The Morning Roundup: Expected B.O. Report, Boondock Saints 2, Ancient Romans on TV, New Trailers
Written by: Phoebe Raven, CC2K Staff Writer
This morning you can read all about the B.O. report everyone expected, Boondock Saints 2 finally being made, ancient Romans invading your TV again, Whedon's own words about the Dollhouse trouble and then enjoy some new trailers.
First and foremost, let's send some good thoughts in Jennifer Hudson's direction. I am sure you read about the drama as it unfolded over the weekend. When life imitates art (or movies), it really can scare the hell out of you. Go here for all the latest updates and links to recap the whole story.
Not surprisingly, the boys and girls of High School Musical 3: Senior Year sang and danced their way to the top in the weekend box office. HSM3 had the highest opening for a musical ever. Did you really expect anything less from the HSMers? HSM3 nabbed the top spot at all the European box offices as well, btw.
Saw V provided the much needed counterpoint to all that gooey high school action and came in second in the US. It's now just $2 million short of beating out Friday the 13th as the most successful horror franchise ever. Max Payne and W. round out the top 4.
All in all it was a powerhouse box office this weekend, up 30% from last year around the same time. Uhm, aren't we supposed to be in recession?
The Tokyo Film Festival handed out its honors over the weekend and the top prize went to Sergey Dvortsevoy’s drama Tulpan, about the troubles of a young Kazakh shepherd. Dvortsevoy also won the prize for best direction.
Awards for actors and actresses went to Vincent Cassel for Public Enemy No. 1 and Felicite Wouassi for her work in With a Little Help From Myself. For more results go here.
The popular Japanese anime Ninja Scroll is heading for the big screen. Alex Tse is writing the script for Warner, and Leonardo DiCaprio's company Appain Way is producing the thing.
And apparently a sequel to the cult hit The Boondock Saints is finally happening. It will be called The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day. Production kicked off last week in Toronto, and yes, Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus are both back. You can watch the latest video by the mastermind behind the project, Troy Duffy, right here on this site. Plus many more on his Youtube Channel.
Chris Nolan gave a tellingly untelling interview to the L.A. Times in which he discusses that he may or may not be back for a third Batman movie. Read the whole interview here.
Don't we all love stories from ancient times? We do, come on, just think Rome and 300 and Spartacus. The latter will be made into a 13-episode TV series by Starz. This has the potential to be great, because Sam Raimi will exec produce and Steven S. DeKnight (Smallville, Buffy, Angel) has signed on as a writer. It will be filmed in New Zealand, always a great backdrop, but apparently almost 100% of the environment of the show will be virtual à la Sin City to accomodate the comic book reading and video game playing audience. The result could hit TVs as early as Summer 2009.
And in the last TV tidbit: Joss Whedon hit the message boards, as he occasionally does, and opened up about all the troubles he has already had with his new show Dollhouse, set for Summer 2009 on FOX. Apparently, production was shut down for reasons altogether different than first believed, namely because FOX wanted something different from the show than Joss and as a result the entire pilot had to be reshot. Read what else Joss had to say right here.
Trailer Time!
The Children
Notorious
Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans