This week sees the release of several new movies and TV shows, some for the first time ever on Blu-ray. Of the ones coming out this week, we’re excited for Ninja Assasin, new seasons of Hawaii Five-O, Monk, and South Park and the Blu-ray release of The Wizard of Oz 70th Anniversary Edition.

Oh, and there’s that Twilight movie coming out on Blu-ray this week you may have heard of. I think its called New Moon.

Check them out:

Movies

Armored ~ Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne (Blu-ray and DVD)

Astro Boy ~ Nicolas Cage (Blu-ray and DVD)

Bandslam ~ Vanessa Hudgens (Blu-ray and DVD)

Broken Embraces ~ Penélope Cruz (Bl-ray and DVD)

Did You Hear About the Morgans? ~ Sarah Jessica Parker, Hugh Grant (Blu-ray and DVD)

Fallen Angels ~ Leon Lai Ming, Karen Mok (Blu-ray and DVD)

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A little while back, we brought you the first clip from the upcoming rock biopic, The Runaways, in which Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) meet for the very first time. With the film’s release less than a month away, we’re now getting even more stuff to share, including some great clips of the rest of the band.

The film is written and directed by artist Floria Sigismondi, and covers the formation and eventual break up of one of the first all-girl rock bands. The film is sure to get the attention of a younger crowd as it teams Twilight: New Moon’s Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning.

Also along for the ride is Halloween’s Scout Taylor-Compton and Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat. The film looks to fall in the ranks with other great music biopics such as Almost Famous and Ray, while adding a younger appeal.

Check out four brand new clips from The Runaways after the jump, and be sure to catch the “cherry bomb” when it hit’s theaters on April 9th.

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Now that things have finally calmed down for Kristen Stawart after New Moon swept the nation, it’s finally time for fans to get excited for her upcoming biopic about the legendary rock group The Runaways. Stewart takes the lead in the film as Joan Jett, with Dakota Fanning playing Cherie Currie and Scout Taylor-Compton playing Lita Ford, as well as others.

The film is said to be a coming-of-age biopic that takes place when the band was first being formed, and the turmoil that broke the band up in 1979. In a new clip that we just got our hands on, we get a glimpse at the very first introduction between Joan Jett (Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Fanning).

Check out the clip after the jump, and take a look at the brand new poster for the film, courtesy of our pals at MTV Movies Blog. Catch The Runaways in theaters on March 19th.

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While Twilight: New Moon has been sweeping the nation since it’s release last year, and Eclipse already in the can, producers of the franchise realize that they need to look forward to the final book in the series, Breaking Dawn. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to think the films would get this far, as producers are now stumped on how to film some of the outrageous moments of the final book.

For those like myself who have no intention on reading the books, [SPOILERS BE HERE] in the final book Bella becomes pregnant with Edward’s baby, and while pregnant, the baby grows at an accelerated rate. The baby begins to claw it’s way out of the womb, before Edward uses his teeth to perform a makeshift cesarean. They later discover that the baby has psychic powers and werewolf Jacob falls in love with it.

It looks like producers over at Summit finally read Breaking Dawn for the first time and realized that they may be screwed. From the L.A. Times:

Wyck Godfrey, the producer of all the films in the “Twilight” saga, admits that the creative team still doesn’t know how they’ll handle the character in the “Breaking Dawn” movie, but said that the plan is absolutely for the production to go forward — as either one or two installments — with an eye toward beginning to shoot in Vancouver this fall. All three stars are signed for “Breaking Dawn,” he said, meaning that Stewart and Pattinson will be dealing with the joys and woes of interspecies parenting and newly minted heartthrob Taylor Lautner will return as often-shirtless shape-shifter Jacob Black.

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With Twilight: New Moon making over $500 million worldwide, it only makes sense that production studio Summit Entertainment would try as many gimmicks as possible to help boost the next film’s success. It has been announced that the third film in the series, Eclipse will get a simultaneous IMAX release along with the worldwide theatrical release of the film.

The film is set to open on June 30th of next year, which will make it a linchpin for the summer’s blockbuster season. In a recent article in Variety, Summit is already quite pleased with the plan.

“‘Twilight moviegoers will have a whole new way to experience this next installment of the series, with the enhanced image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience putting them in the movie,’ said Richie Fay, Summit’s president of domestic theatrical distribution.”

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The Blind Side pulled off a pretty nifty feat this weekend. After three weeks in wide release, it finally nabbed the top spot at the weekend box office, making about $20 Million and standing at about a $129 Million cumulative total. It is on track to become the highest grossing movie of Sandra Bullock’s career.

In second place, New Moon looks like it is finally cooling off a bit. In its third week, the movie made about $15.7 Million, and dropped another 63% (after a steep drop off of 70% last week.) Domestically, it crossed the $250 Million mark.

Newcomer Brothers made a modest $9.7 Million. Starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhal, and Tobey Maguire, I thought the movie about an Iraq War veteran returning home would fare better. Holdover A Christmas Carol hung in for the number four spot, and made an additional $7.2 Million.  Its cumulative take now stands at about $115 Million. Old Dogs managed to land the fifth spot in the top  five.

Star-laden Everybody’s Fine (Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, and Kate Beckinsdale star) failed to find an audience, and brought in an anemic $4 Million. George Clooney’s critically hailed Up In The Air only played on 15 screens. but made over $1.1 Million, for an impressive $79,000 per screen average.

As far as I know, Paramount is testing the waters for this film, and they should be pleased with the weekend performance. Hopefully they will go ahead and open wide now rather than roll it out slowly. Overall, it was a soft weekend, which is typical of the after-Thanksgiving weekend box office.

With New Moon making over $230 million in the US and nearly $500 million worldwide, it was only a matter of time before the studio decided to try and milk the franchise for even more, and you really can’t blame them. There are two more books left in Stephenie Meyer’s series, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.

The film adaptation for Eclipse was shot alongside New Moon, Donner and Jackson style, and will hit theaters next year. Now it looks like Summit Entertainment will be splitting Breaking Dawn into two separate films. Some may or may not know what goes down in Meyer’s final book, but things get pretty intense.

In nearly 800 pages, the entire story gets tossed on it’s head, with characters falling in love with offspring, and a few more characters dying off. It makes sense to split a book that large into two films, in order to stay true to the source.

This strategy isn’t completely unheard of in Hollywood. The most recent example would be J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter films. The final book was 759 pages long (4 more than Breaking Dawn) and will be split into two films, one to be released in November of 2010, and the second in July of 2011.

Breaking Dawn won’t get a release until well into 2011, but before then Eclipse will be in theaters on June 30, 2010.

This week we will be looking at the weekend box office as well as the 5-day holiday, which includes totals for Wednesday through Sunday. There were some interesting developments regarding the international box office scene as well, so this will be a jumbo sized report. New releases barely made a blip, it was the holdovers that led this weekend to the highest grossing Thanksgiving weekend ever.

The Twilight Saga:  New Moon continued to dominate on the domestic and international side. Playing on over 4,000 screens, it grossed $42.5 Million domestically. Over the five day stretch, it grossed $66 Million. No matter your thoughts on the movie, you have to admit we are witnessing a cultural phenomenon unfold in real-time.  Its domestic cumulative take for 10 days now stands at $230.7 Million.

Nipping at the heels of New Moon was The Blind Side. The movie grossed $40.1 Million for the weekend, and $57.5 Million for the five day, with that weekend total being higher than its opening weekend total of $34 Million. Wide releases rarely see an increase in ticket sales from one weekend to the next so this is unusual. This movie is getting exceptionally positive word of mouth, which is bringing more people into the theaters — a topic we discussed on the most recent edition of The Flickcast podcast.

The Blind Side drove over the $100 Million mark as well. Not too shabby for a family friendly film made for around $30 Million. I’m also starting to hear the “O” word casually mentioned regarding this film, as in Oscar. Sandra Bullock seems to be edging her way into consideration for best actress.

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Last week I mentally predicted that New Moon would come in around the $80 Million mark. Obviously, there is a reason that I am not in the business of box office predictions. New Moon grossed over $140 Million during its opening weekend, and broke a few records along the way. Fangirls (and a few fanboys) showed that they are an emerging force to be reckoned with, as New Moon ($72.7 Million) broke the opening day record previously held by The Dark Knight ($67.2 Million.)

According to Entertainment Weekly, over 80% of the ticket sales were from women, a truly rare occurrence. Although the film was critically drummed, (currently 29% on Rotten Tomatoes) audiences gave it an A- cinemascore, indicating that they were very happy with the film. The film opened on a massive 4,000+ screens, and averaged over $34,900 per screen. There was a drop off from Friday to Saturday of about 40%.

Also of note: New Moon now has the 3rd biggest opening weekend ever behind The Dark Knight and Spiderman 3. Its midnight screening averages on Friday morning garnered over $26M, setting a new record for that. The world box office take was over $258 Million. Director Chris Weitz must feel vindicated after the disastrous box office performance of The Golden Compass, his last directorial effort.

Early estimates show that The Blind Side had an opening weekend gross of $34.5 Million, which is nothing to sneeze at. This marks the best opening ever for Sandra Bullock, just behind last summer’s The Proposal. The film also got a remarkable A+ cinemascore, which means it will start getting some seriously good word of mouth. Expect it to remain in the top ten for a long time.

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Coming off of the astounding numbers from the midnight performance of The Twilight Saga: New Moon (nearly $25 Million) comes a trailer for the next Robert Pattinson/Summit Entertainment project entitled Remember Me.

In the film, Pattinson plays a young New Yorker who is fed up with the glamorous life as son of a rich father (played by Pierce Brosnon, also doing an American accent). From there, the broody Pattinson meets a young quirky girl (Emilie De Ravin), who eats her desert before eating meals. They fall in love, and a love triangle between a werewolf begins live happily.

The film is set to hit theaters on March 12th, 2010, which should be just enough time to start up the marketing machine for the third film in the Twilight series, Eclipse. The success of this film will be interesting to watch, as New Moon is expected to make nearly $100 Million in it’s first weekend.

Does that money come from fans of the Twilight series, or just Pattinson and his glittery skin? Check out the trailer for Remember Me after the jump and decide for yourself.

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