Weekend Movie News Wrap Up: March 22, 2009

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.