In a weekend that had tons of free-range beasts, moviegoers had the choice of watching Sam Worthington hang out on a ledge, Vampires take on genetic Werewolves, or Liam Neeson just take on wolves. And it looks like the man and his “particular set of skills” continued to dominate the hearts of men and women everywhere, by bringing The Grey to the #1 spot this weekend with an estimated $20 Million.

Close behind the dramatic man vs. beast tale was the fourth installment of the “Kate Beckinsale in leather” films known as Underworld. Not a terrible second weekend for the flick, as it raked in $12 Million, just halfing its take from last weekend. In the third spot this weekend, Katherine Heigl continues to make mens’ stomaches turn with her One for the Money ”comedy”, which only made $11.7 Million this weekend.

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Texas Killing Fields is a strong, straightforward crime thriller which tells the story of three cops running the gauntlet in an attempt to solve two brutal crimes. But the film is particularly notable for its haunting tone and superlative acting.

Director Ami Canaan Mann does everything she can to give the movie an infectious gloom, an impressive imitation of the sprawling claustrophobia specific to Southern poverty. Mann, daughter of the legendary Michael Mann (who also co-produced the film), makes a lot of smart choices here, but none more crucial than the cast.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Sam Worthington bring their own unique intensity to their natural good cop/bad cop relationship, and a pre-Oscar nomination Jessica Chastain (The Help) brings a fiery quality to a supporting role. As usual, the 12-year-old Chloe Moretz shows remarkably advanced nuance for an actor her age.

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Fans everywhere who were grinding their teeth during the reboot of the classic Clash of the Titans back in 2010 will finally have another reason to have the studio system as the trailer for Wrath of the Titans has hit the web.

Sure, it had a bad wrap the moment we found out a reboot to such a classic was even getting made, but the trailer doesn’t do much to show us otherwise. Here’s the unnecessarily massive synopsis, so you don’t get lost.

A decade after his heroic defeat of the monstrous Kraken, Perseus (Worthington) –the demigod son of Zeus (Neeson)–is attempting to live a quieter life as a village fisherman and the sole parent to his 10-year old son, Helius. Meanwhile, a struggle for supremacy rages between the gods and the Titans.

Dangerously weakened by humanity’s lack of devotion, the gods are losing control of the imprisoned Titans and their ferocious leader, Kronos, father of the long-ruling brothers Zeus, Hades (Fiennes) and Poseidon (Danny Huston). The triumvirate had overthrown their powerful father long ago, leaving him to rot in the gloomy abyss of Tartarus, a dungeon that lies deep within the cavernous underworld.

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Those who saw French director Louis Leterrier’s remake of the classic film Clash of the Titans were split straight down the middle on those who absolutely loved the film, and those who thought it was total schlock.

Not unlike the response to the original film, this has left a bad taste in the mouths of fans, to the point where talk of a sequel would only anger them. That’s where this bit of news should change some folks’ minds. It seems that the Brothers Warner will be planning two sequels to the film. The good news? Good writers are on the way. From THR.

Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson, who co-wrote Wrath’s screenplay with Steven Knight and also share story credit with Greg Berlanti, have been enlisted to develop and write a treatment for the threequel, which would continue the adventures of Perseus, played by Sam Worthington.

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Last year, the UK got a taste of what it would be like if a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost all lived together in an apartment. Some of the smart folks at Syfy got wind of this and have decided to adapt the original series for us here in the states, bringing some Being Human for the very first time.

For those who don’t know, the series follows the lives of Aidan, a 200 year old vampire, Sally, a ghost who’s trapped in the house she was killed in, and Josh, a young man who was turned into a werewolf nearly 2 years ago. The three befriend each other and live together in a house hoping to move past their supernatural afflictions and cling to what little humanity they have left.

Aside from the new cast, one major element changed from the BBC series is the addition of the character Bishop, played by Mark Pellegrino, who most know as the mysterious Jacob from ABC’s Lost. Bishop’s role is explained, as well as the rest of the series, in the sneak peek after the jump.

Catch Syfy’s Being Human on Monday, January 17th at 9/8c.

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Not that this news will do much to silence the haters but James Cameron has reportedly agreed to make sequels to Avatar his next two films. Cameron will begin working on the scripts for the two films early next year.

According the the article, the director hopes to start production later in 2011 but won’t make the decision on if he will film both sequels simultaneously until after he completes work on the scripts. Obviously, Cameron is pretty excited about the prospect of returning to the world of Pandora.

“In the second and third films, which will be self-contained stories that also fulfill a greater story arc, we will not back off the throttle of ‘Avatar’s’ visual and emotional horsepower, and will continue to explore its themes and characters, which touched the hearts of audiences in all cultures around the world,” Cameron said. “I’m looking forward to returning to Pandora, a world where our imaginations can run wild.”

With worldwide box office of over $2.8 Billion, it’s hard to argue with Avatar‘s mass appeal and sequels were to be expected. With the technology pretty much perfected now and the visuals of the world established, we can only hope that Cameron will spend a bit more time on the characters and story (And Sam Worthington’s “acting”) with these next two films, which will hopefully make them a bit easier to watch.

Currently, Cameron and Fox are looking at a December 2014 release for Avatar 2 and a December 2015 release for Avatar 3. Of course, we’ll bring you all the news on these sequels as it comes to us.

Even though his film Battle: Los Angeles hasn’t even been released yet, director Jonathan Liebesman has apparently already lined up his next job. That job? Director of the sequel to Clash of the Titans which, at this moment, is cleverly entitled Clash of the Titans 2.

According to Deadline, the director was in talks for the film over the weekend and through yesterday but those negotiations stalled because of, you guessed it, money. But now it seems all is well and they’ve been able to reach an agreement to make a sequel to a film that most people, including a majority of critics, had nothing but bad things to say about.

Unfortunately, the sequel was inevitable considering both of the film’s leads (Sam Worthington and Gemma Aterton) survived and the movie, in spite of its negative reviews and terrible conversion to 3D, made a crap load of money worldwide. I’m hopeful the studio will do better this time and am encouraged by at least one other fact that’s come out during this dealmaking process: They will shoot the film in 3D instead of converting it later.

That alone should improve things considerably. Now if we could just do something about the lame story, wooden acting and uninspired direction . . . then we’d really be onto something. Too snarky? I can never tell.

In the rush to get things ready for our coverage of Comic-Con we occasionally miss information that we should have shared. One such instance is news from our fiends at Radical Publishing who will have a high profile panel and presence in San Diego this year.

A couple days ago they released their full schedule of events and we want to make sure and bring it to you before the Con starts in earnest tomorrow. Some of the guests for their panel include a veritable who’s who of comic book writers and artists including Jimmy Palmiotti, Rick Remender, Matt Cirulnick, David Hine and Keith Arem.

Plus, their panel will be moderated by non-other than Harry Knowles and they will have special appearances by Wesley Snipes, Antoine Fuqua and Sam Worthington. How’s that for entertainment?

So, if you’re in San Diego, be sure to catch all of these folks, and more, coming directly from Radical Publishing.

Click through for the complete press release giving you even more details. Also, check out the Radical Publishing website.

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We have been more than vocal about our feeling that Sam Worthington is being pushed onto worldwide audiences as an action star, regardless of his relative merits. His work in films like Avatar, Terminator Salvation, and most recently Clash of the Titans, however, proves to studios that he’s a bankable enough name to attach him to even more potential franchises.

With that in mind, Worthington has just been tapped to play the titular role in Dreamworks’ upcoming big-budget sci-fi adaptation of the literary character Allan Quatermain, in the film Quatermain. From Heat Vision:

Allan Quatermain was the hero of “King’s Solomon’s Mines,” a Victorian adventure novel by H. Rider Haggard, and its sequel, “Allan Quatermain.” In the first book, Quatermain leads an expedition into an unexplored region of Africa to find the brother of a friend as well as a fabled treasure of the lost mines.

DreamWorks’ version is set in a time in which humans have left Earth and sees Quatermain return to the planet from a sojourn in space, embarking on another “King Solomon’s Mines”-style adventure but on a planetwide scale. Mark Verheiden was the writer behind the first script when the project was revealed early last year.

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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 a few of them in particular.

These esteemed examples of entertainment include Crazy Heart, Batman, Batman Returns, Fist of Legend, the first season of Merlin, the DVD release of the classic Battleship Potemkin and  an obscure direct t0 dvd movie called Crimes of Fashion featuring Big Bang Theory‘s Kaley Cuoco and Megan Fox. And, of course, the non-3D Blu-ray release of Avatar hits stores this Thursday (pictured above with Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana).

Movies

Avatar ~ Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver (Blu-ray and DVD)

Battleship Potemkin ~ Alexander Antonov, Vladimir Barsky (Blu-ray)

Batman ~ Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson (Blu-ray)

Batman Returns ~ Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken (Blu-ray)

Cheech & Chong’s Hey Watch This! ~ Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong (DVD)

Crazy Heart ~ Jeff Bridges (Blu-ray and DVD)

Crimes of Fashion ~ Kaley Cuoco, Megan Fox (DVD)

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It’s ironic how we were just having the discussion on this week’s podcast that Sam Worthington feels like a forced “action star” in Hollywood today, as news is now hitting that Taylor Kitsch has been cast to star in Peter Berg’s film adaptation of the timeless board game Battleship. From Heat Vision:

Pete Berg is directing the action adventure movie, whose story has drawn heat from some quarters for adding an “alien invasion” element to what has been traditionally seen as a grounded Naval game. The script, by Jon and Erich Hoeber, sees an international fleet come together to battle a water-bound armada of otherworldly origin.

In “Battleship,” Kitsch is playing a Naval commander named Alex Hopper, described as “wildly spirited” and “a great seaman but a lousy politician.”

Kitsch was a relative unknown a few years ago, but since being cast as Gambit in last year’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, he’s already been cast as the titular lead in Pixar’s upcoming John Carter of Mars as well as being the lead in the TV adapatation of Friday Night Lights. Much like how Worthington was put over the top by getting roles in Avatar, Terminator: Salvation, and Clash of the Titans.

With this new role, it could seem that Kitsch is going to be the next “Worthington”, but what could that mean for the first “Worthington”? Is there room in Hollywood, amidst the stack of reboots and remakes as far as the eye can see, for two actors that Hollywood is forcing down our throats?

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.