Scouting Hollywood: Dec. 14-20

A roundup of news, gossip and history of the entertainment business brought to you from Hollywood, Calif.

Can’t stop talking about Taylor Swift as she continues to set records, officially the most streamed artist of the year at Spotify. A very small percentage of Spotify’s users apparently listen to nothing else. The Wall Street Journal analyzed Spotify’s data and determined that the top .001% of her fans listened to more than 150,000 minutes of her music. In layman’s terms, that’s over 100 days of non-stop Taylor Swift, oh my!

Another singer, Beyoncé, stormed to the box office top with her concert film, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé which did a respectable $21 million on a notoriously slow December weekend. Both critics and audiences seemed to enjoy the film, it garnered a perfect 100 percent/100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Also holding up well was second place finisher The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes that pulled in a solid $14.5 million in its third frame and now has a total domestic take of over $120 million. 

A flurry of late year releases are about to hit the theaters including a remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory titled Wonka and starring Timothée Chalamet and Hugh Grant followed by Jason Momoa, Nicole Kidman, Ben Affleck and Amber Heard in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. For the family crowd there is an animated title, Migration, from Universal and voiced by Elizabeth Banks, Awkwafina, Danny DeVito and Carol Kane.