This week:

We look at the weekend box office and why Robert De Niro doesn’t like the Edge of Darkness, Spike Lee and Denzel Washington make a sequel, we get to see Where the Wild Things Are, Russell Crowe goes Holmes and Tom Cruise might go to Florence.

Weekend Box Office

It looks like Nic Cage will capture the weekend with a pretty low $8 million dollars for Bangkok Dangerous. The film wasn’t screened for critics and it looks like the public didn’t like the look of Cage’s hair. Tropic Thunder managed another $2.1 million on Friday, so the film should shoot up close to $7 million over the weekend. The Dark Knight should manage another $5 million this weekend bringing its total to a mighty $511 million.  Don Cheadle’s Traitor dropped 40% on the second weekend and the film should have bagged a total of  $17 million come Monday morning. Meanwhile Vin Diesel must be pretty unhappy with Babylon A.D’s 62% drop. The film might muster another $4 million by the end of Sunday. Ouch.

Movie News

1. Robert De Niro has pulled out of Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness. The Mel Gibson starrer started shooting on August 18, and De Niro did less than a week’s work on the film.

De Niro’s spokesman said:

“Sometimes things don’t work out; it’s called creative differences.”

The role will be recast, and the film will shoot around De Niro’s departure. It’ll be tough to replace an actor like De Niro, so it will be interesting to see who will fill his shoes.

Source: Latino Review

2. Spike Lee is going to direct a follow-up to his hit film The Inside Man. The original film starred Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster.

It looks like Owen and Washington will return in the Terry George penned sequel, but the film will take a different slant on the characters and a new setting. It has a working title of…Inside Man 2. Original.

Who would have thought that Denzel and Lee would ever make a sequel?

Source: CHUD

3. Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are finally has a new release date. The pic should finally be released on October 16, 2009. The film has seen a huge amount of trouble in its production, from disastrous special effects through to horrendous test screenings and reshoots. The adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book stars Catherine Keener, Benicio Del Toro and Forest Whitaker. That is – if any of their characters survive the reshoots and re-editing.

Source: Comingsoon.net

4. With Nottingham delayed Russell Crowe has some time on his hands. According to Latino Review it looks like the Gladiator star may sign up to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. Nope, it’s not as Dr Watson as previously speculated, but Holmes’ nemesis Professor James Moriarty. Very interesting.

Latino Review also state that 300 star Gerard Butler was offered the role of Watson, but he declined. Robert Downey Jr will play the titular detective.

As a Sherlock Holmes fan I’m quite interested in how this is shaping up.

Source: Latino Review

5. It wouldn’t be Sunday without a bit of Tom Cruise news! The indecisive couch-jumper has yet another script sitting on his “to do” pile. Cruise and United Artists have bought the rights to The Monster of Florence a book about eight murders which took place in Florence from 1968 to 1985.

The events inspired Thomas Harris’ Hannibal, which is a rather unfortunate thing as the film is terrible.  It sounds like the makings of a pretty great thriller, and if it’s half as good as Zodiac then it should be something special.

The film will be penned by Cruise’s Valkyrie writer Chris McQuarrie, and the top gun will decide if he will take a lead role when he reads a draft of the script.

Come on Tom – choose a film already!

Source: Variety

That’s it for another week!

See you at the movies.