Take a seat Harry Potter. Step back Batman. Put away that arrow Katniss. There’s a new king of the box office world and it’s a throne shared by several superheroes. Early reports say Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers will end the weekend grossing $200.3 million, setting the all-time opening weekend domestic box office record by a large margin. It crushed the previous record held by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 by almost $30 million thanks in part to the second biggest Friday gross of all time (behind Potter) and the biggest Saturday gross of all time. The film is the fastest to ever reach $200 million and has made almost $650 million internationally in its first 12 days of release.
Read the press release and more after the jump. Read More »
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This week, Dave, Devindra, and Adam review Joss Whedon’s much-anticipated mega-blockbuster, The Avengers. Special guest Drew McWeeny joins us from Hitfix’s Motion Captured.
You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993.
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Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
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The event Marvel Studios has been working towards for many years is here: the studio has released The Avengers, in which the various stars of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Incredible Hulk unite in the sort of super-team movie that once would have existed only as a fan pipe dream. Well, most of the various stars of those films, as Mark Ruffalo steps in as Bruce Banner and the Hulk, but otherwise we’ve got the roster that Marvel has been building over the past few summers: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Clark Gregg, and relative newcomers Jeremy Renner and Cobie Smulders.
Joss Whedon got the job rewriting and directing the film and, I think, managed a neat balance of character and action. Every member of the team gets their due, and the conflict that brews between the rougly-formed team of Avengers and Asgardian trickster Loki culminates in a giant battle sequence that occupies most of the film’s final act. But Whedon & Co. keep the action lively and the staging uncluttered enough that we can see what these heroes are doing as they repel an alien force.
So now that you’ve had a chance to see The Avengers, what did you think? Chime in through the comment section below where, as always for these pieces, spoilers are totally acceptable. Read More »
With a change in director, it isn’t surprising to see a new writer come on to The Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire, and now Michael Arndt, who won an Oscar for scripting Little Miss Sunshine, is in talks to work on the film with director Francis Lawrence. Read More »
Though he’s not even old enough to watch The Dark Knight Rises by himself, Bart Simpson’s got the kind of ex-girlfriend roster most of us can only dream about — and many of them, including Zooey Deschanel, Natalie Portman, and Anne Hathaway will be back in his life for the upcoming 24th(!) season. Also after the jump:
- Has HBO started casting for Season 3 of Game of Thrones?
- TNT’s Southland and Showtime’s Borgias renewed
- AMC orders two more murder mystery pilots
- Dish Network will drop AMC, IFC, Sundance, and WEtv
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Disney sure loves to buy companies. They own Pixar, they own Marvel and earlier this year they bought UTV, one of the largest media companies in India. A trailer for the first film under this new regime, Arjun: The Warrior Prince, has just been released. The film will be released May 25 in India and is “the untold story of India’s greatest warrior.” While the animation isn’t quite up to Disney standards, it’s interesting to see what the Mouse has their finger on in different countries. Check out the trailer after the jump. Read More »
There are several take aways from Marvel’s The Avengers: the excitement, the humor and how you’d like to own every single prop that’s in the movie. Pieces like Thor’s hammer, Cap’s shield, Hawkeye’s bow and Loki’s staff are so iconic, owning one would be the crown jewel of any collection. And while companies do make authentic prop replicas of these items, and will continue to do so, there’s something to be said about the actual screen-used props. When these one-of-a-kind items are done in front of the camera, most of them get put into storage for use in future movies or possibly toured around the country at comic convention or museums.
For The Avengers, Disney’s D23 fan club has put all these items on display for you in a video tour featuring Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. Check out below. Read More »
