfires

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for a 10-day domestic total of $32.6 mil-lion. DreamWorks, Participant Media and Disney teamed on the $40 million histor-ical drama, which fell a scant 26 percent, less than the drops for such previous October titles as Gone Girl, The Social Network and Captain Phillips.

Disney is also celebrating Ant-Man’s late run in China, where the superhero pic took in another $22 million over the weekend for a 10-day total of $81.9 mil-lion and global cume of $493.8 million.

Sony’s Hotel Transylvania 2 also remained a vibrant player, coming in No. 2 overseas with $28.7 million to race past the $300 million worldwide mark, finishing Sunday with $315.8 million in global ticket sales.

Bridge of Spies, which Fox is handling overseas in many markets, also is doing well for a historical drama, taking in $5 million from 23 markets for an early global cume of $39.7 million.

In the U.S., Steve Jobs was expected to generate as much interest among adults as Bridge of Spies, considering the buzz surrounding the biopic, which stars Michael Fassbender as the legend-ary and controversial Apple co-founder. But the Universal film had to settle for a seventh-place finish after grossing just $7.3 million from 2,493 theaters.

Those backing Steve Jobs had hoped to see it land somewhere in the teen millions but are still counting on a long run through awards season (an A- CinemaScore should help word of mouth). The pic is overindex- ing in upscale theaters in major cities, including the Bay Area — home of Apple — but falling flat in Middle America. Two weekends ago, the $30 million film scored the top location average of the year to date when it opened in New York and Los Angeles. Through Sunday, its domestic total stands at $10 million.

“We’re going to redouble our efforts to support these markets,” Universal domestic distribution chief Nic Carpou said Sunday. “It’s working great in these theaters now, and we want to make sure it continues to do so.”

Aaron Sorkin wrote the adapted script for Steve Jobs, which features Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels starring opposite Fassbender.

In terms of other movies written by Sorkin, Moneyball bowed to $19.5 mil- lion in September 2011, while 2010’s The Social Network debuted to $22.4 million. Both of those movies played nationwide from the outset.

Lionsgate’s The Last Witch Hunter came in No. 4 with $10.8 million from 3,082 theaters, a poor start considering its production budget of $75 million to $80 million. The film, starring Diesel as an immortal witch hunter who attempts to stop a plague from destroying New York City, will need to do strong business overseas. So far, it has earned $13.4 mil-lion from 53 markets for an early global total of $24.2 million, and has yet to roll out in a number of major markets.

Lionsgate, whose financial exposure was reduced by co-financing partners and foreign presales, had banked on a debut in the mid- to high-teen millions.

Marking a franchise low, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension landed at No. 6 with $8.2 million. The 3D horror film is only playing in 1,656 theaters, compared to nearly 3,000 locations for the last Paranormal Activity film. That’s because many cinema owners refused

to play the Halloween offering due to a bold deal between Paramount, AMC and Canada’s Cineplex to make the Blumhouse-produced film available in homes earlier than usual.

According to Paramount, Ghost Dimen- sion generated $3.1 million at AMC loca- tions on Friday and Saturday, more than any other film playing at the country’s three other largest chains — Regal, Cine-mark and Carmike, all of which passed on the movie. Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore said this proves there was plenty of demand for Ghost Dimension. “The issue isn’t that people didn’t show up because of the VOD window,” he said.

Overseas, the film, which cost in the mid-teen millions to produce, impressed with $18 million from 23 markets, including $2.3 million in Mexico and $2.3 million in the U.K.

Ghost Dimension and Last Witch Hunter both skewed male (usually, horror titles skew female), while 66 percent of the for-mer’s audience was under the age of 25.

Blumhouse and Universal’s Jem and the Holograms and Open Road’s Rock the Kasbah didn’t even crack the top 10 in their debuts.

The latter took in onyl $1.5 million from 2,012 theaters, the worst start for a film starring Bill Murray, who plays a

F r o m pa g e 1

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Weekend Box Office Top 10This

Week MOvie/DisTriBuTOr3-Day grOss

(in mil)

PercenT change

# Of TheaTers

Per-TheaTer average

cuMe TO DaTe (in Mil)

1 The Martian (fox) $15.9 -25 3,504 $4,538 $166.4

2 goosebumps (sony) 15.5 -34 3,501 4,427 43.7

3 Bridge of spies (disney) 11.4 -26 2,811 4,043 32.6

4 The last Witch hunter (lionsgate) 10.8 — 3,082 3,512 10.8

5 hotel Transylvania 2 (sony) 9.0 -29 3,154 2,854 148.3

6 Paranormal: ghost Dimension (Paramount) 8.2 — 1,656 4,952 8.2

7 steve Jobs (universal) 7.3 380 2,493 2,915 10.0

8 crimson Peak (universal) 5.6 -58 2,991 1,860 22.5

9 The intern (warner bros.) 3.9 -29 2,061 1,870 64.7

10 Woodlawn (Pure flix) 3.1 -23 1,475 2,102 8.5

rentrak

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rock manager past his prime who accom- panies a performer (Zooey Deschanel) on a USO tour in war-ridden Afghanistan. When she bails, he comes across a young singer (Leem Lubany) who could be the biggest discovery of his career, and he arranges for her to appear on Afghan Star, the equivalent of American Idol. Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson and Danny McBride co-star in the dramedy.

Younger females out-and-out rejected Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Jem, based on the popular 1980s cartoon that focused on teenage girls who strive to become famous performers. The live-action pic took in $1.3 million from 2,413 theaters, the worst opening of all time for a major studio release going out in 2,000 or more theaters — a record previously held by another music-themed film, Warner Bros.’ We Are Your Friends, which bowed in August to only $1.8 million.

It’s also the third-worst start ever for a new film playing in 2,000 theaters, fol-lowed by Kasbah. The two movies to have done worse were indie titles that weren’t backed by a major distributor or serious marketing spend — 2012’s Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure ($443,901) and 2008’s Delgo ($511,920).

If there’s any solace, it’s that Universal and Hasbro spent just $5 million to make Jem, which stars Aubrey Peeples, Stefanie Scott, Aurora Perrineau, Hayley Kiyoko, Ryan Guzman, Molly Ringwald and Juli-ette Lewis. Jason Blum, Scooter Braun and Hasbro produced the pic.

New offerings at the specialty box office included Carey Mulligan’s British period drama Suffragette. The specialty film debuted to $77,000 from four the-aters for a location average of $19,250 for Focus Features, the best of the weekend.

I Smile Back, a drama starring Sarah Silverman, opened to $16,036 in two thea- ters in New York and Los Angeles for a meek location average of $8,010 for Broad Green Pictures. The film is a tough sell, since most moviegoers are used to seeing the actress in comedic roles.

Among holdovers, Room, a drama based

on the best-selling Emma Donoghue novel, expanded into a total of 23 theaters for a location average of $11,059 for A24, and Truth, starring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett, posted a theater aver- age of $6,534 as Sony Pictures Classics expanded the docudrama into a total of 18 locations.

Depp, Wright to team for milk aDaptatioNBy Borys Kit and Rebecca Fordedgar Wright and Johnny depp are teaming to adapt Fortunately, the Milk, based on a Neil Gaiman story, in a hot package that is in early negotiations to

be acquired by Fox.Wright would helm the

film, which is intended to be a live-action/animation hybrid which will have a script by Bret McKenzie, the writer also known as one half of the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords.

Depp will star in and produce the project, along with animation house Ani-

mal Logic Entertainment (The Lego Movie), which acquired the book out of pocket and packaged it. Zareh Nalbandian will produce for Animal Logic.

Gaiman’s children’s book, which originally hit shelves in 2013 via Harper-Collins, is described as “a story of time travel and breakfast cereal.” It starts out with a father who goes to the store to buy some milk and returns with wild tales of aliens, time-travel, pirates and more.

The pitch package hit town late last week, generating immediate interest.

For Wright, the sale happens just as the filmmaker, who last directed 2013’s The World’s End, is in preproduction on Baby Driver, starring Ansel Elgort, Lily James and Jon Hamm. Wright is repped by CAA, Anonymous Content, Independent Talent Group in the U.K. and Nelson Davis.

Depp, who is repped by UTA, currently stars as infamous gangster Whitey Bulger in Black Mass. He has Alice Through the Looking Glass and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales both in post.

Along with starring and writing for Flight of the Conchords, McKenzie wrote the music for The Muppets and its sequel Muppets Most Wanted. He is repped by UTA and Morris Yorn.

Gaiman is repped by CAA and Ziffren Brittenham.

DreamWorkS thriller ghost getS NeW Writer By Tatiana Siegelhot off the success of universal’s

Straight Outta Compton, writer Jonathan Herman has been brought in to do an overhaul on the script for DreamWorks’ anime-based live-action thriller Ghost in the Shell.

In the film, Scarlett Johansson stars as a special-ops cyborg who leads an elite task force called Section 9 for Hanka Robotics. Section 9 is devoted to stop-ping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, led by The Laughing Man, whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka’s advance-ments in cyber technology.

Based on Masamune Shirow’s popular Japanese comic books of the same name, the Rupert Sanders-helmed feature is scheduled to go into production in the first part of next year in New Zealand and is scheduled to bow March 31, 2017.

As with Ghost, Herman was brought in to do an overhaul on the long-gestating Compton, writing the draft that received the go-ahead from Universal. The film became a surprise late-summer hit for the studio and is nearing the $200 mil-lion mark worldwide.

William Wheeler and Jamie Moss wrote previous drafts of Ghost.

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are producing. Michael Costigan, Jeffrey Silver, Tetsu Fujimura and Mitsuhisa Ishikawa are executive producing.

Herman. who is repped by WME, Stephen Crawford at Industry Enter-tainment and Lichter, Grossman, Nicols, Adler & Feldman, wrote a new draft of the Scarface remake in the works at Uni- versal. He also is currently in development on The Demonologist and a remake of The Birds at Universal.

rome: goddesses WiNS people’S ChoiCe aWarDBy Ariston AndersonROME — Pan Nalin’s Angry Indian God- desses on Sunday won the BNL People’s Choice Award at the Rome Film Festival.

While the fest scrapped its traditional juries this year, it kept its audience prize,

which is modeled after the Toronto International Film Festival’s award and is chosen by online voting.The movie also picked up the runner-up Audience Award at TIFF.

Billed as the first all-female Indian “buddy movie,” Goddesses follows Frieda and her friends as she gathers them for a week in Goa for a surprise bachelorette party. The film stars Sarah-Jane Dias, Rajshri Deshpande, Sandhya Mridul, Amrit Maghera, Pavleen Gujral, Anushka Manchanda, Tannishtha Chatterjee and was produced by Gaurav Dhingra and Nalin and co-produced by Sol Bondy and Jamila Wenske.

“I am especially pleased that a cou-rageous and revealing film, that sheds light on the condition of women in India, choosing a genre that is traditionally about male bonding, was the one our spectators liked best,” Fondazione Cinema per Roma president Piera Detassis said in a statement.

“Throughout the fest, our specta-tors have appreciated the richness of this year’s program. I am proud and

gratified that the quality of the films has been consistently praised by both the foreign and the Italian press,” said new Rome Film Fest artistic director Antonio Monda. “It makes me particu-larly happy that this film was voted the winner, because one of the goals I had set for myself was to offer the audience high-quality films from all over the world: the Indian film industry is one of the most advanced, and Pan Nalin’s films are among its most stimulating, dynamic and provocative products.”

The 10th anniversary of the Rome fest screened 53 pics from 24 countries. While ticket sales were down from last year, the festival was shorter this year, and the largest cinema venue was not included in this year’s lineup. Overall, under the new artistic direction of Monda, who brought in a wealth of inter-national films and guests, the event was considered a huge success for the city.

ChiCago: moore’S invade NabS fouNDer’S aWarDBy Seth AbramovitchMichael Moore on friday Was

presented with the Founder’s Award for his latest documentary, Where to Invade Next, at the 51st Chicago Interna-tional Film Festival.

The Founder’s Award is given “to that one film … that captures the spirit

of the [fest] for its unique and innova-tive approach to the art of the moving image,” the fest said in a statement.

The honor was presented during a ceremony held at the Chicago Peninsula. Hours before, the film — in which an upbeat Moore “invades” several Euro-pean countries (and one Middle Eastern one) in order to plunder some of their best social policies — received its Mid-western premiere.

A lively Q&A, hosted by Chaz Ebert, wife of the late Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert, followed. During the

session, Moore fondly shared the story of how Ebert launched his career by agreeing to attend the world premiere of Roger & Me (after Moore practically begged him to) at the 1988 Telluride Film Festival.

“He walks into the theater, it was two minutes before showtime,” recalled the filmmaker. “He sees me and says to me, ‘Don’t say a word. I’m only here because there was a crazy look in your eyes.’”

Moore continued: “The next morning, I hear, ‘Michael Moore, Michael Moore, can I take your picture? I need a picture for my story. That was the first fan pic-ture ever taken of me, by Roger Ebert. And the next day in the Sun-Times there was this beautiful story saying it was one of the best films he’d seen in the last decade. … It just shot like a bullet from what he did.”

Where to Invade Next, which pre-miered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, will receive a Dec. 23 release in Los Angeles and New York, qualifying it for Oscar consideration. The doc was acquired by former Radius-TWC co-presidents Tom Quinn and Jason Janego and Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League for their new, yet-to-be named distribution venture.

In the Chicago Fest’s international film competition, France’s A Childhood, directed by Philippe Claudel, took the Gold Hugo award for best film. A special jury prize went to Paulina, an Argentina- Brazil co-production, while Chilean film- maker Pablo Larrain took top directing honors for The Club.

The best male actor award was shared by Childhood’s Alexi Mathieu and Jules Gauzelin; the best female actor prize went to Lizzie Brochere of Full Contact, a film from the Netherlands and Croatia which also won the Silver Plaque for best cinematography; and Club earned best screenplay honors.

The Roger Ebert Award, presented “to an emerging filmmaker whose film presents a fresh and uncompromising vision” went to Iran’s Ida Panahandeh for Nahid.

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By Lesley GoldbergaMerica ferrera is Making her

way back to ABC.The foremr Ugly Betty star — who is

poised to return to the small screen in NBC midseason comedy Superstore — has started a production company and

signed an overall deal with ABC Studios.

Ferrera has launched Take Fountain Productions and, via her deal with ABC Studios, will develop new projects for cable and

broadcast. The actress has also tapped Gabrielle Neimand, former vp of nar-rative films at Participant Media and producer of The Last Exorcism, to run development and production.

Take Fountain has also sold its first two projects: comedy Plus One to ABC and drama Social Creatures to younger- skewing sibling cable net ABC Family.

Plus One, which has received a script commitment at ABC following a compet- itive bidding process, is a single-camera family comedy. The potential series is told from the point of view of three mil-lennial siblings who find their places in the family upended when they discover they have a fourth sibling who is every-thing they are — and more.

Valentina Garza (Bordertown, The Simp- sons) will pen the script and executive pro- duce alongside Ferrera and Neimand.

Social Creatures, meanwhile, has received a script commitment from ABC Family, which is set to be rebranded as Freeform in January. The project follows the lives of six young friends living in New York City who are trying to create meaningful relationships in the hyper- digital age.

Ryan Piers Williams, who created the drama, will write the script, executive produce and direct, should Social Crea-

tures move to pilot. Take Fountain and Teri Weinberg, via her Yellow Brick Road banner, will also executive produce. The drama will serve as a reunion for Ferrera and Weinberg, who collaborated during Ugly Betty’s run.

Ferrera is repped by CAA, Authen-tic Management and Peikoff Mahan; Garza is repped by UTA and Industry Entertainment.

CbS’ limitless getS full-SeaSoN orDerBy Lesley GoldbergcBs is ready to go the distance

with Limitless.The network has picked up the fresh-

man drama based on the 2011 Bradley Cooper feature film of the same name for a full season, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Additionally, the network has ordered six additional scripts for rookie medical drama Code Black.

Limitless, starring Jake McDorman and Jennifer Carpenter, ranks as the fall sea- son’s second-most-watched new show. The additional episode order brings its total to 22 episodes. The drama is CBS’ first full-season order of the 2015-16 broadcast season.

Limitless, one of many remakes and reboots ordered at the broadcast net-works this season in a bid to cut through clutter, has been averaging 11.4 million total viewers. Among the all-important adults under 50 demo, the series is aver- aging a 2.4 rating, up 9 percent year-over- year in the Tuesdays at 10 p.m. slot. When factoring in multiplatform viewing, the show debut grew 79 percent among total viewers and 132 percent among the demo when compared with its overnight returns.

For its part, Limitless is the first of this season’s reboots to get a back-nine order.

Limitless joins ABC drama Quantico and comedy Dr. Ken, Fox procedural Rose- wood and NBC’s action thriller Blindspot as having received full-season orders.

Code Black, meanwhile, is one of multi- ple medical dramas greenlighted for this season. The additional script order is a show of faith from CBS as it awaits multi- platform viewing returns, given that the Marcia Gay Harden-led drama premiered a week later than Limitless.

abC CutS Blood & oil’S epiSoDe CouNt to 10By Lesley GoldbergaBc is ending its sunday-night bleeding early.

The network has trimmed the episode order of freshman drama Blood and Oil from 13 to 10 episodes, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The series will continue to air through the end of the calendar year in its current Sundays at 9 p.m. slot, at least for the time being.

Blood & Oil is one of several rookie series to have undergone major behind- the-scenes changes ahead of its premiere, including a showrunner switch that was announced minutes after ABC presented the series to reporters at the Television Critics Association’s press tour in August.

Sources say creator Josh Pate’s (Moon- light) vision post-pilot never was fully embraced by the network, which was looking for more “OMG” moments a la Scandal. That didn’t work with the emo-tional soap that showrunner Cynthia Cidre (Dallas) and her team had written, which led to Jon Harmon Feldman (Dirty Sexy Money) being brought in to try and create what the network sought. The series — which also underwent numerous re- castings — now is said to have two writers rooms, one led by Feldman and the other, featuring Cidre, given little to do.

Blood & Oil has been the sore spot on ABC’s Sunday lineup. The soap, starring Don Johnson and Chace Crawford and marking the former’s TV return, opened

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soft to 6.3 million total viewers and has been bleeding viewers since. Its most recent installment drew only 3.5 million total viewers, making for a poor lead-in for fall hit Quantico, which has already been picked up for an additional six episodes. When factoring in three days of DVR returns, Blood & Oil’s premiere added only 36 percent among adults 18-49, bringing its haul to 1.9 million among the advertiser-coveted demo.

hanniBal boSS reviviNg amazing stories for NbCBy Lesley GoldbergnBc is getting into the Week ly anthology game.

The network is teaming with Hannibal boss Bryan Fuller to revive 1980s anthol- ogy series Amazing Stories, The Hollywood

Reporter has learned. The sci-fi program ran

on NBC for two seasons from 1985-87 and focused on strange, fantastic and supernatural stories.

Fuller will pen the script for the project and executive produce alongside Universal Television (which produced the original) and Amblin Television’s Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank. Steven Spielberg, who created the original series, is not involved.

The reboot, which marks Fuller’s return to NBC after the network axed critical fave Hannibal, comes as weekly anthologies have been drawing increased attention from broadcast and cable net-works alike. (The prolific producer has Starz drama American Gods due next.)

Netflix recently picked up new epi-sodes of weekly anthology Black Mirror, and The CW tried its hand last year with a revival of Tales From the Darkside, where each episode was designed to fea-ture at least one story with a completely different cast.

The weekly format marks the latest incarnation from such season-long anthol-

ogies as Fargo, American Horror Story, American Crime and True Detective, which have become more commonplace.

Amazing Stories also becomes the latest reboot this season as broadcast networks look for the familiar in a bid to break through an increasingly competitive landscape of 400-plus original scripted series. NBC is revisiting 1999 pic Cruel Intentions and TV mystery series Hart to Hart, among others; ABC is developing a sequel to 1997 romantic comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding as well as a female- fronted take on TV classic Fantasy Island; CBS is rebooting series Nancy Drew and MacGyver, as well as adaptations of 2001 crime thriller Training Day and H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau; Fox is readying a take on 2001 war pic Behind Enemy Lines; The CW is prepping The Notebook and Friday the 13th remakes; 20th Century Fox Television is shopping a reboot of The A-Team; Norman Lear is rebooting his TV series One Day at a Time (though there is no network yet attached); and Fox also has revivals of The X-Files and Prison Break in the works after recently rebooting 24.

NbC reDuCeS Player’S orDer to NiNe epiSoDeSBy Lesley GoldbergThe Player’s gaMe is alMost over.

NBC has reduced the episode order on the freshman drama from 13 to nine epi- sodes, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The low-rated series from Sony Pictures Television and The Blacklist producers will limp off the schedule in mid-November at the conclusion of its ninth episode. It’s unclear at this point what will replace the drama, which stars Philip Winchester and Wesley Snipes.

The series opened in the prime Thurs-day at 10 p.m. slot following Blacklist to a 1.2 rating among the all-important adults 18-49 demographic, and it rose only a fraction to a 1.8 when factoring in three days of delayed viewing. Last Thursday’s original episode garnered less than 4 mil-

lion total viewers.Player becomes the second freshman

series to meet its maker. Fox trimmed the order for Minority Report earlier this sea-son, while NBC has reduced the count for two midseason comedies to accom-modate scheduling needs.

tbS ComeDy CliPPedaxeD after oNe SeaSoNBy Lesley GoldbergtBs is cutting its ties to CliPPed.

The Turner-owned cable network has canceled the freshman comedy, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Produced by Will & Grace duo David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, the series premiered in June to 1.4 million same-day viewers and finished its 10-episode run in August with 1.25 million for an average of 1.2 million total viewers.

Produced by Warner Horizon, the multicamera comedy focused on a group of kids from high school who ran in differ-ent circles but all now worked together at a Charlestown, Mass., barbershop. The series, which went through develop- ment and was picked up to series under the title Buzzy’s, marked Kohan and Mutchnick’s latest small-screen foray, following CBS’ Partners. Ashley Tisdale and George Wendt co-starred.

Clipped was developed and picked up to series in May 2014, before Kevin Reilly took the reins of the network and started looking for edgier fare in a bid to cut through the clutter and compete with cablers including FX.

The cancellation comes as TBS has yet to debut Tribeca, its Rashida Jones-starring cop comedy produced by Steve and Nancy Carell. The cabler also quietly canceled Greg Malins’ freshman entry Your Family or Mine. Its comedy roster also includes upcoming Jason Jones and Samantha Bee scripted family project The Detour and upcoming ensemble laffer Wrecked. On the pilot side, TBS is develop-ing alien comedy The Group, produced by The Office’s Greg Daniels.

Fuller

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obituary

By Mike Barnes and Duane ByrgeMaureen o’har a, the irish

beauty whose striking red hair, crystal- green eyes and porcelain skin were so dazzling on the silver screen that she was dubbed “The Queen of Technicolor,” has died. She was 95.

O’Hara, who played the feisty wife to onscreen husband John Wayne in five films — three of them directed by John Ford — died Saturday at her home in Boise, Idaho, Johnny Nicoletti, her longtime manager, told the Associated Press. O’Hara moved to Idaho in 2013 to be closer to her relatives after spending four decades in Ireland.

“She passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family as they celebrated her life listening to music from her favorite movie, The Quiet Man,” her family said in a statement.

Although she was memorable in so many great films — including The Hunch- back of Notre Dame (1939), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Rio Grande (1950), Quiet Man (1952), Our Man in Havana (1959) and The Parent Trap (1961) — the Dublin native never won an Academy Award, much less received an Oscar nomination.

That oversight was rectified when the Academy announced she would receive an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards in November 2014.

O’Hara starred opposite Wayne in three Westerns — Rio Grande, McLintock! (1963) and Big Jake (1971) — as well as in the St. Patrick’s Day perennial Quiet Man and Navy biopic The Wings of Eagles (1957).

On matching wits onscreen alongside Wayne, O’Hara said in a 2003 interview: “I was tough. I was tall. I was strong. I didn’t take any nonsense from anybody. He was tough, he was tall, he was strong

and he didn’t take any nonsense from anybody. As a man and a human being, I adored him.”

Meanwhile, she helped Ford collect two of his four career Oscars by starring for the legendary director on the best pic-ture winner How Green and Quiet Man.

In such Technicolor films as To the Shores of Tripoli (1942), the swashbuck-lers The Black Swan (1942) and The Spanish Main (1945) and Quiet Man, the vibrant O’Hara pops off the screen. “Framed in Technicolor, Miss O’Hara seems more significant than a setting sun,” The New York Times once said.

She received the “Queen of Techni-color” nickname from Dr. Herbert Kalmus, who invented the process.

Born Aug. 17, 1920, Maureen FitzSimons developed an early interest in acting, auditioning for the Abbey Theatre School as a teen. Winning numerous awards and local attention, she earned a screen test in London and had one line in the British musical comedy Kicking the Moon Around (1938). She then landed her first note- worthy part in Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn (1939), starring Charles Laughton. The actor suggested she change her name to O’Hara.

In 1939, she set out for Hollywood and had a champion in Laughton. She was fea-tured in his next pic, Hunchback of Notre Dame at RKO, in which he starred as the inimitable hunchback Quasimodo while she played Esmeralda.

Her casting by the Irish-American director Ford in Fox’s How Green won her wide notice and critical recognition. The pic, about a struggling Welsh family in a mining town trying to hold onto their way of life in the face of the Industrial Revolution, won the Oscar for best picture as Ford was given his third Academy Award. O’Hara was charismatic as Angharad Mor- gan, the most beautiful girl in the valley.

O’Hara was then cast in two big mov-ies in 1947 — Sinbad the Sailor opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Miracle on 34th Street, the sentimental Christmas classic in which she plays 8-year-old Natalie Wood’s mom.

In 1950, she starred with Wayne for the first time in Ford’s post-Civil War gem Rio Grande. Two years later, she starred in Quiet Man as Mary Kate Danaher, an Irish lass in rural Galway County who is wooed by an American boxer (Wayne), much to the displeasure of her protective brother (Victor McLaglen).

O’Hara appeared in 18 films in the 1950s. For At Sword’s Point (1952), which starred Cornel Wilde as D’Artagnan, she trained with a fencing coach for months and did her own stunts.

She took on more mature roles in the 1960s, playing Hayley Mills’ mother Maggie McKendrick in The Parent Trap and the wives of Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vaca- tion (1962) and Spencer’s Mountain (1963), respectively.

O’Hara starred with Fonda again in the 1973 NBC telefilm The Red Pony and in 1991 made a return to the big screen, starring as John Candy’s overbearing mom in Chris Columbus’ Only the Lonely. (She said that Candy reminded her of Laugh-ton.) Her final credit was as the star of the 2000 CBS telefilm The Last Dance.

O’Hara was married three times, most recently to aviator Charles Blair, whom she wed in 1968. When he was killed in a plane crash in 1978, O’Hara continued to manage his commuter seaplane business in the U.S. Virgin Islands and published Virgin Islander magazine.

Earlier, she was married to producer George Brown from 1939-41 (that union was annulled) and director Will Price from 1941 until their divorce in 1953. They had a daughter, Bronwyn.

O’Hara, Hollywood’s ‘Queen of Technicolor,’ Dies at 95

O’Hara

Page 8 of 8OCTOBER 26, 2015

film revieW

Paranormal aCtivity: the ghost dimensionBy Justin Lowean unprecedented phenoMenon when it debuted from Paramount in 2009, Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity launched a six-film franchise based on an urban legend-like haunted-house tale. Earning more than $193 million worldwide on a $15,000 budget, it also helped spawn the sometimes regrettable found-footage horror genre.

So Peli and producer Jason Blum’s decision to bring the series to a conclusion with this final installment may seem sur- prising in comparison to the typical strat- egy of overexploiting a horror franchise, but in truth Peli hasn’t directed another pic in the series since the original, moving on to a producing role instead, while Blum- house has taken the low-budget, high- concept Paranormal Activity model and created similar successes with horror series The Purge, Sinister and Insidious.

With their first 3D release, the pro- ducers turned the directing role over to longtime Paranormal Activity series editor and producer Gregory Plotkin (making his feature directorial debut). Rather than meaningfully reconnecting with the most compelling characters from the earlier films, the final installment returns to the original house haunted by the demonic entity known as Toby, or more precisely the property, since the home in Santa Rosa, Calif., where Katie (Chloe Csengery) and Kristi (Jessica Brown) were indoctrinated into a myste-rious cult burned down when they were children. The new owners of the rebuilt home are Ryan (Chris J. Murray) and Emily (Brit Shaw), a married couple with a young daughter. As Christmas quickly approaches, Leila (Ivy George) is excited when her uncle Mike (Dan Gill) arrives to spend the holiday with his brother and sister-in-law, along with Emily’s friend Skyler (Olivia Taylor Dudley).

While adorning the house with dec-orations removed from storage, Mike

finds an ’80s-era, custom-built VHS camera and a box of tapes. Technophile Ryan gets the device working and dis-covers that its sophisticated lens reveals some type of mysterious energy field manifesting in the house that’s only visible to the videocam, a phenomenon lamely described as “spirit photography.” Playing back the tapes, Ryan and Mike review disturbing footage of Kristi and Katie’s grandma Lois (Hallie Foote) and a strange man training the girls to com- municate with the spirit world. As the manifestation of the aberrant energy field intensifies in his home and Leila begins speaking aloud to an ominous invisible friend, Ryan begins to suspect that the same evil presence that stalked Katie and Kristi may be after his daughter as well.

Narratively and stylistically, Ghost Dimension barely diverges from the format of the first three films, as nervous home-owners take up video cameras to record the mysterious occurrences that appear to be targeting their loved ones. Even at this late stage in the evolution of the franchise, logical lapses in filmmaking technique undercut the integrity of the found-footage format, but continuity was never one of the series’ strong points.

What may be less acceptable, however, is the film’s unaccountably weak effort to sort out the mythology concerning the series of demonic hauntings, instead stacking the deck with a tricked-out plot device that’s an awkward fit with the more traditionally supernatural events that occurred earlier. Primarily referencing,

and occasionally depicting, events from Paranormal Activity 3, the current film’s team of four screenwriters, replacing longtime scripter Christopher Landon, fails to sufficiently clarify the actions and motivations of the series’ principal char-acters, who at this point have practically vanished from the storyline anyway.

Plotkin proceeds much in the manner of the foregoing lineup of rotating direc-tors, setting up a chronology of nightly video shoots, roaming the house with a handheld camera, then relying primarily on loud noises and jump scares for impact, although the 3D format allows for more sophisticated special effects, particularly those recorded by the mysterious video camera. Some may remain nostalgic for the low-budget practical effects that enlivened the first few movies, while a major ripoff of a climactic scene from a classic supernatural thriller may even turn off those loyalists as well.

Overall, it’s been a fairly entertaining run, but it’s unclear whether the films as a whole will ever rate as a classic horror franchise, although it may be unwise to rule out any further occurrences of Paranormal Activity at this point.

Opened: Oct. 23 (Paramount). Production: Blumhouse Productions, Solana Films, Room 101. Cast: Chris J. Murray, Brit Shaw, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Dan Gill, Jessica Brown, Chloe Csengery, Hallie Foote, Ivy George. Director: Gregory Plotkin. Rated R, 88 minutes.

The holidays prove far from happy for a family in Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension.