Usually January is a wasteland for the box office, dominated by award bait films, studio dump offs and the sputtering remains of the Christmas blockbusters. This week, one new film braved these difficult days and came out with very respectable numbers.

The Devil Inside debuted on over twenty-two hundred screens, bringing in an estimated thirty-four and a half million dollars. The satanic possession horror film raked in the 3rd highest January opening ever behind Cloverfield and  the special edition re-release of Star Wars back in ’97. The movie had a production budget of only one million, which makes this weekend a pretty big win for Paramount.

Coming in second place this weekend was Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol , which continued it’s very impressive run. With another twenty million, it now is on pace to threaten Mission: Impossible 2 as the series’ top grosser. The movie has had several weeks of really solid holds and is proving to be the big winner of the crowded holiday season.

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If there’s one thing modern action films lack that their predecessors of the 80s and 90s had it’s gratuitous chick fights. They may have been a bit tacky at times, but they please about 90% of the audience going to see the film, and sometimes, just sometimes, they were even more violent than the rest of the film.

That’s exactly what we’re getting in this brand new clip from the upcoming action blockbuster Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol. Sure, the ladies will get Simon Pegg, Tom Cruise, and Jeremy Renner. But for the fellas, we’ve got Déjà Vu starlet Paula Patton kicking some serious ass.

Take a look at the intense fight sequence after the jump, and be sure to catch Cruise pass the proverbial torch over to Jeremy Renner in Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol, in theaters and IMAX on December 21st.

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Retro is all the rage these days. Whether it’s music, clothes, or technology, the times, they aren’t a-changin’ as we grow more nostalgic about the days of yore. That’s why it’s even cooler to see classic TV tropes make their way onto the newest form of entertainment and storytelling: web series.

This is where DANGER 5 comes in. The brand new web miniseries is everything we loved (and laughed about) from shows like The Avengers, Mission: Impossible, Thunderbirds are GO! and several other classically campy series from the 60′s. Here’s a brief synopsis.

Set in a bizarre, 1960′s inspired version of World War II, action comedy series DANGER 5 follows a team of five spies on a mission to kill Adlolf Hitler.

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Even though the title sounds suspiciously like a video game, the lastest installment in Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible franchise, known as Ghost Protocol, is arriving soon.

Previously, we brought you the first trailer for the film, which we thought looked pretty darn good. Now, we’ve got a clip from it to share with you today.

We won’t do much to set this one up. Suffice it to say you don’t really need any explanation about what’s going on. It should be pretty obvious.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is directed by Brad Bird. It co-stars Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Vladimir Mashkov, Michael Nyqvist, Josh Holloway, Simon Pegg, Lea Seydoux and Anil Kapoor.

Check out the clip after the break. Look for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol to arrive in theaters on December 16.

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Even though Tom Cruise occasionally does some unusual stuff in his personal and public life, that doesn’t mean his movies aren’t often entertaining. Let’s face it, he’s had some pretty good ones over the years from Risky Business and Taps to Top Gun, Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men and more.

So, when Cruise has another movie coming out soon, we tend to take notice. This time around it’s the fourth installment of the Mission Impossible franchise subtitled Ghost Protocol.

Of course, now that there’s new trailer for the film, courtesy of Yahoo Movies, we’ve got it for you to check out right here. The trailer is also currently playing in front of Transformers: Dark of the Moon but since you probably not dumb enough to go see that flick, we’ll save you the trouble.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is directed by Brad Bird and hits theaters on December 16th. The film co-stars Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Vladimir Mashkov, Michael Nyqvist, Josh Holloway, Simon Pegg, Lea Seydoux and Anil Kapoor.

Click through for the trailer and enjoy.

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While things are a bit shaky in terms of what we’re calling the newest Mission: Impossible film, one thing is for sure: the cast is going to kick ass. Hawkeye himself, Jeremy Renner joined the cast a few weeks back, which was already headed by returning Cruise, Ving Rhames, and Simon Pegg, and the newly added Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q.

Now, a brand new face of awesome is jumping in, as LOST star Josh Holloway has been signed to join Cruise’s new team of super spies. This marks Holloway’s first major role since leaving the island, or dying, or staying in purgatory, or however you want to interpret that ending.

Between this cast, Incredibles director Brad Bird taking the helm, and J.J. Abrams supplying the story, there is very little room for this film to fail, or at least we hope. Megastar Cruise even took a pay cut in order for this film to get made, so it has that going for it.

The movie is set to go into production before the end of the year, with a release date of December 16th, 2011. Expect to hear plenty more news coming out of this camp in the coming weeks as we lead up to principal photography.

Tom Cruise has gotten a pretty bad rap in the past few years. Ever since his epic “couch jumping” episode on Oprah, he’s been labeled by some as, well, crazy. Most people in the public eye can take that information two different ways. They could choose to be sticks in the mud and hate the media, or they could embrace it in a film, making light of their eccentricities.

Luckily, as fans of comedy and action, we are treated to the latter with Tom Cruise’s newest upcoming flick, Knight and Day. The film is basically Tom Cruise playing his typical Mission: Impossible super spy when he’s blacklisted and forced to take to a civilian (Cameron Diaz) for assistance in staying alive.

In the newest international trailer for the film, they focus more on the “cover story” that the government forges, in which Cruise’s character has gone crazy. After his epic cameo in Tropic Thunder, there’s no doubt that Cruise is willing to take a few shots at himself, or the characters he’s played.

Check out the trailer after the jump, and catch Knight and Day in theaters on June 25th.

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This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are back and celebrate a little milestone: the 50th episode. This week sees a slew of new topics including Clash of the Titans, the iPad, The Walking Dead casting, Smallville and Superman rumors, what it means to be a movie star and the inexplicable success of Sam Worthington.

Chris and Matt also made some picks this week, as they usually do, including Matt’s pick of  The Lord of the Rings Trilogy on Blu-ray and Chris’ pick of the ABC show Castle starring Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic.

Finally, in this episode Chris and Matt introduced a new feature, The Flickcast Mailbag. If you have questions for our team about pretty much anything, shoot an email to mailbag [at] the flickcast dot com and if we answer your question on the air, you can win a great prize. This week it’s a code to download the COD Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Pack for free. Cool right?

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

While Tom Cruise has been working like a fiend to pick a director for the upcoming sequel to his popular Mission Impossible franchise, he’s also got a new film coming out where he plays an international action spy. That’s called range.

While the characters may seem a bit played out, the premise is somewhat fresh. From 20th Century Fox:

An action-comedy centered on a fugitive couple (Cruise and Diaz) on a glamorous and sometimes deadly adventure where nothing and no one – even themselves – are what they seem. Amid shifting alliances and unexpected betrayals, they race across the globe, with their survival ultimately hinging on the battle of truth vs. trust.

The film also stars Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Lost’s Maggie Grace, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Marc Blucas. Check out the newest trailer after the jump. Knight and Day hits theaters on June 25th.

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Tom Cruise and company were all pretty quick to jump onto and set a release date for the upcoming fourth installment of the Mission Impossible franchise. The only problem was that the film had yet to sign a director. Who could possibly take the helm after sci-fi meganerd J.J. Abrams shared his vision in the last film. Well, according to THR, the studio’s number one choice is Incredibles director Brad Bird.

On the surface, Bird may seem a peculiar choice. The writer-director wrote and directed 1999′s “The Iron Giant” and 2004′s “The Incredibles” as well as 2007′s “Ratatouille” (the latter two earned Oscars for best animated picture), but he has never helmed a live-action feature.

On the other hand, nabbing Bird would be inspired. He is praised for his storytelling skills and is known for his strengths in staging thrilling and intricate action set-pieces as well as fusing the action with large dollops of heart and emotion.

Bird is just one name thrown into the hat along with others such as Edgar Wright and Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer. Brad seems the be at least Cruise’s top pick in the list.

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While he may look to be beating a dead horse with the upcoming spy comedy Day & Knight, Tom Cruise has announced that he’s returning to the Mission Impossible franchise for a fourth film. From Variety:

Cruise and J.J. Abrams — who co-wrote the “Mission: Impossible III” screenplay — will produce from a screenplay by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, a writing duo hired last summer to pen the script from an idea hatched by Cruise and Abrams. Appelbaum and Nemec spent four seasons with Abrams as co-exec producers of “Alias.”

Paramount made the announcement yesterday, along with news that the film’s planed release date will be next Memorial Day. This will put the film out on the same weekend as the planned Hangover sequel, and on the second weekend of the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean film.

The previous Mission Impossible films pulled in just over $1.3 billion, but Cruise’s cost was far too high for Paramount to continue any further films at the time. It seems, with this news, that the studio has decided Cruise is well worth the money spent.

With the film set to hit theaters in just 15 months, you can expect to see casting and script details to leak online by the droves in the coming weeks. We’ll be sure to keep you updated with any information as it comes our way.

According to an article in Variety, all systems seem to be go for Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams to team up once again for another round of Mission Impossible. What was once seemingly never going to happen is, at least according to the article, being put together right now over at Paramount.

According to the article, Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams have agreed to co-produce the sequel and are aiming for a release sometime in 2011. This project should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Cruise’s treatment by Paramount and the abrupt termination of his 14 year deal with the studio in August of 2006. The rift created by the summary nature of Cruise’s terminated deal led to the actor becoming the head of United Artists and basically thumbing his nose at Viacom’s CEO Sumner Redstone.

Now, it seems all is forgiven and Cruise is prepared, at least for this project, to return to the studio where he’s spent so much time and made so much money. There’s no word yet on if Cruise will star in the film, if Abrams will direct or the potential story. However, it would probably make sense that Cruise at least would take on the Ethan Hunt role one more time while he still can.

No matter what, production on Mission Impossible IV will have to take a back seat to Cruise and Abrams other commitments. Abrams is, of course, currently responsible for the Star Trek franchise and its next film and Cruise is busy working on a movie for director James Mangold. So, it seems we will get another Mission Impossible film but just not anytime soon.

And honestly, I would rather Abrams spend his time working on another Star Trek movie anyway. I loved it and can’t wait for another. As for Tom Cruise, he can do whatever he wants — as long as he doesn’t interfere with the next Star Trek movie. Other than that, its all good.