Weekend @ the Box Office

Audiences everywhere are flocking to see American Sniper because of misguided patriotism, earning the movie $64,365,000 and the number one spot for several weeks in a row. The Boy Next Door proves you don’t need a good movie in January as long as you have an attractive star. The movie earned $15,001,000 and opened in the #2 spot at the BO. Paddington charms its way to staying in the third spot with $12,391,000. The Wedding Ringer fell 43.8% in its second week, landing in the fourth spot with $11,600,000. Finally, Taken 3 continues to take audience money with $7,136,000 in the fifth spot.

News Roundup

Let’s get some of the smaller news out of the way:

For all you Jake Gyllenhaal fans (aka all of us), his upcoming project Southpaw wherein he gains back all the weight he lost for Nightcrawler through muscle, is coming to to theaters this July. Deadline reports that Antoine Fuqua is directing and Sons of Anarchy‘s Kurt Sutter is scripting. If Kurt Sutter has free reign, don’t expect subtlety. Expect conflicted characters to say “I’m so conflicted.”

Deadline reports Star Trek 3 has recruited Simon Pegg to write the script since nobody wanted another movie dealing with magic blood or conspiracies. Pegg isn’t just a likable actor, he’s a tested screenwriter from his time with Edgar Wright. This is the best news to befall Star Trek 3 yet.

Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is coming this year, much to the chagrin of Dave, and ComingSoon.Net has a full cast lineup along with a synopsis. The official lineup of cast members is Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Channing Tatum, James Parks, Dana Gourrier, Zoë Bell, Gene Jones, Keith Jefferson, Lee Horsley, Craig Stark, Belinda Owin. Try saying all those names five times fast. Or don’t, I don’t really care. Here’s the synopsis:

In The Hateful Eight, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…

The Blob remake from Simon West (Con Air, Expendables 2) is coming full steam ahead. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of CGI to “fully realize the potential of The Blob” because it’s not like there are two pretty good versions of this movie already, that don’t use CGI.

Lastly, Frank Darabont left the sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman to take his overqualified talents elsewhere. Now we can all get comfortable with Cedric Nicolas-Troyan taking over the reigns for The Huntsman. Troyan was a VFX supervisor for the previous film, so it’s similar to when the VFX designer of Alice in Wonderland decided to direct Maleficent.

And finally, some Superhero News:

Trailer of the Week


I know we’re a movie site. There was a trailer for Hot Tub Time Machine 2. I can’t bring myself to say anything positive about this. So instead here’s a trailer for Season 3 of Hannibal a show on NBC that had a man eat his own face last year before joking he was “full of himself”

Tweets of the Week