Free Republic

It’s lights out and away we go at the box office as “F1,” a big-budget racing drama starring Brad Pitt, impressively revs to $55.6 million in its domestic opening weekend. With great reviews and a promising “A” grade on CinemaScore exit polls, “F1” landed in the middle of expectations of $50 million to $60 million. At the international box office, the film collected a strong $88.4 million from 78 markets. Those initial ticket sales are significant given “F1” is an adult-skewing tentpole that’s not part of an existing film franchise — a rarity in today’s I.P.-dominated movie theater landscape. Directed...

A former Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks animator was sentenced to 25 years in a French prison on sex trafficking, child rape, and child pornography charges for availing himself of websites through which he remotely directed the sexual assault of children as young as two years old for his own amusement. French newspaper Le Monde reported that 59-year-old Bolhem Bouchib, whose credits include work on Lilo & Stitch, both Incredibles films, Ratatouille, and last year’s Elemental, was found guilty of paying Filipino women to rape and abuse Filipino girls averaging between the ages of five and 10 for him to view on...

In a sign of digital piracy reaching the masses, illegal DVD copies of recently released movies are showing up in legitimate marketplaces such as online auction house EBay Inc. Bootlegged versions of "Men in Black II," "Reign of Fire" and "Lilo & Stitch" have been sold on the auction site in recent days. Unlike digital movie copies downloaded from the Internet, the DVDs require no special equipment or expertise to obtain or watch. All that is needed is a free EBay account and a DVD player. "EBay creates a much larger arena for pirates to sell their goods than historically...