Let’s not forget there’s more to entertainment than what comes out of the collective Hollywood brain trust. And thank goodnesss for that or we would constantly be bombarded with movies like Battleship and endless other Transformers clones.

Fortunately, there’s more independent-minded production companies that try to make more original and edgy fare. One of those companies is Anchor Bay, and while it’s not indie in the strictest sense of the word (it’s owned by Starz), it still tries to bring some edgy and creative work to the table.

One example of this is the upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller The Collapse. In the movie, an “unknown event has catapulted civilization into a fatal downward spiral. The Weaver family — father Scott (John Fantasia), young adult son Aaron (Steve Vieira), mother Emily (Lise Moule) and teenage daughter Rebecca (Anna Ross) — desperately tries to survive.”

Check out the trailer and clips after the break. Look for The Collapsed to arrive on June 5.

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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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Universal has announced that it is looking to bring The Mummy franchise back from the dead once again. The studio is planning on a reboot of the already rebooted series, which like a lot of Hollywood is a safe move.

And no, Brendan Fraser probably won’t be attached.

Universal has already rebooted the series once with Stephen Sommers’ loose 1999 remake of 1932’s original Mummy movie. That film spawned a myriad of sequels, including spinoffs of like the Scorpion King,which had spinoffs of its own.  Now the film is getting a reboot by Prometheus co-writer Jon Spaihts.

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Hellraiser is about to be reborn on the small screen, as Sonar Entertainment is co-developing a television series with Eric Gardner’s Panacea Ent.

The original Hellraiser films focused on a puzzle box that opens a gateway to the Hell-like realm. The dimension is run by an order of formerly human monsters, who harvest human souls to torture in sadomasochistic experiments, known as Cenobites.

Even if you are unfamiliar with the films, most people would recognize the leader of the Cenobites, Pinhead.

With the popularity of horror and thriller TV shows, including the recent success of American Horror Story and The River, it is no surprise that we would have companies tapping a well known horror franchise and bring it to television. Whether Hellraiser is the right franchise to bring to the small screen is yet to be seen.

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After Dark Films, who over the last couple of years have become well known for releasing horror films to theaters and home video,  has partnered with Dark Castle Home Entertainment to bring you a new franchise of films, this time all action based.

Aptly named After Dark Action will present a collection of original action flicks starring a myriad of established and new talent.

Like they did with their horror compilations, After Dark Films does a tremendous job of bringing  films that would otherwise not get distributed to market. Any one familiar with their previous horror films knows that we can expect some of these films to be great and some to be stinkers, but they are all usually worth a viewing.

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The young career of Chloe Moretz has been stellar. Every project she has taken has been interesting and varied, and at the young age of fifteen she already has shown more range than a few of her Oscar winning elders.

So when Deadline reports she is joining the cast as the lead in an all new adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie you know there is a good chance the movie is going to be good.

She’s expected to play the shy high school student Carrie White, who is raised by a nightmarish religious fanatic mother, and comes to grip with devastating telepathic powers just as she reaches puberty. She eventually uses those gifts for lethal means when fellow classmates use the prom as an excuse to humiliate her before the entire school in a parable about bullying.

We have already seen young Ms. Moretz dazzle in a moody horror role, but to take on the lead in Carrie can take her to the next level. Another interesting angle on this story is that Chloe is currently a little younger than a typical high school senior would be.

Usually these sorts of roles are filled with 20 somethings, so perhaps the younger looking Moretz will have an even larger visual difference between her classmates to punctuate her outsider, lonely demeanor.

If you love old B-movies, you can’t miss Shout Factory’s line of “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” DVD collections. Horror, fantasy, science fiction, grindhouse- all are represented in these neat 3- and 4-film multi-packs.

The Vampires, Mummies, and Monsters collection is kind of a B-movie potluck. The four films on two discs created over a span of 17 years have incredibly different looks, tones, and yes, monsters.

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As we have seen, The Walking Dead franchise has already been able to support a monthly comic, AMC’s most popular show and two toy lines. Now, a third toy line will be added to the list as favorites Rick, Dale and a horde of zombies make their way to the Minimates line. This will be the first line of toys associated with Robert Kirkman’s hit series not from Todd McFarlane’s company.

After hitting 9 million viewers in the season 2 finale, it’s safe to say that the series is now more in demand than ever before. This first wave of The Walking Dead Minimates will follow the standard Minimate format of three different two packs and a fourth variant two pack featuring a chase version of one of the regular figures.

The Walking Dead Minimates will feature accessories, in addition to the 14 points of articulation, including weapons for the human characters and additional limbs for the zombies.

The first wave will feature:

• Rick with Roamer Zombie
• Herd Zombie Two-Pack
• Dale with Roamer Zombie
• Winter Coat Dale with Roamer Zombie (Rare variant)

Art Asylum has also hinted at an alternate Toys R Us exclusive line as well. Keep your eyes peeled at your local comic shops for the latest in both the Minimates and The Walking Dead when these hit shelves soon.

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One of the most surprising facets of the hit AMC show The Walking Dead is how much of a ratings blockbuster it can be. It is particularly intriguing due to the fact that genre, horror and comic book based shows rarely dominate in the ratings.

When The Walking Dead premiered it smashed all expectations and became the highest rated show in the history of AMC. It actually continued to gain momentum with the season one finale bringing in more viewers, which was in turn also true of the season two premiere.

Falling in line with that very positive trend, the season 2 finale, which aired this past weekend, again broke it’s own record by becoming the highest rated episode in show history. All of this continued succsess despite the very public problems this show had this season is telling of the over all popularity.

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If Oren Peli has made his mark in one place, it’s been the attention that he’s brought to the “found footage” subgenre of horror films. He has made Paramount’s Paranormal Activity a massive, billion dollar franchise. Now he’s taking on a different myth with the legend of the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant.

Here’s the synopsis.

“Chernobyl Diaries” is an original story from Oren Peli, who first terrified audiences with his groundbreaking thriller, “Paranormal Activity.” The film follows a group of six young tourists who, looking to go off the beaten path, hire an “extreme tour” guide.

Ignoring warnings, he takes them into the city of Pripyat, the former home to the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, but a deserted town since the disaster more than 25 years ago. After a brief exploration of the abandoned city, however, the group soon finds themselves stranded, only to discover that they are not alone…

The first trailer is now here, to give you the same chills that worked so well with Paranormal Activity. Check it out after the jump, and see it in theaters on May 25th.

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It looks like two horror icons will be working together on a television adaptation of The Knife Man. The exciting part is the harshly grim nature of the subject matter fits right into what David Cronenberg (Scanners, The Fly) and Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Drag Me To Hell) are both best known for.

The Knife Man follows John Hunter, a man from humble Scottish origins,  who rose to become the most famous anatomist and surgeon of the eighteenth century. In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful and often fatal, Hunter rejected medieval traditions based on ancient Greek Orthodoxy to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiments.

Hunter’s scientific genius led him to become a central figure of the Enlightenment, which led him to be revered by fellow scientists and to become friendly with high society. Unfortunately, Hunter’s experiments required human corpses, and most were not donated. His tireless quest for human corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body-snatching.

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This decent thriller and remake of the Uruguayan film La Casa Muda is more fun than scary — the jumps, false alarms, little girls, bumps in the night, close-ups of the heroine’s boobies, etc. — border on abuse they’re used so often; first it’s spooky, then it’s overused, then it comes back around to being funny, like a joke that goes on and keeps going.

I counted at least three times the heroine hid under something. First a dining table, then a bed, then a pool table while someone ominously walked around and/or spotted and made snatch for her. Three times something crashed off camera and someone else dismissed it.

Twice a character appears to be dead; four times a little girl, ostensibly meant to inspire terror, appears from nowhere; twice does someone mysteriously stuff something down their pants; and a whopping eight-and-a-half times is the heroine surprised by something benign.

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