For A Few Movies More

Director James Mangold has tweeted a new poster for The Wolverine, featuring a stylised take on the film’s villain, The Silver Samurai. It’s an incredibly eye-catching design that wisely keeps the Samurai’s appearance mostly under wraps, further building intrigue around this big screen interpretation of one of Wolverine’s most formidable foes.

Take a look at it below.

So who would’ve thought? Iron Man 3 on top again and it is pretty much the same story worldwide. If $27m in two weeks in a smallish country with a decent box office market looks impressve, try the $60m in China (more than The Dark Knight Rises made in total), $40m in South Korea, with $30m+ takings also in UK and Mexico. In fact the film has over $500m in two weeks! While it won’t reach the $1.5bn worldwide of the Avengers, it may challenge the $880m internation (non-US) total. It should be noted that 56% is a large drop and it will need to flatten that out to challenge the big takings of 2012 films The Avengers ($54m), Skyfall ($48m) and DKR ($44m)

Other notable films for the week include The Big Wedding, a universally panned wedding flick which did well to get over the $1m mark. Drift had a middling opening while The Place Beyond The Pines pre released for $200K from 63 screens. See below for chart:

We all knew Iron Man 3 would be big, but did anybody see this happening? The third film in what is now one of the biggest franchises in the industry has hit an amazing $175m in its opening weekend, making it second only to last year’s Marvel team-up The Avengers ($207m). There’s plenty that weighed into this effort but I’ll save that for below. Not surprisingly the weekend is a massive boost to the ailing 2013 box office, which is desperate to make good on block buster season. It was a clean strike for Iron Man with no other nationwide releases and an understandably slim total for the remaining films.

See Chart and Analysis below:

Welsh actor Luke Evans has been cast as Eric Draven in F. Javier Gutierrez’s upcoming reboot of The Crow.

Evans was reportedly the first choice for the role, however his busy schedule clashed with the production, temporarily ruling him out. Alexander Skarskard and Tom Hiddlseton were considered for the role next, but Gutierrez was eventually able to push back the shooting date of the film, allowing Evans to jump back onboard.

Here’s the full report from  Deadline; “Evans seemed to be unavailable because of production on ‘Dracula’ and promotion on ‘The Hobbit.’ The distributor looked at Tom Hiddleston and more recently Alexander Skarsgard, the latter of whom has a bunch of offers after Warner Bros halted ‘Tarzan.’ Ultimately, they have decided to push the start date to early next year to accommodate his schedule in order to secure Evans.”

The original 1994 version of The Crow saw Brandon Lee play a guitarist who is brutally murdered along with his fiancée. Mysteriously brought back from the dead, he proceeds to extract bloody vengeance on his killers one by one. Tragically Brandon Lee died on the set of the film when he suffered from an accidental gunshot wound.

So who do you think would have made the best lead for The Crow: Luke Evans, Alexander Skarskard or Tom Hiddlseton?

Summit Entertainment has just released one of those bite-sized teasers for Ender’s Game, giving fans a glimpse of the film’s look and feel before the full teaser trailer hits next week. Also featured is an introduction from stars Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford, both of whom are in sombre and serious mode.

Check out the mini-teaser below.

Steven Spielberg will team up with Bradley Cooper for his next feature, American Sniper, an adaptation of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s autobiography.

The Hollywood Reporter confirms the film will focus on Texas native Chris Kyle, a Navy Seal member who racked up the highest number of sniper kills for an American. Sadly Kyle was tragically killed by a fellow veteran at a shooting range in February.

Here’s the plot synopsis of the book, full name American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History:

From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyles kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned legendary status among his fellow SEALs, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, whom he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.

Steven Spielberg and Bradley Cooper will co-produce the picture along with Andrew Lazar and Peter Morgan. Jason Hall penned the script for the adaptation.

The film is scheduled for the 1st quarter 2014.

The films and books that you connect with when you’re a spritely little pre-teener, full of hope and driven solely by fun, are some of the purest experiences you will have with art and entertainment. You’re old enough to appreciate a good story, but not old enough for the trash of teenage lust, or the pre-tense of a budding hipster, or the decaying hope as you enter your late twenties, thirties and beyond. For myself, and countless other eighties babies, the children’s horror series Goosebumps was the perfect marriage. Combining fun and engaging writing with the supernatural, author R L Stine took us on a monthly escape with mummies, ghouls, ghosts, werewolves, witches, shrunken heads and a couple more mummies, with twists and turns, and an almost brutal ability finish each chapter teetering on a knife edge.

I couldn’t get enough (well, that is until I discovered Animorphs) so you can imagine the rush of nostalgia as I read the news that they are planning to bring Goosebumps to the big screen! My head was swirling with fond memories – admittedly most were of the joy of reading the series rather than the actual stories themselves, but I banded together with fellow FFMM writers Dean and Jason to put together a couple of our favourites which we would love to see re-imagined. We’re not sure how the film will be constructed as yet, but whether it is an amalgamation of a couple stories, one stand alone feature or even an anthology-style film, all I know is it will be awesome- or at least mildly entertaining like that TV series they did…

Read on for our picks

Check out this latest trailer for The Wolverine which originally premiered at CinemaCon last month. Featuring plenty of sword-swinging samurai action, it’s a no-nonsense trailer that primarily focuses on the film’s grand set pieces.

Watch it below.

Kelsey Grammar sure appears to be embracing his inner villain in recent times. The veteran actor recently excelled as TV’s sleaziest politician in Boss, and now Grammar is lined up to the play the villain in Michael Bay’s forthcoming Transformers 4.

Deadline reports that Grammar will play “Harold Attinger, a counter intelligence guy.” Yeah not too much to go off there…

Transformers 4 will also co-star Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci.

Ehren Kruger (Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) wrote the script for the film, which heads into production in July.