Laetitia Wright Tops 2018 Box Office $$$ | Research Bashes Myth About Women Actors + Film Profits | Lina Iris Viktor Settles W/Kendrick Lamar

1) Guyanese actor Laetitia Wright topped the Hollywood $$$ charts in 2018, with Fandango crowning her the Highest Box Office Earning Actor of 2018. The list was compiled based on domestic box office earnings, and Wright ran away with the title with an easy $1.55 billion in revenue. via Marie Claire

Wright’s films tallied by Fandango:

Black Panther ($700,059,566)

Avengers: Infinity War ($678,815,482)

Ready Player One ($137,690,172)

The Commuter ($36,343,858)

2) Movies Starring Women Earn More Than Male-Led Films New York Times

Creative Artists Agency and shift7, a company started by Megan Smith, the 3rd Chief Technology Officer of the US and Assistant to the President in the Obama administration, has blown a hole in the common Hollywood truism that women’led films perform poorly at the box office.

Studying  the top movies from 2014 to 2017 , reality is that films starring women earned more than male-led films. Budget was not a determining factor. Whether the budget was $10 million or $100 million, women delivered box office cash.

The research also found that films that passed the Bechdel test — which measures whether two female characters have a conversation about something other than a man — outperformed those that flunked it.

“The perception that it’s not good business to have female leads is not true,” said Christy Haubegger, a C.A.A. agent who was part of the research team. “They’re a marketing asset.”

Screenshot from Kendrick Lamar's "All the Stars" video, featuing the black and gold patterns alleged to have been stolen from Lina Iris Viktor's work.

3) British -Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor and rapper Kendrick Lamar have settled claims by Viktor that after she declined use of her ‘Constellations’ series in Lamar’s video for the single ‘All The Stars’, included on the ‘Black Panther’ soundtrack, Lamar’s team just plagiarized her. Details of the settlement are sealed, but Viktor sought a portion of the profits from the sale of both the single and the ‘Black Panther’ soundtrack.

AOC profiled Lina Iris Viktor’s artwork in 2018