By Rebecca Rubin According To The variety “Venom: The Last Dance” is looming over the domestic box office in its third weekend of release. The third and final installment in Sony’s comic book trilogy has added $16.2 million from 3,905 North American theaters, down 37% from the prior frame and enough to lead over two newcomers, A24’s horror thriller “Heretic” and Lionsgate’s family friendly “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” Although those new releases weren’t able to topple “Venom 3” from No. 1, they opened on the higher end of expectations, thanks to word-of-mouth and the otherwise desolate movie theater landscape. Hollywood mostly avoided the post-election weekend out of concern that people wouldn’t be paying attention to anything other than the presidential race. As a result, over...

By Adam B. Vary According To The variety When news broke on Thursday that Simon Kinberg — best known for being a writer, producer, director or all of the above on much of the “X-Men” franchise — had been hired by Lucasfilm to write and produce a new “Star Wars” trilogy, it came as a surprise to many executives at Lucasfilm and Disney. The project is considered internally to be in deep development and not nearly ready to be made public. There was also some surprise within the wider industry that Lucasfilm had turned to Kinberg as the newest steward of “Star Wars” on the big screen. According to multiple industry sources with experience working in the franchise space, Kinberg is seen on one level as a sensible and safe choice. Starting with 2005’s “XXX: St...