Trailers! The Bleak and the Beautiful!

It’s been a little while since I posted any trailers here but these two caught my eye this evening so here we are. First we have the bleak, World War Z which looks pretty awesome (and yes I know I am late to the party here!). The trailer features apparent family man Brad Pitt who gets caught up in a world scale Zombie outbreak.

The most notable thing here are the amazing visual effects, the Zombie idea is certainly getting plenty of air time at the moment between TV shows and comic books so it makes sense that Hollywood should have a stab at the genre. The setup looks pretty interesting too, I like they idea of a fleet at sea where survivors can go for safety although I can’t see the apparent safety lasting long even there. World War Z is set for release on June 21st in the UK, Ireland and the America.

Next up we move on to the beautiful looking Oz The Great and Powerful, a sequel to the classic Wizard of Oz. the film tells the story of how the titular Wizard of Oz arrived there and became the lands leader. James Franco is taking the leading role with Michelle Williams and  Rachel Weisz featuring alongside while Sam Raimi directs this gorgeous looking feature.

While I am not sure if this film is one that needed to made  (questions about the he back story of the Wizard have never really crossed my mind, until now of course!) it does look very pretty. The color palette is broad and bright as the the unusual cast of characters and I am really looking forward to getting a look at some more footage. I image it will look stunning on Blu ray eventually too.

That’s all for now anyway but be sure to check back soon for some Halo 4 and Black Ops II impressions and of course new comic book Wednesday!

Box Office Round Up

Hi all, sorry this post is a day or so late! Monday was a bank holiday here in Ireland so that’s my ‘excuse’ but better late than never I suppose, anyway here are the latest US weekend box office figures. Once again this weekend belonged to The Dark Knight Rises which took an impressive $35.7 Million bringing its three-week (global) total to an equally impressive $353.9 Million. This puts its three-week gross figure just a little ways behind that of The Dark Knight and The Avengers, which is no small feat.

The Dark Knights success however was bad news for Sony whose Total Recall remake struggled on its opening weekend taking a meagre $25.5 Million. This will be a big blow for Sony who, having already suffered a couple of disappointments this year (MIB3, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and That’s My Boy), have spent some serious money on Total Recall ($1.5 Milllion to be precise) and will be pretty lucky to make it all back.

In third place this week was another new release, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days. The third installment of the Wimpy Kid series took $14.3 Million in its opening weekend. With a budget of just $22 Million I think that Fox and director David Bowers will count this as a success although it can’t have escaped their attention that each successive release in the series has seen ever diminishing returns. They may make another of these or they may not though I think that Fox may choose to take a gamble on a fourth installment with a reduced budget.

Ice Age: Continental drift hung on in the top five taking the fourth spot with a solid fourth weekend gross of $8.6 Million. Meanwhile Fox’s The Watch has somehow managed to hang in there too grossing $6.5 Million, taking a pretty huge 48% drop from its opening weekend (last week).

Step Up Revolution slipped to sixth with $5.9 Million, taking a 50% drop from last weeks take and the adorably indecent Ted slipped further into seventh place. Ted has however only just opened across much of Europe where it is performing pretty well.

That wraps it up for this week then, once again the weekly gross for the top five was down on last year, the primary causes being the Olympics and a degree of fallout from the Colorado tragedy. There will however be a couple of big releases State Side this weekend with Bourne Legacy (which I am super pumped for) and The Campaign (also pumped) hitting the theaters there this Friday (10th). Perhaps Hawkeye can knock Batman from his perch?