When Universal Studios decided to back out of making three feature films and two limited-run TV series based on Stephen King’s mammoth post-apocalyptic Western The Dark Tower back in July, many thought it was the end of the project. Luckily for fans of the series of books, the partners in the film all pledged they were going to find a way to get a movie made. Now, the films and television series may indeed become a reality thanks to Warner Bros.

According to reports, the company is very close to a deal that will give Ron Howard (Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon) the chance to direct at least the first feature. They are also in talks with Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men) about starring as the gunslinger Roland Deschain.

In the story, Roland Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers and the last of the line of “Arthur Eld”, his world’s analogue of King Arthur. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American old west but is also magical.

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That unfortunate loud thudding noise you just heard was John Carter‘s opening weekend. The mega budget, would be franchise starter came in at a beyond disappointing 30.6 million. Good enough for second place to last week’s winner, The Lorax.

Speaking of this week’s box office champion, The Lorax hauled in an impressive 39.1 million, representing a mild 44% drop from last week’s huge opening numbers. With a massive opening, and a mild drop, the Dr. Suess adaptation is in prime shape to be the break out hit of the spring. It really only has The Hungar Game to compete with, and that audience is similar but far from exact.

Project X held well, and preformed strongly in the wake of a solid opening weekend. This week it was announced that a sequel to the found footage party film was possibly underway, and a continued strong presence at the box office goes a long way in validating that decision.

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The Lorax is the big winner of the box office this weekend, bringing in a massive 70.7 million. This is a monumental number and further proof that the concept of prime seasons being the only way a film can make bank is dead.

We are now in the thick of the ‘Spring Movie Season’ which for the last few years has yielded some of the most successful and surprising films of the years. The staggering numbers for The Lorax also represent a bit of a coming out for Universal’s animation house Illumination Entertainment, which previously won a lot of people over with the very fun Despicable Me.

The impressive haul also marks a new high water mark for Dr. Seuss adaptions, topping the previous high of 55.1 million raked in by How The Grinch Stole Christmas. The film is likely to have a decent run as well with few marquee kids films on the immediate horizon, and mixed reviews that do tend to skew a bit towards positive.

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The story of The Lorax has never felt right to me. Either the Once-ler is the most short-sighted whatsit in the world, next to the Lorax himself (or at least the forest creatures), or the entire tale is a buried parable on the importance of stable property rights. Given Seuss’s general lack of subtlety when making a political point, the latter probably isn’t the case. In any event, why does no one preserve the Truffula trees? If the Once-ler owns the forest, and his business is based on the Truffula trees, why on earth would he practice clear-cutting?

He, like pretty much every other private timber company that owns the forest they log, has an incentive to preserve the forest (unless he’s renting it from the creatures, but that doesn’t seem to be the case) – clearly the Once-ler needed to fire his business planner. Or, once the land had been deforested, should have sold it and the seed to another logging concern.

Heck, they’d probably seek him out, since Truffula trees are a hot commodity, and there’s a lot of Thneedians; we already know that one of the characters is a budding entrepreneur, it’d be a lot easier and a lot more profitable for him to replant the forest than find a way to sell air. Evidently the Thneedians don’t understand marginal utility, but that’s okay, what gets me is how Seuss (and the movie) stacks the odds in his favor.

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If you like this sort of thing then you will be excited to see the first teaser for Universal’s Despicable Me 2 has arrived. The first one was fun and this looks to be more of the same.

Plus, the first one made over $525 Million globally, so you should have expected to see a sequel as soon as possible. It’s only going to take about two years. Look for Despicable Me 2 to hit theaters on July 3, 2013.

Yeah, that’s more than a year away but things tend to get started earlier in the process these days to help build that important “brand awareness.” Although, with all that money in the bank from the first movie, the awareness is already pretty high.

Still, you can never be too careful these days. Enjoy.

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I’m not sure if the world needed a movie to put those damn hippies in their place, or needed to introduce us to the culture of nude wine-making, or why the name is Wanderlust when the characters stay in one place, but no matter.

Paul Rudd plays George, a 30/40-something someone (this is where I’d mention his job, but it’s never made clear), and his wife Linda (Jennifer Aniston), another 30/40 with a sordid and varied resume; her latest occupation is hocking a documentary she made about penguins with testicular cancer to HBO. They usefully inform her that it could use more sex, violence, and vampires.

George and Linda have recently purchased an expensive and tiny apartment in Manhattan, only for George to lose his job and Linda to, predictably, get tossed out of HBO for her lousy doc. So, unemployed and destitute in New York, they high-tail it to Georgia to stay with George’s brother Rick (Ken Marino). On the way, they stop overnight at Elysium Fields, an ostensible bed and breakfast, but really a hippie commune run by well-aged toker Carvin (Alan Alda), and featuring nudist wine-maker Wayne (Joe Lo Truglio), spacey moonchild Kathy (Kerri Kenney-Silver), eye candy Eva (Malin Akerman) and all-around douche Seth (Justin Theroux).

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The American Pie franchise lives in two planes of existence. For some the movies represent a loud and raunchy franchise that has slipped from the main stream and lives in the proverbial cinematic dumpster. For the rest of you American Pie represents something much more, and those direct to DVD sequels don’t even register in your mind.

As far as the theatrical films are concerned, the franchise has been about growth and the slow onset of adulthood. We have been with Jim and his friends through some of his most important life milestones, and we as an audience have grown up with them.

So the impending release of American Reunion has a chance to really be something special for an entire generation of film fans, and thankfully this most recent trailer has amped the nostalgia levels all the way to eleven.

Of course reckless nostalgia can be a really bad thing, and that will be the one test the movie will have to pass to be any good. However, the high school reunion plot should provide an easy in for a fond looking back tone. So long as they do not over milk it, odds are we will be in for a pleasant treat this April.

Check out the new trailer after the jump.

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This week’s War Movie Monday pick is Universal Picture’s first ever Academy Award winning film for Best Picture and for Best Director (Lewis Milestone), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). The film stars Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Ben Alexander, and Slim Summerville.

All Quiet on the Western Front has been hailed as the greatest anti-war film of all time. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel of the same name, the film follows a group of young men who witness the horrors of World War I after being convinced by their schoolmaster that duty to one’s country and to shed blood in defense of the fatherland is a noble deed.

The small group of young men quickly gets their first dose of military life after they endure basic training at the hands of their drill instructor Himmelstoss (Wray) who is the World War I equivalent of what R. Lee Ermey was for Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. After just only a few short weeks of basic training, the young men are sent off to the front and are plunged head first into combat.

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It’s been almost a year since we first brought you news of Jeremy Renner starring in the fourth film in the ‘Bourne’ franchise. All that time we’ve wondered how he would do as the new Bourne and if he would be able to make us forget about Matt Damon who, let’s face it, did a pretty good job.

Well, pretty much all of our questions have been answered now with the first trailer for The Bourne Legacy being released today. In it we see Renner in action as the new ‘Bourne’ (actually, as a character names Aaron Cross, but who’s counting?) and also get a better idea of where his character comes from.

We also get more of an idea who will be accompanying him on his journey. Fortunately, many of our favorite supporting players also make an appearance. All of it serves to make this trailer, and the upcoming film, look pretty darn good.

As to the question of Renner helping us to forget about Matt Damon, the answer to that is “Matt Damon who?” Plus, the movie has Rachel Weisz in it so we’re going no matter what.

Look for The Bourne Legacy, directed by Tony Gilroy and featuring Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Joan Alley and Albert Finney, to hit theaters on August 8. Check out the trailer after the break.

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Those who live in Los Angeles or the surrounding areas have probably been to the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park at least once in their lives. Whether it was for the Haunted Halloween Nights last month, or to check out the fun and exciting rides and attractions, most people (locals in particular) probably think they’ve seen all the park has to offer. They’re wrong.

In just 4 months, Universal Studios Hollywood will unveil their new Transformers ride, which is only one of the huge attractions coming to the park. Also coming soon, you can see a smaller version of “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter”, which is currently thrilling attendees at Universal Studios in Orlando.

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Most of the fanboys and fangirls will get plenty of Kristen Stewart next week with the first half of Twilight: Breaking Dawn, but for those who want to see her in less of a”damsel in distress” capacity and more of a strong heroine type, you’ve got the upcoming film Snow White and the Huntsman.

The film is going to highlight a bit more of a mythical take on the classic Snow White fairytale, which will be nice, seeing as how this is one of three Snow White incarnations we’re getting now, including ABC’s Once Upon a Time series and Relativity Media’s Mirror Mirror.

So you’re caught up to speed on this prett-people-filled flick, here’s the synopsis.

In the epic action-adventure Snow White and the Huntsman, Kristen Stewart plays the only person in the land fairer than the evil queen (Charlize Theron) out to destroy her. But what the wicked ruler never imagined is that the young woman threatening her reign has been training in the art of war with a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) dispatched to kill her.

You can see this trailer embiggened this weekend as it’s attached to reels of Immortals, or just catch it after the jump. Snow White and the Huntsman is set to hit theaters June 1st.

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The best performance in Tower Heist comes not from its most bankable stars Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, rather it’s the nervously underplayed schlub Mr. Fitzhugh, an out-of-work stockbroker played by Matthew Broderick, who’s channeling parts of Bob Newhart and parts of Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion. Director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) tends toward broad comedy, but the funniest bits by far are Broderick’s subtle squeaks of concern.

There’s a scene early on when he’s being evicted from his apartment. The living room is completely empty save for two tents. Broderick explains to the building manager that he’s sold all the furniture. “I told the kids we’re going green,” he gives a resigned shrug, “my kids aren’t very smart.”

The manager is Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller), who’s been working at the building for years and is the golden boy of its owner Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a Madoff-inspired Wall Streeter who, we learn, has taken the employees’ pensions and either stolen them or made some really bad investments (the movie never really makes it clear, but since he’s rich, he’s automatically bad, I guess). The Feds, led by the sexy Claire Denham (Tea Leoni) naturally swoop in to cart off Shaw for some SEC violations, leaving little hope for the tower employees to recover their life savings.

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