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Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: March 22, 2009

Niall Browne — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:18:54 +0000

It’s Sunday and therefore it’s Wrap Up time. This week:

We Know who is top of the box office; Cage and Bruckheimer make a date; Beatty fights over Dick Tracy; George Lucas’s Red Tails gets Wild(s); get ready for Demonkeeper; Segal meets Little Fockers and Universal knows the Rites of Men.

Box Office
Nicolas Cage is king of the box office with Knowing. The Alex Proyas (I Robot) directed film should manage about $24-25 million over the weekend. Put it this way, Knowing made more on Friday than Bangkok Dangerous made on it’s opening weekend.

The Paul Rudd- Jason Segal comedy I love You, Man should cash in $18 million over the weekend. The R-rated comedy was similar to the weekend starts of the stars previous film like Role Models and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Julia Roberts re-teams with Clive Owen for Duplicity. The comedy-caper film should steal $14.5 million from audiences over the weekend.

The Rock’s (or Dwayne Johnson‘s) Race To Witch Mountain should gather another $14 million bringing the Disney film to just under the $50 million mark.

Watchmen should bank another $6-7 million bringing the epic comic book movie to the $100 million mark. Not a bad gross, but it’s quite disappointing.

Last House on the Left dropped $65% to $6.5 million.

Liam Neeson’s Taken managed another $4.5 million bringing the total of the film to over $130 with a world wide take surpassing $200 million.

Movie News

1. Nicolas Cage’s forthcoming Disney film The Scorcerer’s Apprentice has a release date set for July 16, 2010. The Jerry Bruickheimer produced film which co-stasr Jay Baruchel, directed by Jon Turtletaub, is a modern retelling of the Disney classic.

It should make a killing at the box office.

Source: Variety

2. Warren Beatty is being sued by Tribune Media Services so that they can regain the rights to Dick Tracy. The action states that the character of Tracy should revert back to the company as Beatty hasn’t made “productive use” of the rights in a decade.

Beatty has however begun work on a Dick Tracy television special, but Tribune Media Services say that the show is only being produced so that Beatty can retain the rights to the character which he purchased in 1985.

Beatty starred in and directed a Dick Tracy movie that was released in 1990. The film grossed over $100 million at the US box office and co-starred Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Madonna.
It’s not a bad little film. Visually it’s very impressive with a pre-digital Sin City style vibe.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

3. 90210 star Tristan Wilds has been cast in George Lucas‘ Red Tails.

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

“Wilds will play Ray “Ray Gun” Knight, a flyboy nearly blinded over Nazi-occupied Italy who becomes the wingman of his friend and cohort, Marty. The two face the prejudice of the U.S. military as much as the overseas enemy but end up establishing an unprecedented record.”

The film was written by John Ridley and it will be directed by Anthony Hemingway.

Lucas has talked about this film for years, and I honestly believed that it would never see the light of day.

Now just get behind a camera again George and direct something like THX 1138 or American Graffiti.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

4. The Tale of Despereaux and Flushed Away director Sam Fell will direct a liva-action adaptation of Royce Buckingham’s Demonkeeper.

According to Variety:

“Story follows a Seattle teen who inherits responsibility for a house filled with demons. When the youth finally breaks free of his charges to go on a date, he returns to discover that kids have broken into the house, unleashing its most vicious demon, the Beast, Killer of Lost Children.”

Sounds like an interesting premise.

Source: Variety

5. Peter Segal is in the frame to direct the third Meet the Parents movie which is currently titled Little Fockers.

Segal had been expected to direct Get Smart 2, but Steve Carrell signed on to the comedy Date Night with Tina Fey. With Segal at the helm this will be the first Focker movie to to be directed by Jay Roach.

The Robert DeNiro produced film was written by John Hamburg. Ben Stiller, DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand and Owen Wilson are all expected to return.

Source: Variety

6. Jonathan Herman’s new script Rites of Men has been bought by Universal Pictures. The script is being compared to the sleeper hit Taken.

The Hollywood Reporter said:

“Herman’s script centers on a working-class single dad whose only son is murdered and must then set out on a quest to solve the killing.”

The “dad on revenge” movie seems to be a popular new sub genre. Mark Wahlberg is attached to a similar film called Prisoners while Mel Gibson has the forthcoming Edge of Darkness.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

That’s it for now. See you at the movies.

Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: December 07, 2008

Niall Browne — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:39:47 +0000

It’s hard to believe that we are now into December. It seems like only yesterday I was talking about the big summer releases – and now we are looking forward to next years big movies.

This weeks Weekend Movie News Wrap Up features the obligatory box office wrap up as well as:

La Beouf is The Associate; Stiller talks Zoolander 2; who is Angelina Jolie? Zombie returns to Halloween and Brownlow Vs Captain Blood.

Box Office

America just loves Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. How do I know this? Simple: Four Christmases grossed another $18 million over the weekend, keeping it the top movie at the box office despite terrible reviews. That’s only a 41% drop from opening weekend, usually an indication of a movie being very popular.

Twilight should bag another $14 million keeping it in the No. 2 position. Man, it must suck being a Studio Executive who turned this vampire flick down.

Bolt should manage another $10 million, keeping Disney quite happy with its gross. $100 million is well on target.

Bond, James Bond should collect another $8 million or so giving Quantum of Solace a little over $150 million.

Australia should manage another $6 million giving the Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman film a weak $30 million gross. Not good. After Deception flopped earlier in the year and now this – Jackman must be praying that Wolverine does well.

Punisher: War Zone flopped HUGE on its opening, grossing just $4 (four!) million – about half of what Thomas Jane’s The Punisher grossed in 2004. It looks like the movie-going public just don’t dig Frank Castle. This is the third attempt to bring The Punisher to the screen and it will probably be the last. It looks like the Lexi Alexander directed film didn’t benefit from all of the pre-release rumor that was floating about over the summer. It should make a killing on DVD, so maybe a series of straight to DVD Punisher films is what is needed. Just a thought.

Movie News

1. Shia La Beouf goes where Tom Cruise, Matt Damon and Matthew McConaughey have gone before. Get your mind out of the gutter – it has nothing to do with Penelope Cruz. He will be top-lining a John Grisham adaptation. La Beouf will star in The Associate, a legal thriller based on an as yet unpublished novel by Grisham.

According to Variety:

“LaBeouf will play a student who’s about to graduate from Yale Law School when he’s manipulated into accepting a job at a prestige law firm and given privileged information about a multibillion-dollar lawsuit.”

Sounds like pure Grisham. Should be another $100 million hit under Shia’s belt.

La Beouf’s Transformer producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is producing.

Source: Variety

2. Ben Stiller must be in the sequel mood as he’s developing a follow-up to 2001’s cult favorite Zoolander.

Stiller currently in the UK promoting Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa told The Sun:

“I’ve been trying to get Zoolander 2 together and we’ve had a few scripts. I feel that is the sequel I really would like to do some day because I like the original and I would make sure it was something new and worthy of it first.”

He also reportedly threatened another Meet The Parents.

Take these rumors with a pinch of salt a British tabloids have a habit of being creative with the truth.

Source: The Sun

3. Speaking of Salt, there appears to be some confusion of Angelina Jolie’s forthcoming action-thriller Salt.

Salt is a thriller that Jolie inherited from Tom Cruise – originally titled Edwin A.Salt. Some believe that the film may be Erika Salt, while others are of the opinion that the film will be simply called Salt – with the character called Evelyn..

Apparently in the sequel she teams up with a soldier from the US Army called Sgt. Pepper. This follow-up will be called Salt and Pepper.

Sorry – I just made up the last bit.

Source: Joblo

4. It looks like shock-rocker Rob Zombie will helm the sequel to his re-imagining/remake/rehash of John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Originally Zombie had stated that he would not return, but I’m guessing that Dimension made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo were originally signed to make the film, but they left due to “creative differences.”

Apparently shooting is due to star in March, however there is no confirmation of a script being in place.

That’s never stopped a movie though!

Source: Shock Till You Drop

5. John Brownlow will write the script for Phillip Noyce’s remake of the legendary Captain Blood.

The original starred Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone. The remake won’t have anyone half as cool.

Source: Dark Horizons

That’s it for now. See you at the movies!