After a very impressive run, The Hunger Games has finally fallen from the top spot of the box office. It held well again, dropping only 31% and bringing in an estimated $14.5 Million, but at the end of the day it was time for a new hit to take over champion duties, and Think Like A Man is a hit.

Bringing in $33 Million, Think Like A Man ranks as one of the biggest openings of the year. The movie surpassed the expectations and becomes another victory notch in Sony’s belt on the year. When you compare Think Like A Man’s opening with other like films it is ahead of nearly all of them. The strong weekend also ranks as Screen Gem’s third number one opening of the year.

Coming in at number two is the next in a seemingly endless line of romantic films hoping to rekindle The Notebook’s fervor. The Lucky One pulled in nearly $23 Million, which actually made more than Nicholas Sparks’ most famous adaptation. However, like another recent Sparks adaptation, Dear John, more money doesn’t translate to more popularity.

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One thing will be certain in a few weeks. Once Summer starts there will be more high profile scores than Fridays and some good music might fall through the cracks. Which is precisely why I am so excited to bring you this early review of Danny Elfman’s score from Dark Shadows.

This score ranked as one of my most anticipated of the early summer season, and that anticipation was made all the more severe when we listened to the expanded preview a few weeks back. So suffice to say I am ready to dig into the 14th collaboration between Danny Elfman and Tim Burton.

That is a lot of feature film scores from a director with a very distinct style, and recently there has been a lot of concern about repetitiveness in Elfman’s music. You can only go to that stylized dark well so many times, and eventually it will be dried up completely.

So does this umpteenth collaboration yield beautiful sonic rewards, or is this little more than a Beetlejuice or Sleep Hallow remix album?

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Bryan Fuller, the creative mastermind behind Wonderfalls, Pushing Daises and choice episodes of Heroes and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, might very well have two new shows on the air next season. We already told you about his two new projects likely to hit screens this season.

Now we are getting word from EW that the already greenlit Hannibal series will have a cable-esque 13 episode season one:

Hannibal, which has received a 13-episode series order, features Lecter solving crimes with empathic FBI profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy). For the first time, viewers will spend quality time with Lecter while he’s at large and before the world knows his secrets, working side by side with a similarly brilliant man who is destined to catch him.

What we have is Alfred Hitchcock’s principle of suspense — show the audience the bomb under the table and let them sweat when it’s going to go boom. So the audience knows who Hannibal is so we don’t have to overplay his villainy. We get to subvert his legacy and give the audience twists and turns.

Sounds mighty interesting. If Fuller and company can pull of this tight rope we might have a pretty great show on our hands. Fuller is certainly very capable, but this year will see him tackle two very well known properties. It will be interesting to see how he handles each one.

OK, so lets break it down to you in the simplest way possible. Disney wants to make a movie that is based on a ride, that was based on a movie, that was based on a book. We here at The Flickcast are generally pro re-imagining properties, but that seems stretched a little thin.

Deadline is reporting that Disney is keen to get a movie in production based on yet another popular ride from a Disney Park:

Disney has feature film plans for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, one of its longest-running theme park rides. The studio has set iconic commercials and video director Pete Candeland to develop a live-action/CGI mix feature that will bring to life a theme park ride that originated in Disneyland on its opening in 1955.

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, if you remember, is the children’s dark ride that simulates a wild and drunken high speed car chase that ends with a first person simulation of a horrible death and hell. It is by far the most insane, ‘WTF’ ride at Disneyland and the concept of turning that experience into a feature film is crazy, but maybe just crazy enough to work.

The current idea would be to craft a film based on the attraction, not the well regarded source material. So sorry Wind in the Willows fans, it looks like you won’t be getting the umpteenth adaptation of your beloved book.

Remaking old TV shows as movies is a tricky proposition. There are a few angles you can take with it, you could make the movie as direct an adaptation as possible. Or you could embrace the camp nature of the source material and make a farce of it.

Both tactics have failed miserably, but so to have they both worked. This spring’s 21 Jump Street is a prime example of a film that works by embracing the absurdity of the original’s sincere premise. Most indications of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows might have succeeded in a similar fashion, so word of more classic TV adaptations can be met with some optimism these days.

According to Deadline, Universal has gotten behind their next TV to Big Screen adaptation:

Universal Pictures has set David Levien and Brian Koppelman to write The Rockford Files, a feature adaptation of the memorable series that ran on NBC from 1974-80 and featured James Garner as the down-and-out private eye. The studio will develop the film as a star vehicle for Vince Vaughn to play Rockford, and Vaughn and Victoria Vaughn will produce through their Universal-based Wild West Picture Show Productions banner.

Vaughn is a rather obvious choice, but hopefully it means they are going for a more comic approach. I know that will get fans of the original twisted up, but I think a strait forward adaptation of the show wouldn’t really work today. What could work is a Vince Vaughn staring vehicle using the show’s premise and the core of the main character. So long as it is more 21 Jump Street and less Starsky and Hutch we should be fine.

Tron: Legacy is a bit of a polarizing film. Some people loved it, others hated it while few could find much middle ground. Say what you will about the movie itself, it is hard to deny that Legacy re-introduced us to an intriguing universe that deserves to be explored a bit more.

While a third Tron film grows less and less likely with each passing month, Disney remains committed to the franchise with a new animated series set to debut on Disney XD soon. We have long known of this project, as it was announced shortly after the release of Legacy, but it has been awhile since we have been reminded that the show is still on the horizon.

That reminder has finally arrived in the form of a new trailer for the show, showcasing an impressive animated style that fits the digital world of Tron perfectly. The show also boosts an incredible voice cast, starring Elijah Wood, Mandy Moore, Lance Henriksen, Paul Reubens and even Bruce Boxleitner back as Tron.

You can check out the new trailer after the jump.

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One of the biggest enigmas in the crowded summer blockbuster season is how will the average movie goers take a rebooted Spider-Man so close to the success of the Raimi trilogy. How the reboot is received is going to be an important indicator for the longevity of the comic book movie as we know it.

In the last decade comic book films have rewritten a lot of the rules for how major franchise movies act in cinemas, pretty much demolishing the previous axiom that sequels suffer from standard diminishing returns. Now the success of an event film has much more to do with the reception of the previous film in the series and over all franchise health.

This summer brings two old comic book standards to the big screen, the team-up and the reboot. If these are successful it could signal to other studios that movie going public is keen on these characters, and will show up for a good film starring them even if the story is going back to the beginning.

So a lot is at stake, and as such the marketing push for The Amazing Spider-Man has been going strong for awhile now, keeping ole web head in our minds during the spring and early summer event film season. The newest bit of advertising is a brand new poster featuring some battle damaged Spidy. A really great, simple image that is reminiscent of the Raimi era character posters, while still feeling very much a part of the new tone for the series.

You can check out the full poster after the jump.

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Kind of hard to not sound redundant at this point, but The Hunger Games once again beats off a flurry of new comers and takes the weekend. With a very solid hold from last weekend, the adaptation has now brought in over $337 Millions dollars. There  is no reason the film wont play well over the next few weeks and the box office world braces itself for a huge summer.

Unforgivably, The Three Stooges came in at second place with $17.a Million over the weekend. This actually represents the third highest opening for a Farrelly Brothers film which seems like encouragement for the future of these types of films. The general success of the film isn’t repulsive because of the film itself, but more so because it goes on record as beating whats at number 3.

The spectacular The Cabin in the Woods debuted in the third slot this weekend with a hair under $15 Million. In context to what the film is, and how it was marketed, that is a pretty solid number. It just stings a bit that a film as effective and crowd pleasing as this isn’t going to have a bigger audience in the movie theater.

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FX has released a first teaser for Charlie Sheen’s upcoming comedy series Anger Management. The teaser doesn’t include any actual footage from the show, as it is just beginning production.

The series is a sitcom version of the 2003 feature film which starred Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler. In the original. Sandler plays a businessman who can’t express his feelings properly. He is wrongly sentenced to an anger-management program, where he meets an overly aggressive instructor played by Nicholson. The television series is expected to follow a similar format.

The teaser shows Sheen in a coffin, which is a playful reference to Sheen’s turbulent last year, as well as the off screen death of his character on CBS’ Two And A Half Men, and symbolizes his rebirth. We’ll have to see if the show can resurrect the perpetual joke that has been Charlie “Winning” Sheen over the last year.

Check out the teaser after the jump.

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The ‘first phase’ of the Marvel Studios shared universe comes to a climactic end on May 4th, but the ‘second phase’ continues to chug along and is set to begin one year later. On May 3rd, 2013 Iron Man 3 should be hitting theaters nation wide.

According to Variety, Marvel Studios might have finally found their foe in the Shane Black directed sequel:

Ben Kingsley is in final talks to play the villain in Marvel Studios and Disney’s “Iron Man 3,” but fans of the comicbook character will be disappointed to learn he won’t take on original Tony Stark archenemy the Mandarin.

Instead, Kingsley’s character is involved in the spread of a virus through nanobots, given that “Iron Man 3″ is loosely based on Warren Ellis’ six-issue “Extremis” comicbook series first published in 2005. That arc — which also heavily influenced the first “Iron Man” pic — introduced a new origin story and focused heavily on nanotechnology.

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The recent trend of Fairy Tale re-imaginings is going to be around for at least a few more years as Disney announced today that one if its most intriguing in-development projects is moving full steam ahead.

Maleficent is a live action re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty story, but from the perspective of Maleficent herself, played very appropriately by Angelina Jolie. Originally the movie was being developed by Brad Bird and there was even a time when Tim Burton was attached to direct, but recently the project had been rather dormant.

That was until today’s announcement of course. Disney has confirmed that Robert Stromberg will be making his feature debut with this film, which is now set for an March 14th, 2014 release date. Stromberg is a production designer that was a major contributor on Avatar and has worked with Tim Burton and Sam Raimi in the past. With a resume like that it is a safe bet that the film will look stunning, and with Angelina Jolie still perfectly cast in the title role this film has much going for it.

There was a time when this project looked dead in the water, but this new niche sub-genre has been gaining a ton of momentum as of late. Even the poorly marketed Mirror Mirror ended up gaining some admirers. Hopefully re-done fairy tales has some more creative heft to it now that the Twlight aesthetic has grown so stale.

It looks like Funny or Die’s viral hit Drunk History may soon be a full fledged TV series. Comedy Central has request a pilot presentation of a Drunk History Across America. 

The pilot is set to be produced by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy’s Gary Sanchez Prods. The trio will executive produce with Derek Waters, creator of the Drunk History series of shorts, Jeremy Konner, who directed them, and Owen Burke. Konner will also direct the pilot presentation.

Just like the web series, Drunk History Across America will feature historical reenactments that are based on the way the historical events are described by drunk narrators. The television show will expand on this idea by include some travel elements and interviews with city locals, who will drunkenly narrate local and personal history which. As with the current shorts, all the re-enactments will all be acted out by guest actors.

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