It’s a cruel summer for Italian cinema. One movie made it over a million this week, and there was no major upheaval in the box office rankings. Thor: Love and Thunder in its second weekend, collected € 1.3 million, for a total since the release of € 7,602,553. Compared to last week though, the movie was down 61 %.

A long, long distance behind Thor,  Elvis still holds out: the Baz Luhrmann biopic collected € 174,066 and the total grossing has now risen to € 2,320,92. What is surprising, however, is the third place, still in the hands of Tom Cruise and his Top Gun: Maverick. Two months since its theatrical release, the movie has collected another €160,689. In all, it has grossed the crazy amount of € 11,197,499 in Italy – while in the States it has become Paramount’s top domestic grossing film, surpassing even Titanic.

Among new releases, the Top 10 list includes the re-release of Hayao Miyazaki‘s masterpiece: back in theaters for a special event, Princess Mononoke grossed € 87,353. Ti West’s highly anticipated film X – A Sexy Horror Story, on the other hand, debuted with € 69,190.

While the box office doesn’t grant big surprises, summer is the time to meet some Hollywood stars visiting Italy for leisure, usually as guests of the many festivals in the country. In Rome, the “gladiator” Russell Crowe returned to the Colosseum. Visiting with his family the actor posted a photo on Twitter with an ironic phrase: “I took my boys to visit my old office.”

In Umbria, at the Umbria Jazz festival, Johnny Depp put his legal problems with ex-wife Amber Heard behind him. And he did so by focusing on his other great passion, music, in a super performance along with guitarist Jeff Beck, cheered on by a frenzied crowd.

Several Italian productions will be released on the Sky channels. Call My Agent (working title), will tell the story of a casting agency, and will cast guest stars as Paola Cortellesi, Paolo Sorrentino, Pierfrancesco Favino, Matilda De Angelis, Stefano Accorsi, Corrado Guzzanti. There are big expectations for Hanno ucciso l’uomo ragno – la vera storia degli 883: a dramedy inspired by the true story of Max Pezzali and Mauro Repetto, two musicians of the 90s who were able to create a band – the 883 – that became a truly national and generational phenomenon.

The filming for Valeria Golino’s The Art of Joy begins this August in Sicily. The series, based on the posthumous novel by Goliarda Sapienza, tells the story of a young girl in early 20th-century Sicily who discovers sexuality and the desire for a better life than she has always had.

Filippo Timi will star in Dostoevsky, a noir series starring the actor as a brilliant detective with a painful past who finds himself investigating the blood trail of a ruthless serial killer, nicknamed Dostoevsky because of the letters full of grisly details he leaves at crime scenes.

This fall Sky Atlantic will air the series Il Grande Gioco, starring Francesco Montanari, an in-depth exploration of the soccer market.