Fans of excellent animated superhero adventures are in for a treat today as Warner Bros. is releasing the next installment of their DC Universe animated original movie series. This one, called Superman: Unbound, looks to be great fun and we’ve got some preview images and a video clip to share with you today.

The movie “is based on the Geoff Johns/Gary Frank 2008 release Superman: Brainiac and features the Man of Steel aptly handling day-to-day crime while helping acclimate Supergirl to Earth’s customs and managing Lois Lane’s expectations for their relationship. Personal issues take a back seat when the horrific force responsible for the destruction of Krypton – Brainiac – begins his descent upon Earth.

Brainiac has crossed the universe, collecting cities from interesting planets – including Supergirl’s home city of Kandor – and now the all-knowing, ever-improving android has his sights fixed on Metropolis. Superman must summon all of his physical and intellectual resources to protect his city, the love of his life and his newly-arrived cousin.”

Superman: Unbound arrives today on Blu-ray, DVD, On Demand. Check out the preview and all the pics after the jump.

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This looks pretty fun. Look for the movie to arrive on June 21. Meantime, enjoy the trailer below.

If you get the clumsy baseball references in the title than you get that this weekend was won by 42. The Jackie Robinson biopic earned an estimated $27+ Million, giving the film one of the strongest baseball movie debuts of all time. The film took advantage of perfect timing and well delivered advertising to get out of the gate strong. Despite the impending the parade of competition, the new baseball season should continue to allow the film to stay relevant for a few more weeks than it really should.

Bombing into second place is Scary Movie 5 which managed to pull in $15 Million, and providing tangible proof that no one cares about the spoof franchise any more. If any one is a victor in this instance it would be the Wayne’s Brothers. They conjured up the franchise with the first brilliant film, but eventually parted ways by the third film. The brothers Waynes got back into the horror spoof game earlier this year with A Haunted House, which shines an even larger light on Scary Movie 5‘s failure.

Sticking in third place is the newest hit from Dreamworks, The Croods. Easing a very light 36%, the film brought in another $13 Million giving the film a total haul of nearly $150 million, which is huge for a new animated IP from a studio with a mixed track record. There still remains scant children entertainment competition in the upcoming Box Office calender, so the film should still perform well in the coming weeks.

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This weekend had the distinct feel of a throwback celebration with a Reboot-make, a re-release and a sequel to an 80′s iconic franchise inhabiting three of the top four positions.

Coming in at number one, with $26 Million, was the incredibly well advertised Evil Dead which played very strongly for an extreme horror film aimed squarely at a specific niche. Due, in part, to that specific audience target, the film’s reviews have been mixed and the word of mouth has been less than stellar on the whole. Still, the film plays very well to its target audience and with a big weekend under its belt will go into the books as a big win for all involved.

The next two spots ended up being an estimated tie between last weekend’s top two films. G.I. Joe: Retaliation and The Croods. Both brought in an estimated $21.1 Million, with the tie break going to last weeks number 1 because the Rock is in that one and the main event at Wrestlemania this weekend.

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There used to be a rule in feature animation. PIXAR was the king of quality and they had a perfect record, Dreamworks had Shrek and a whole train load of Disney and PIXAR knockoffs with star-studded casts. Most of the times those films were turds, and provided a sharp contrast that might have aided in PIXAR’s incredible win streak by providing such horrible comparison.

Well that was the past boys and girls, because the quality gap has been dwindling faster than The Croods just past 100 Million at the international box office. Dreamworks newest animated feature had a solid-to-great opening weekend bringing in over $44 Million. Which puts the film on par with other recent Dreamworks its How to Train Your Dragon and Megamind.

A big weekend was probably expected for The Croods, however, the weekend was not without its shocker. The action flick Olympus Has Fallen surpassed even the most generous of projections to bring in over $30 Million over the weekend. Which is a huge win for an action-centirc film in a year where so many have died horrible box office deaths.

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Silly, silly fun. There’s not much of a plot — The Croods are a family of cave-dwellers whose home is threatened by earthquakes; the dad Grug (Nicolas Cage) is over protective; the daughter Eep (Emma Stone) is curious; they meet up with a smarty-pants guy named Guy (Ryan Reynolds) who teaches them the secret of fire, among other things; and they set off to find a new home.

Grug, whose mantra is “Always be afraid!” immediately dislikes Guy while Eep is immediately attracted to him, and in the background are the rest of the Croods, who have their moments but are played for jokes; maybe they could have been something more, but before they can, the earthquake chases them off. There’s two running gags that persist the entire film, and there’s some ugly character design, but those are the biggest flaws.

And they’re easy to overlook because everything else looks so good. Granted, this doesn’t need to be in 3-D, as the lusciousness of the backgrounds, from crags to forests to plains to dried-out oceans encircle and captivate on their own, without added gimmicks. More fun is the creature designs, which must have had even the animators laughing. Each one is a Darwinian nightmare, conjured by a gaggle of mad scientists.

There’s flying turtles, land-whales, two lemurs attached by a single tail and a flock of birds that look like toucans, though their mouths open right below the eyes. Cute at first, then they swarm on one of the land-whales and pick it clean.

Despite that, the emphasis is clearly on the visuals, as are the gags. The talents of Cage, Stone, and Reynolds, as well as Cloris Leachman and Catherine Keener, aren’t necessary. None stand out, but then there’s little the film requires of them. Of course we have the requisite familial tensions and affirmations of love between those who need to hear it — they aren’t earned and slow the movie down considerably whenever they’re brought up, but they’re not often and don’t last long.

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We like quirky, and so should you. It’s fun and often ends up giving us some insight into the human condition while also being entertaining. That’s a good thing.

And speaking of quirky (see what we did there?) IFC has a new show premiering tomorrow night (Friday) called Out There and we gotta say, it looks pretty interesting — and yes, quirky.

We’ve got a little preview for the series after the jump, so be sure and check that out. Also, in case you were wondering, here’s some info about the show itself:

The ten episode series chronicles the socially awkward Chad Stevens and his best friend, Chris Novak. Living in the small town of Holford in the middle of nowhere, the boys wander the surreal, bleak landscape waiting out their last few years of high school and discovering that growing up is weird to do.

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Take the billion download getting smash Gangnam Style. Get it good and drunk. Then put it in a room with the cougar, A-Ha’s Take On Me. What do you get? For those of you who wonder what it’d look like if the catchy pop anthem that most people only know the chorus of since the lyrics are primarily in Korean and animated it, here you go.

2012 showed us the power of viral video when PSY’s Gangnam Style garnered a billion views in only about six months time. It also made him a sought after pop sensation. Say what you will about the song, you’ve already heard it more times than you can count. Now, others are at least able to capitalize on its popularity like YouTube flipbook animator etoilec1. While he has already earned himself over four and a half million views on his channel, his Gangnam Style video has already hit almost 200,000 in just a week’s time.

Take a peek at the video below and check out the rest of etoliec1′s work on his channel here.

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It was a strong weekend for Wreck-It Ralph as the Disney animated feature brought in half a million during its opening frame. However, before we get to that some house cleaning from last week.

We missed out on an opportunity to celebrate Argo‘s rise to the number one spot last weekend. Ben Affleck’s film had a solid debut, but it was on the low-end of expectations. In the weeks following, Argo has been holding incredibly well for a movie that is playing on so many screens. Culminating in finally taking the top spot last weekend in an otherwise weak weekend.

How did it do this weekend? Well since it wasn’t number one again you will have to wait to find out. The winner this weekend was Wreck-It Ralph, another Disney animated feature that proves there is still some magic left in the mouse house proper. Coming out with nearly $50 Million, Ralph managed one of Disney’s biggest animated openings. Of course even those lofty numbers pale in comparison to the PIXAR average, but from the studios that brought us Home on the Range, this is great business.

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If you like this sort of thing (animated movie sequels, that is) then you will probably be excited to see the latest trailer for Universal’s Despicable Me 2. Universal opens its sequel on July 3, 2013.

Steve Carell is back in the lead with Kristen Wiig and Al Pacino joining him in the voice cast. The original was a big hit, grossing $543M worldwide in 2010 and spawning an Orlando theme park ride Despicable Me Minion Mayhem, so you shouldn’t be at all surprised to see a sequel on the way.

Check out the latest trailer after the break.

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Like for many people who are alive on this earth, the Pythons exist in a place of great regard here at The Flickcast. Their films, TV shows and live performances are the stuff of comedy legend, and even after the team broke up all of the troupe have gone on to do great things. Well all except that lazy bum Graham Chapman.

Finally, it seems, Chapman has decided to dust himself off and get his act together, starring in an animated version of his autobiographical-ish autobiography, A Liar’s Autobiography. Which brings together most of the Python’s to provide voices for the colorful people who probably littered Graham’s life.

Eric Idle, who apparently also has a fear of zombies, does not seem to play a part in this forthcoming animated opus. However, he wrote the afterward for the novelization of this movie back in 1991, so he gets a pass.

You can take a good long look at the trailer for the film that dares to combine fourteen animation studios and up to five Pythons, the number changes depending on how you count the deceased, after the jump.

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It is weekends like this that really tempt me to just copy and paste last week’s report. The top 3 remained the same and no new movie could do better than seventh place in another mundane, ho-hum late summer weekend.

The top of the charts was once again highlighted by the under-performing Expendables 2 which brought in another $13+ Million. In retrospect, even though the film is not doing the same business of its R-Rated predecessor, taking the top spot two weeks in a row might be enough of a win to help get a third go-round green lit.

Once again The Bourne Legacy came in second, even still it is on pace to be the lowest performer of the franchise. Of course if you look at it in the wrong context that sounds bad, but when you realize all the factors working against the film it actually did about as well as any one should have reasonably expected.

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Last week I said this was not going to be a big weekend, even with three new films nothing really had good Box Office potential. Even though the final tallies proved that this was indeed a lack luster weekend no film actually had a horrible haul.

The ‘big’ winner of the weekend was The Expendables 2, the sequel to the action extravaganza that dared to load as many action superstars as possible into about an hour and a half ‘splosion. The sequel was probably originally expected to do bigger business than it’s predecessor with its bigger cast and PG-13 rating.

Somewhere along the way expectations tempered and the film’s $28.7 Million take is probably close enough to expectations. Even though it is near expectations, it was still on the lower end, so at this point word of mouth has to be the saving grace for this testosterone fueled franchise.

Second place went to The Bourne Legacy which brought in just over $17 Million. Its drop was on par with the previous films in the franchise, but because the first weekend was weaker the film still lags. That said for a pretty big overhaul, the film has performed pretty well, and there is clearly life left in this series.

Scrapping into third place is the stop motion animated film ParaNorman. The supernatural animated picture hit the stop motion animated glass ceiling with a decent $14 Million which is not great, but hardly bad either. It is nice that the film is playing to some business, but it would have been nice to see the film breakout a little more.

Next weekend sees yet another ‘meh’ weekend at the Box Office, in fact we are starting to see the beginning of the end of summer doldrums where tent pole type films with little box office potential or momentum get a release and bang around for the left overs of the summer season pie.

Yahoo! has released the first ten episodes of Tom Hanks’ new animated, sci-fi series, Electric City. Created by Hanks, the series is accompanied by digital, social, mobile, and gaming media opportunities meant to help immerse and engage viewers. What does that mean exactly? Well, it means games on the site and apps available for mobile devices tie into the series, a 3D map of Electric City is provided, behind-the-scenes videos are available, and much more.

The plot is as follows:

The world as we know it has ended and out of the rubble, the Electric City stands as a symbol of peace and security. Yet under the veneer of order lies a world full of secrets and violence.  Secret police, back-alley dealings, daring chases, and murder all find a home in the “Electric City.” Through the lens of a functioning, yet dystopian metropolis, “Electric City” touches upon relevant global issues and themes including energy consumption, freedom of information, crime and punishment and more. 

Lending their voices to this dystopian world are Hanks,  Jeanne Tripplehorn , Holland Taylor , Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Antoon, and more.  The first ten episodes, premiered on July 17, with the remaining episodes being released on July 18 and July 19.  Experience Electric City for yourself at the official website.

John Lasseter once said that no sequel would ever be made at PIXAR with out the original director’s involvement or explicit permission. It is that mandate that has caused the biggest no brainer at PIXAR, Incredibles 2, to not happen… yet.

I say yet because it almost seems as if PIXAR is now dead set on returning to all of its former glorys. Deadline is reporting that Finding Nemo Director Andrew Stanton might be returning to the ocean for another Nemo based adventure:

[Deadline has] been hearing for months that he would come aboard to direct the sequel to Disney-based Pixar‘s Finding Nemo, with the idea that Disney would give him another shot behind the camera on a live-action film.

Finding Nemo is my favorite of the PIXAR catalog and often ranks among my top five favorite films of all time. So I like to think I can speak with some authority on the film, and a sequel is kind of baffling to me.

I have immense trust in Andrew Stanton, and I don’t hate the concept of a return to the sea, it is just hard for me to see the scenario for a return. Nemo ends in kind of a perfect place, and given the character growth in the film, another adventure to find Nemo would seem rather cheap.

It is said that Stanton has a concept that Disney loves, so perhaps he cracked that code. Or maybe he is just returning to the Nemo ‘universe’ and has a whole different type of story to tell. We can only wait and see.