We have an epidemic people. In the past few weeks BioShock: Infinite and Tomb Raider both were officially confirmed pushed to early 2013. One or two delays make sense, and at the end of the day wont really have a big impact on the season, but we now have two more to add to the list.

Last week THQ announced that Obsidian’s South Park: The Game would also be pushed to the early portion of 2013. This ambitious RPG might not have yet been on a lot of people’s radar, but the game has been written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone with Obsidian getting a lot of support from the folks at South Park Studios. So it is likely the game will be a big deal once it gets close to release.

In addition, Gearbox Software announced today via their blog that Aliens: Colonial Marines has also been delayed until the first quarter of 2013:

Our vision has been to create a video game sequel to the original Alien trilogy. Our vision is for the game to be fully featured with an exciting, suspenseful, thrilling and action packed narrative campaign that can be played alone or cooperatively combined with a robust competitive game where human players can take on the roles of Colonial Marines or Xenomorphs and do battle online. The game must be authentic.   

Hopefully the later release date will help Gearbox properly follow through on those visions. Alien: Colonial Marines isn’t just getting a nebulous delay though, an official release date of February 12th has also been announced.

These two new delays have started to make early 2013 seem a little crowded. The normally lack luster post holiday gaming season might just be pretty worthwhile next year.

Before I recount the gory details of Battleship‘s disastrous opening weekend, it behooves me to let you know yet again that The Avengers won the weekend. I adore The Avengers, but it has made so much money so fast that we are just about out of things to say about it in the Box Office report.

It settled a measly 46.6% for another $55+ million at the domestic box office. The Avengers scored a few more speed records, such as fastest film to $450 Million domestic, in 10 less days than the next best film. Next weekend will be interesting though, its first (potentially) non-first place hold will give a decent indication of how big of a final total we can expect.

The good news for Battleship is that it isn’t a complete and utter disaster worldwide. With its international release weeks in the film has already made over $200 Million. Of course it made a paltry $25 Million here in the states and will be viewed as a the new John Carter (and THAT film’s reign as biggest cinematic black eye might end up short-lived).

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Remember a few months ago when it seemed like fall 2012 was loaded with tons of awesome, highly anticipated video game releases?

We told you how BioShock: Infinite would be delayed several months and now add another of those high-profile games has jumped ship to early 2013. In an announcement made on Edios Games’ forums, Darrell Gallagher informed us that the Tomb Raider reboot game has been pushed to 2013:

Our priority now is to make sure we fully deliver the very highest quality game. In order to do this, we have decided to move the game’s release date by a few months, from Fall 2012 to the first quarter of 2013.

We’re doing things that are completely new to Tomb Raider in this game and the additional development time will allow us to put the finishing touches into the game and polish it to a level that you deserve. We believe this is the right choice and I guarantee it will be worth the wait. The game is looking amazing and we can’t wait to show it to everyone at E3 in a few weeks.

Unfortunate news for a game that a lot of people were really look forward to. Although we here at The Flickcast think this might be for the best, in a world where Uncharted has set a new standard for action and treasure hunting games, Tomb Raider has a lot to live up to. At the very least the game wont be a no-show at E3 like BioShock, so we wont have to long to wait to see what sort of additions this delay allows.

In its second weekend in release The Avengers brought in over $100 Million bucks. I will write that again for effect. In its second weekend in release The Avengers brought in over $100 Million bucks!

That absurd second weekend haul obliterates the second weekend record just as the debut frame obliterated records last week. For reference the previous best second weekend was Avatar with a bit over $75 million. The movie has already cleared a billion in total Box Office and it has only been in US cinemas for 10 days.

So yes, The Avengers continues to draw in the masses and shatter records left and right. At this point in time it seems plausible that the movie will end up as the third most successful film of all time. Why not the top slot if it is doing better than everything else right now? The start of the Summer season is just to hard of a spot for the movie to have the kind of legs required to break that pesky 2 billion dollar plateau.

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Normally this is a report about the top 10 in the weekends Box Office, a celebration of the entire spectrum of the week’s best performing movies. That will not be the case this week as The Avengers just demolished even the most generous expectations and became the first film ever to rake in over $200 Million dollars in a debut weekend.

You read that correct, The Avengers made an estimated $200.3 Million this weekend at the Box Office. For reference the next closest film was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 which brought in over $169 Million in its opening frame. Kudos to me for the prediction last week.

There is a fitting symmetry for Marvel this week, as it was the original Spider-Man movie in 2001 that was the first to breach the $100 Million Dollar plateau. In the twelve years since that first triple digit weekend five of the films to achieve the mark were based on Marvel properties, the most of any single franchise.

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Domestically this was a very weak weekend. The defending champion held its crown among a very unimpressive selection of new challengers. Think Like A Man dropped about 47% to bring in around $18 Million. The back-to-back wins catapulted the film passed Titanic 3D as the highest grossing film released this month.

The second place finisher was the most recent stop-motion animated film from the guys over at Aardman Studios. The Pirates! Band of Misfits did typically weak for the British Animation Studio who has yet to have a huge box office win despite a quality of output that ranks right up with PIXAR.

The Lucky One sputtered into third place with just over $11 Million, representing a 50% drop over its debut weekend. If the number seems low that’s because it is. The weekend as a whole was incredibly light compared to last year. All of this has the distinct feel of the quiet before the storm as The Avengers comes out next week.

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With the advent of the internet buying tickets to movies becomes more and more like buying tickets to concerts, and I don’t mean the inflated prices. When an event film comes out and you know you want to experience it with the midnight or opening day crowds you can by your tickets way ahead of time.

Lots of people are doing just that for the first ever major ‘Cross-over Event’ Film. According to MovieTickets.com the presale ticket numbers for The Avengers are larger than all the other Marvel Studio films… COMBINED:

MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS is pre-selling more tickets for the upcoming release than the online ticketing company sold for CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, THOR, IRON MAN 2, and IRON MAN combined at the same point in the sales cycle for each film.  In fact, pre-sales of MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS is over one and a half times that of these past Marvel films combined sales at the same point in the sales cycle.

You can check out the bigger break down of how far ahead The Avengers is after the jump.

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The Dark Knight Rises is going to be a big film, and now we know that has more than one meaning. The blockbuster is going to be setting a new standard for how much IMAX native footage is released for a Hollywood feature film.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Nolan’s Bat-Finale will include the most actual IMAX footage of any studio film before it:

When Mr. Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” opens July 20, it will contain the most IMAX footage ever for a Hollywood feature, more than one hour’s worth. There were 40 minutes of such footage in 2008′s “The Dark Knight”—which set box-office records in its opening weekend.

IMAX’s summer slate also includes potential blockbusters “The Avengers,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “Men in Black 3,” Tim Burton’s gothic comedy “Dark Shadows,” and Ridley Scott’s 3-D “Prometheus.” Mr. Nolan’s film was the only one shot using IMAX cameras; the others were converted using IMAX’s technology.

Sounds exciting. These Nolan Bat-Films are paving the way for the first truly IMAX movie. Sure the cameras and tech have been around for ages, but up till know it was used for nature docs and educational programming. We want to see what true film-making legends can do with the tech. IMAX is always going to be more immersive than traditional movies, so this can only be a big win movie goers.

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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If you can forgive us the headline long enough for us to tell you the news, we would appreciate it. The search for a director to take on the Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire after Gary Ross decided to walk away is over.

The man Lionsgate has chosen to take up the torch and continue the blockbuster franchise is Francis Lawrence. Lawrence won the coveted gig after after other directors like Moneyball helmer Bennett Miller had to drop out due to a scheduling problem.

According to the report, he was always a top pick for Lionsgate but his deal finalized when others such as Miller had to drop out of contention. Additionally, Lawrence can get started right away so the film can get into production before star Jennifer Lawrence (no relation) has to head back to the Marvel Universe and suit up for the sequel to X-Men: First Class.

In case you can’t place the director’s name, his previous credits include Water For Elephants, I Am Legend and Constantine as well as music videos for Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and Green Day. So, he’s got some directing chops as we like at least two of his movies (no, not the one with RPat).

So, with the sequel to Hunger Games now seemingly on track, look for it to arrive in theaters late in 2013.

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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Game Stop has always been an interesting force in the world of video game retailers. They are fabulous in the sense that they are major players in the used game market, really refining a trade-in infrastructure that allows people to get their hands on new games cheaper.

On the flip side of that coin is the seedy fact that they pay dirt cheap prices for games (I once got a quarter for a three year old Madden title!) and mark them up significantly. It is hard to truly be angry about this though, as they follow a pretty strait forward supply and demand model in their pricing.

Of course as Game Stop grew, so did the concept and popularity of used sales. Used sales is great for the gamer, but horrible for the game developers, as they don’t see a dime off of the used sale. In an effort to mitigate these losses, developers and publishers have begun supplying online pass codes into new games, effectively forcing those who buy used copies to shell out $15 bucks for the same content that would be free if purchased new.

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