Connect with us

Business

Column: What FDR could advise Biden about reforming the Supreme Court — tread lightly

Published

on

Column: What FDR could advise Biden about reforming the Supreme Court — tread lightly

If it’s true that as Mark Twain supposedly said, history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes, then we are about to embark on a poetry slam for the ages, with the Supreme Court as its theme.

President Biden on Monday unveiled a package of proposals to rein in a court that has seen public confidence reach a low ebb not recorded by the Gallup Organization in readings dating back to 1973.

Most significantly, he is calling for 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and the imposition by Congress of binding conduct and ethics rules requiring the justices to “disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”

Term limits would… make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come.

— President Biden on his Supreme Court reform plan

Advertisement

He is also proposing a constitutional amendment to neutralize a court decision appearing to give former presidents immunity for crimes committed while in office.

The template for these proposals is Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 plan to “pack” the court by allowing presidents to appoint a new justice when any sitting justice failed to resign or retire within six months of turning 70, up to a maximum of six new justices.

The manifest goal was to dilute the influence of a cadre or conservative justices who had overruled almost every New Deal law or regulation that had come before them, as well as several other measures.

If FDR could counsel Biden today, he might warn him to move carefully; FDR’s court-packing scheme went down in flames amid congressional opposition, cut deeply into the popularity that had brought him a landslide reelection victory in the 1936 election, and brought the New Deal to a screeching halt. It also represented a moment in which FDR lost his unique ability to gauge the popular mood and act upon it.

Advertisement

The politics of Supreme Court reform today resemble those of 1937 in many ways, though as Twain’s supposed quip suggests, there are significant differences. Let’s look at the differences first.

Roosevelt was then at the outset of his second term, riding high on an electoral victory that may have given him a greater sense of his political omnipotence than he actually possessed. Biden, of course, is less than six months away from the end of his presidency. Roosevelt could look ahead at four more years of policymaking; Biden may be more focused on cementing his legacy of progressive achievements by bequeathing the nation a reformed Supreme Court.

Both presidents may have felt they had nothing to lose by taking on what seemed to be the most revered of the three branches of government, albeit for different reasons — Roosevelt because nothing could chip away at his popularity, Biden because his own term in office can’t be affected by the fate of his reform proposals.

Roosevelt was faulted for springing his scheme on an unsuspecting public and Congress. Notwithstanding public discontent with the court, its reform hadn’t been an issue in the presidential campaign recently ended. FDR had not spoken publicly about the court after a series of anti-New Deal rulings in 1935 and 1936 except after one ruling in which he accused the court of relegating the country to “the horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce.”

Instead, he blindsided the nation by announcing his plan in a speech on Feb. 5. To his surprise, voters and legislators — including reliable New Deal supporters on Capitol Hill — reacted with fury.

Advertisement

It was not merely the secrecy in which the scheme had been plotted that its critics found dismaying. FDR’s stated rationale, which was that the aging justices were overworked and needed help to manage their docket, was transparently deceptive.

That rationale might have looked superficially reasonable at first, since the oldest member of the court’s so-called Four Conservative Horsemen, Willis Van Devanter, had been born during the administration of James Buchanan, which supposedly rendered him utterly out of step with the politics of the 1930s.

However, the oldest justice on the court, Louis Brandeis, was even older — at 80, he had been born during the administration of Franklin Pierce, Buchanan’s predecessor, but nevertheless was the court’s liberal lion and not an impediment to the New Deal.

Biden seems to have absorbed the lessons of FDR’s failed effort. He has been telegraphing for weeks that he is contemplating Supreme Court reforms. His proposals are not as radical as expanding the court outright, but they address some of the most evident issues driving the court’s public standing into the sub-basement: a conservative majority that has shown no respect for values and rights long cherished by most Americans, and a record of financial grifting and overt partisanship, chiefly by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

As in 1937, there is a sense that the court has taken aim at progressive principles and laws, running roughshod over individual rights.

Advertisement

The court’s direction has been led by a conservative majority including three judges appointed by Donald Trump — among them Neil M. Gorsuch, who slid into a seat kept open by Senate Republicans’ refusal to even consider Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the late Antonin Scalia’s seat; and Amy Coney Barrett, rushed to confirmation by Senate Republicans in October 2020 only 38 days before the election that would unseat Trump and bring Biden to the White House.

Barrett took the seat vacated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the most liberal justices ever to sit on the court.

The three Trump judges were in the majority that in 2022 overturned Roe vs. Wade, the decision that had protected women’s reproductive health rights since 1973.

It may be useful to compare the court’s behavior in recent years with what provoked FDR into launching his court-packing scheme.

The court’s distaste for elements of the New Deal was assumed as the Roosevelt administration proceeded to remake the U.S. economy. But it didn’t become palpable until it issued three decisions on May 27, 1935, a date that would become known to progressives as “Black Monday.”

Advertisement

In the first decision, the court overturned Roosevelt’s ouster of a reactionary member of the Federal Trade Commission, placing a limit on a president’s authority over executive officers. The court then invalidated a farm mortgage law because it applied to existing mortgages, not just new ones. Then came the court’s invalidation of the National Recovery Administration, through which the government had tried to regiment competition throughout the economy to help dig the country out of the Depression.

All three decisions were unanimous, but they still signaled that a conservative cadre was poised to undermine New Deal initiatives due to come before the justices. In 1936, the court narrowed the authority of the Securities and Exchange Commission and invalidated a relief program for coal companies. Most significantly, it overturned a New York minimum wage law in a decision known as Tipaldo, after its detestable protagonist, the owner of a laundry who had been cheating his laundresses of their legal wages.

Condemnation of the Tipaldo decision came from across the entire political spectrum. “If this decision does not outrage the moral sense of the country, then nothing will,” FDR’s Interior secretary, Harold Ickes, wrote in his diary. Conservatives were dismayed that the decision undercut their argument that labor rights should remain in the hands of the states — how could that be, if the Supreme Court had overturned a state minimum wage law?

Roosevelt and his fellow progressives foresaw that the court would invalidate the entire New Deal. For a time, FDR seemed content to let that happen, reasoning that it would help him get a constitutional amendment enacted that would allow Congress to save any law the court deemed unconstitutional by reenacting it. If the court kept overturning the New Deal, he reasoned, there would be “marching farmers and marching miners and marching workingmen throughout the land.”

In the end, he chose to go with the court-packing scheme, recognizing that it fit within the constitutional provision giving Congress the unquestioned right to dictate the size of the court.

Advertisement

For many Americans today, the court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe vs. Wade has supplanted its 1857 Dred Scott decision as the worst in its history. By relegating abortion to a state-level decision, Dobbs has spawned a patchwork of punitive state laws that have life-threatening ramifications for pregnant women (among many other shortcomings).

Public distaste for Dobbs, as was the case with Tipaldo, has been manifest. Since it was handed down in June 2022, every single state initiative to protect women’s reproductive rights has prevailed at the ballot box. The chief weapons in the antiabortion camp’s quiver have been efforts to stymie referendum and initiative votes by changing the ballot box rules, as has been tried in Florida and Ohio.

Biden’s proposal to establish staggered 18-year terms for justices has several virtues. One is that it would rebalance a court on which GOP appointees are arguably overrepresented. From 1960 through this year, Republicans held the White House for 32 years and Democrats for 31, almost an even split. But in that period, Republicans have appointed 15 justices and Democrats only ten. Under Biden’s proposal, every president would have the opportunity to appoint two justices during each four-year term.

“Term limits would … make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come,” the Biden White House says.

The one flaw in the proposal is that it could require a constitutional amendment. The Constitution states that federal justices may serve “during good behavior,” but expert opinion is divided over whether that bars Congress from imposing any other conditions on their service.

Advertisement

It’s worth noting that the Supreme Court was so unnerved by the groundswell of criticism it faced after Tipaldo that Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes engineered an about-face, orchestrating a 5-4 opinion upholding a Washington state minimum wage law that was almost identical to the New York law it had overturned, also by 5 to 4. That helped to take the wind out of FDR’s scheme. The change would forever be known as “the switch in time that saved nine.” The court never overturned another New Deal initiative.

But few such opportunities for an about-face are on the horizon. The damage this court has done to individual rights and the rule of law is manifest. Biden’s sense is that the time is ripe for reform, and that this time the public may go along.

Business

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Published

on

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

new video loaded: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Our reporter, Emily Steel, found that in many states, Uber’s guidelines allow people with serious criminal convictions to drive, as long as those convictions are more than seven years old. Some of those drivers have gone on to sexually assault or harass passengers.

By Emily Steel, Christina Shaman, Zach Caldwell, David Jouppi and Thomas Trudeau

December 22, 2025

Continue Reading

Business

How private investors stand to profit from billions in L.A. County sex abuse settlements

Published

on

How private investors stand to profit from billions in L.A. County sex abuse settlements

Walking out of a Skid Row market, Harold Cook, 42, decides to play a game.

How long after opening YouTube will it take for him to see an ad asking him to join the latest wave of sex abuse litigation against Los Angeles County?

“I can literally turn my phone on right now, something’s going to pop up,” said Cook, opening the app.

Within a few seconds, a message blares: “They thought you’d never speak up. They figured you was too young, too scared, too Black, too brown, too alone. … L.A. County already had to cough up $4 billion to settle these cases. So why not you?”

Since the historic April payout to resolve thousands of claims of sex abuse in county-run facilities, law firms have saturated L.A.’s airwaves and social media with campaigns seeking new clients. For months, government officials have quietly questioned who is financing the wall-to-wall marketing blitz.

Advertisement

The ad Cook heard was from Sheldon Law Group, one of several law firms active in sex abuse litigation in California that receive backing from private investors, according to loan notices and SEC filings. The investors, which often operate through Delaware companies, expect to profit from the payouts to resolve the cases.

Sheldon, based in Washington, D.C., has been one of the most prolific L.A. advertisers. The firm has already gathered roughly 2,500 potential clients, according to a list submitted to the county. The lawsuits started being filed this summer, raising the prospect of another costly settlement squeezed out of a government on the brink of a fiscal crisis.

“We act in the best interests of our clients, who are victims in every sense of the word and have suffered real and quite dreadful injuries,” a spokesperson for Sheldon Law Group said in a statement. “Without financial and legal support, these victims would be unable to hold the responsible parties, powerful corporate or governmental defendants, accountable.”

The financing deals have raised alarms among lawmakers, who say they want to know what portion of the billions poised to be diverted from government services to victims of horrific sex abuse will go to opaque private investors.

Kathryn Barger, a member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, said she was contacted by a litigation investor who sought to gauge whether sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. “This is so predatory,” Barger told The Times.

Advertisement

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

“I’m getting calls from the East Coast asking me if people should invest in bankrupting L.A. County,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said. “I understand people want to make money, but I feel like this is so predatory.”

Barger said an old college friend who invests in lawsuits reached out this spring attempting to gauge whether L.A. County sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. Barger said the caller referred to the lawsuits as an “evergreen” investment.

“That means it keeps on giving,” she said. “There’s no end to it.”

Advertisement

The county has spent nearly $5 billion this year on sex abuse litigation, with the bulk of that total coming from the $4-billion deal this spring — the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.

The April settlement is under investigation by the L.A. County district attorney office following Times reporting that found plaintiffs who said they were paid by recruiters to join the litigation, including some who said they filed fraudulent claims. All were represented by Downtown LA Law Group, which handled roughly 2,700 plaintiffs.

Downtown LA Law Group has denied all wrongdoing and said it “only wants justice for real victims.” The firm took out a bank loan in summer 2024, according to a financing statement, but a spokesperson said they had no investor financing.

Lawyers who take the private financing say it’s a win-win. Investors make money on high-interest rate loans while smaller law firms have the capital they need to take on deep-pocketed corporations and governments. If people were victimized by predators on the county’s payroll, they deserve to have a law firm that can afford to work for free until the case settles. Money for investors, they emphasize, comes out of their cut — not the clients’.

But critics say the flow of outside money incentivizes law firms to amass as many plaintiffs as possible for the wrong reasons — not to spread access to justice, but rather ensure hefty profit for themselves and their financial backers.

Advertisement

“The amount of money being generated by private equity in these situations — that’s absurd,” said former state lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez, who wrote the 2019 bill that opened the floodgate for older sex abuse claims to be filed. “Nobody should be getting wealthy off taxpayer dollars.”

For residents of L.A.’s poorest neighborhood, ads touting life-changing payouts have started to feel inescapable.

Waiting in line at a Skid Row food shelter, William Alexander, 27, said his YouTube streaming is punctuated by commercials featuring a robotic man he suspects is AI calling on him to sue the county over sex abuse.

Across the street, Shane Honey, 56, said nearly every commercial break on the news seems to feature someone asking if he was neglected at a juvenile hall.

In many of the ads, the same name pops up: Sheldon Law Group.

Advertisement
Austin Trapp says the ads recruiting plaintiffs for sex abuse cases in California are all over his Instagram feed.

Austin Trapp, a case worker in Skid Row, was among several people in the neighborhood who said ads seeking people to join sex abuse litigation against L.A. County have become increasingly common.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Sheldon’s website lists no attorneys, but claims the firm is the “architect” behind “some of the largest litigations on Earth.” They list their headquarters online at a D.C. virtual office space, though the owners on their most recent business filing list their own addresses in New York. The firm’s name appears on websites hunting for people suffering from video game addiction, exposure to toxins from 9/11, and toe implant failure.

Sheldon Law Group was started by the founder of Legal Recovery Associates, a New York litigation funding company that uses money from investors including hedge funds to recruit large numbers of plaintiffs for “mass torts,” cases where many people are suing over the same problem, according to interviews with former advisers, court records and business filings.

Those clients are gathered for one of their affiliated law firms, including Sheldon Law Group, according to two people involved in past transactions.

Advertisement

Ron Lasorsa, a former Wall Street investment banker who said he advised Legal Recovery Associates on setting up the affiliate law firms, told The Times it was built to make investors “obscenely rich.”

“It’s extremely profitable for people who know what the hell they’re doing,” Lasorsa said.

The idea, he says, emerged from a pool cabana at a Las Vegas legal conference called Mass Torts Made Perfect in fall 2015.

A man holds up his phone showing an ad

A man visiting friends on Skid Row holds up his phone showing an ad recruiting clients for sex abuse case in Los Angeles County on December 11, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Advertisement

Lasorsa had just amassed 14,000 clients for personal injury lawsuits in one year using methods that, he now says, were legally dubious. A favorite at the time: using call centers in India that had access to Americans’ hospital records and phoning the patients to see if they were feeling litigious.

Near the pool at a Vegas hotel, Lasorsa said Howard Berger, a former hedge fund manager barred by the SEC from working as a broker, asked if he could turbocharge the caseload of Legal Recovery Associates, where he worked as a consultant.

Lasorsa said he soon teamed up with the founders of LRA — Gary Podell, a real estate developer, and Greg Goldberg, a former investment manager — to create “shell” law firms based in Washington. The nation’s capital is one of the few places where non-lawyers can own a law firm, profiting directly from case proceeds.

Goldberg, who is not licensed to practice law in D.C., would become a partner in at least six D.C. law firms including Sheldon Law Group by 2017, according to a contract between Legal Recovery Associates and a hedge fund that financed the firms’ cases.

Sheldon, which said it was responding on behalf of Podell, said in a statement that all their partners are lawyers, though declined to name them. Goldberg did not respond to a repeated request for comment.

Advertisement

The Sheldon spokesperson said Legal Recovery Associates is a separate entity that engages in its “own business and legal activities.”

Investors typically make money on litigation by providing law firms with loans, which experts say carry interest rates as high as 30%, representing the risk involved. If the case goes south, investors get nothing. If it settles, they make it all back — and then some.

Lasorsa said he helped the company gather 20,000 claims using the same Indian call centers before a bitter 2019 split. He later accused the owners of unethical behavior, which led to a half-million dollar settlement and a non-disparagement agreement that he said he decided to breach, leading to a roughly $600,000 penalty he has yet to pay, according to a court judgment.

Lasorsa was also ordered to delete any disparaging statements he’d made, according to the judgment.

D.C. law firms with non-lawyers as partners must have the “sole purpose” of providing “legal services,” according to the district’s bar. Some attorneys have argued no such service was provided by the firms associated with Legal Recovery Associates.

Advertisement

Troy Brenes, an Orange County attorney who co-counseled with one of the firms over flawed medical devices, accused the company of operating a “sham law firm” as part of a 2022 court battle over fees.

“The sole purpose … appears to have been to allow non-lawyers to market for product liability cases and then refer those cases to legitimate law firms in exchange for a portion of the attorney fees without making any effort to comply with the D.C. ethics rules,” Brenes wrote.

A spokesperson for Sheldon and LRA noted in a statement that “no court or arbitration panel has ever concluded” that its business structure violates the law.

In the medical device cases, the affiliate firm, which was responsible for funding the marketing campaign, took 55% of recoverable attorney fees, according to an agreement between the two firms. The profit divide mirrors the 55/45 breakdown between Sheldon Law Group and James Harris Law, a two-person Seattle firm they have partnered with on the L.A. County sex abuse cases, according to a retainer agreement reviewed by The Times.

juvenile hall lawsuit ad on phone

A person on Skid Row in downtown L.A. shows an ad on their phone seeking plaintiffs to joint a lawsuit over sexual abuse in juvenile halls.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Advertisement

This summer, ads linking to a webpage with the name of James Harris appeared online, telling potential clients they could qualify in 30 seconds for up to $1 million. When a Times reporter entered a cell-phone number on one of the ads, a representative who said they worked for the firm’s intake department called dozens of times.

After The Times described these marketing efforts in a story, Harris emphasized in an email that he did not know about the ads or the persistent calls and said they were done by his “referring firm.” The landing page the ads led to was replaced with the name of Sheldon Law Group.

Harris said his firm and Sheldon, which he described as “functioning as a genuine and independent co counsel law firm,” have “been highly selective and have only prosecuted cases that we believe are legally and factually meritorious.”

“I continue to believe that lawyer advertising, when conducted ethically and without misleading claims, serves as a vital tool for raising public awareness about legal rights and available recourse, particularly for survivors of abuse seeking justice,” he said.

Advertisement

Over the last five years, experts say, the practice of funding big mass tort cases has boomed in the U.S.

Of the five main firms in L.A. County’s initial $4-billion sex abuse settlement, two took money from outside investors shortly before they began suing the county, according to public loan filings.

The loans to both Herman Law, a Florida-based firm that specializes in sex abuse cases, and Slater Slater Schuman, a New York-based personal injury firm, came from Delaware-registered companies. Deer Finance, a New York City litigation funding firm that connects investors with lawyers, is listed on business records for both companies.

The loan documents do not specify which of the firms’ cases were funded, but show each deal was finalized within months of the firms starting to sue L.A. County for sex abuse. Neither firm responded to questions about how the outside funding was used.

Slater, which received the loan in spring 2022, represents more L.A. County plaintiffs than any other firm, by far.

Advertisement

Slater’s caseload surged after the county signaled its plan to settle for $4 billion in October 2024. Several of the main attorneys on the case told The Times they stopped advertising at that point, reasoning that any new plaintiffs would now mean less money for the existing ones.

The next month, Slater Slater Schulman ran more than 700 radio ads in Los Angeles seeking juvenile detention abuse claims, according to X Ante, a company that tracks mass tort advertisements.

By this summer, the number of claims jumped from roughly 2,100 to 3,700, according to court records, catapulting Slater far beyond the caseload of any other firm.

This fall, another Delaware-registered company took out a lien on all of Slater’s attorney fees from the county cases, according to an Oct. 6 loan record. The law firm assisting with the transaction declined to comment.

“These are extraordinarily complex cases and litigating these cases effectively requires resources,” said an outside attorney representing Slater in a statement, responding to questions from The Times.

The firm, which also represents roughly 14,000 victims in the Boy Scouts sex abuse cases, was singled out by the judge overseeing the litigation this fall for “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs. The firm was one of several called out by insurers in the litigation for using hedge fund money to “run up the claim number.”

Advertisement

The firm has said they’re working “tirelessly” to address the issues and justice for survivors is its top priority.

April Mannani

April Mannani, who says she was assaulted in the 1990s by an officer while she was housed at MacLaren Children’s Center, said she feels lawyers on the sex abuse cases are putting profits ahead of the best interests of clients.

(Jimena Peck/For The Times)

Many plaintiffs told The Times they were discouraged to see how much money stood to be made for others off their trauma.

April Mannani, 51, sued L.A. County after she said she was raped repeatedly as a teenager at MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter now notorious for abuse. Mannani accepts that her lawyers are entitled to a cut for their work on the case, but said she was disheartened watching the numbers of cases suddenly skyrocket this year. With the district attorney investigating, a pall has been cast over the entire settlement.

Advertisement

“We’ve been made fools of and we were used for financial gain,” she said. “They all just see it as a money grab.”

That firm that represents her, Herman Law, has filed roughly 800 cases against L.A. County. Herman Law took out a loan in 2021 from a Delaware-registered company affiliated with Deer Finance, according to a loan notice. The firm said they use traditional bank loans for “overall operations.”

Herman Law is the most prolific filer of county sex abuse cases outside of L.A. County since the state changed the statute of limitations.

Herman Law has filed about half of these roughly 800 sex abuse lawsuits that have been brought outside of L.A. County, according to data reviewed by The Times.

Herman Law has sued several tiny counties, where public officials say they’ve been inundated with advertisements on social media and TV looking for plaintiffs. Some counties say they threw out relevant records long ago and have no way to tell if the alleged victim was ever in local custody.

A judge fined Herman Law about $9,500 last month for failing to dismiss Kings County from a lawsuit despite presenting no evidence the county ever had custody of the victim, calling the claim “factually frivolous” and “objectively unreasonable.” An attorney for Herman Law said in a court filing the client believed she’d been in a foster home there, and the lack of records didn’t conclusively establish anything.

Advertisement

“There are not records. There’s nothing that exists,” said Jason Britt, the county administrative officer for Tulare County, which has been sued at least eight times by Herman Law. “Counties at some point are not gonna be able to operate because you’re essentially going to bankrupt them.”

The firm said its clients are always its top priority.

“No lender or financial relationship has ever influenced, directed or played any role in legal strategy, client decisions or case outcomes, including any matters involving the Los Angeles County,” the firm said. “Herman Law’s work is driven solely by our mission to advocate for survivors in their pursuit of justice and healing.”

Joseph Nicchitta, L.A. County’s acting chief executive officer, said he believed the region’s social safety net was now “an investment opportunity.” In an October letter to the State Bar, he called out the “explosive growth” of claims, arguing a handful of firms were “competing to bring as many cases as possible” to the detriment of their existing clients.

He estimated that attorney fees in the lawsuit would amount to more than $1 billion. “It begs reform,” he wrote.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Business

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ heats up the box office, grossing $88 million domestically

Published

on

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ heats up the box office, grossing  million domestically

The Na’vi won the battle of the box office this weekend, as “Avatar: Fire and Ash” hauled in a hefty $88 million in the U.S. and Canada during its opening weekend.

The third installment of the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios’ “Avatar” franchise brought in an estimated total of $345 million globally, with about $257 million of that coming from international audiences. The movie reportedly has a budget of at least $350 million.

Box office analysts had expected a big international response to the most recent film, particularly since its predecessor “Avatar: The Way of Water” had strong showings in markets like Germany, France and China.

In China, the film opened to an estimated $57.6 million, marking the second highest 2025 opening for a U.S. film in the country since Disney’s “Zootopia 2” a few weeks ago. (That film went on to gross more than $271.7 million in China on its way to a global box office total of $1.1 billion.)

The strong response in China is another sign that certain movies can still do well in the country, which was once seen as a key force multiplier for big blockbusters and animated family films but has in recent years cooled to American movies due to geopolitics and the rise of its domestic film industry.

Advertisement

Angel Studio’s animated biblical tale “David” came in second at the box office this weekend, with an estimated domestic gross of $22 million. Lionsgate thriller “The Housemaid,” Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Movies’ “The Spongebob Movie: Search for Squarepants” and “Zootopia 2” rounded out the top five.

The weekend’s haul likely comes as a relief to theater owners, who have weathered a roller coaster year.

After a difficult first three months, the spring brought hits like “A Minecraft Movie” and “Sinners” before the summer ended mostly flat. A sleepy fall brought panic to the exhibition business until closer to the Thanksgiving holiday, when “Wicked: For Good” and “Zootopia 2” drew in audiences.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending