Free Republic

With its spring shoot fast approaching, Eon and MGM have begun bringing back familiar faces for the next James Bond film as Lea Seydoux is set to reprise her “Spectre” role as psychologist Madeleine Swann, a source confirmed to Variety. Daniel Craig is already on board to return, with Cary Joji Fukunaga writing and directing the pic. Craig is currently shooting Rian Johnson’s thriller “Knives Out” and Fukunaga is still finishing the Bond 25 script, but insiders say producers have already begun building out the film’s ensemble. Besides Seydoux, Eon is looking for two other actresses — one would play...

Bohemian Rhapsody is proving to be box office dynamite (with a laser beam?). Twentieth Century Fox’s foot-stomping biopic about the influential British rock band Queen is on track to sell an estimated $50 million in tickets at 4,000 theaters in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, far exceeding expectations and easily dethroning Halloween as the No. 1 film in North America. Starring Rami Malek (Mr. Robot) as Queen’s charismatic frontman, Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody will notch the second biggest opening for a music biopic ever, behind 2015’s Straight Outta Compton ($60.2 million). Heading into the weekend, the film had been...

Bryan Singer has been fired from the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, 20th Century Fox has told The Hollywood Reporter. “Bryan Singer is no longer the director of Bohemian Rhapsody," the studio said Monday in a statement. The decision reflected an escalating clash between Singer and actor Rami Malek and was caused by the helmer being missing from the set, necessitating the Dec. 1 production shutdown of the film in which Malek stars as Freddie Mercury, frontman of the rock group Queen. The pic has been shooting in London. In announcing the shutdown last week, producers Fox, New Regency and Graham King...