This week on The Flickcast Matt and Chris return from a week off with way more energy and sense of purpose. Or, they do their best and just try to get through the show by bringing you even more interesting and exciting topics for discussion.

Some of these topics include Batman: The Dark Knight Rises casting rumors, Captain America photos, TV programs getting canceled, potential Superman casting, The Walking Dead, Matt’s love for all things Nic Cage and much more. The team also made some picks this week including Matt’s pick of the movie Hellboy and Chris’ pick of season one of the original The Bionic Woman starring Lindsay Wagner.

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.

After months of speculation about the sequel to The Dark Knight, at least now we have some info that’s confirmed. In a new interview over at Hero Complex, Christopher Nolan reveals that the title of the next Batman film will be The Dark Knight Rises, which seems to suggest the film will be about Batman reclaiming his hero status in Gotham City after ending the previous film as a wanted man.

Sadly, for some of you at least, Nolan also said the Riddler will not be the main bad guy in the third film. Although, he didn’t rule out the Riddler making some kind of appearance. In addition, Nolan also said in the interview that Warner Bros. has agreed to not go 3D with The Dark Knight Rises. Instead, Nolan will do what he did with The Dark Knight and use a combination of high-definition and IMAX cameras to give the film its distinctive look.

Finally, Nolan revealed some tidbits on what other characters may be appearing in the film. “We’ll use many of the same characters as we have all along, and we’ll be introducing some new ones,” Nolan said, without revealing any names. Of course, we can assume some of the characters that will appear in the new film which have to include the core group of Batman/Bruce Wayne, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon.

For my money, I would like to see Catwoman make an appearance with, perhaps, some support by the Riddler. With Nolan’s take on the Joker working so well, I’m sure he can help Catwoman become the big screen villain she deserves to be. What about you guys? Who do you think we’ll see in the film?

It shouldn’t come as a surpise that pretty much everyone here at The Flickcast (and most of the civilized geek world) is anxiously waiting for more news on the third Batman film. With The Dark Knight pretty much being the ultimate treatment of the character and his world, any info about the third installment of the franchise, so artfully executed by Christpher Nolan and his team, is a very exciting development indeed.

Well, hold onto your seats because news of  the third Batman film is just what we’ve got right now. But wait, there’s more. We’ve also got some news on the Superman reboot too. How’s that for awesome?

Speaking to Empire Magazine during an interview for his upcoming film Inception (which also loooks awesome, btw) Nolan gave some much needed updates on the Batman 3 production as well as some new info about his level of involvement with Superman.

According to Nolan, he still hasn’t officially signed on to direct new Batman movie. “No I haven’t. There is a point where you’re just being precious about it and people get annoyed, but the God’s honest truth is I work on one movie at a time. I’m only capable of doing that, so my head will continue to be firmly in ['Inception'] for another few months.”

There are some things, though, that Nolan can confirm. “My brother is working on the screenplay. We came up with a story that we are very excited about. We particularly like where we are taking the characters and what the ending is… There are things for me to be very excited about in addressing the characters again. But ultimately it always comes down to the script, and can we make a great film from this?

That’s something I will firmly be turning my attention to figuring out fairly soon.” It will be, he said, “the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story.”

Empire also asked whether the villain could be a returning (and recast) Joker. “No,” said Nolan resisting to elaborate, “I just don’t feel comfortable about it.”

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Even though they’ve tried as long as possible to avoid releasing anything like “official” word on the film and haven’t really even confirmed one is coming at all, it seem Warner Bros. has finally decided to let the cat, er bat, out of the bag and give some information most everyone assumed was inevitable. The studio has set July 20, 2012 as the release date for the third Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movie, the sequel to 2008′s The Dark Knight.

According to the report, the studio is in the very early stages of developing the film and director Nolan is still in post-production on the soon-to-be-released Inception, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio. However, Nolan is reportedly working on the story with scribe David Goyer. At the moment the film has no title and no start date but you would have to think it would start filming sometime late this year in order make it’s release date.

Summer 2012 looks to be a busy one with Batman 3 now having a release date. Other films scheduled to come out around that time include The Avengers on May 4, Battleship on May 25, the next Star Trek on June 29 and the reboot of Spider-Man on July 3. Should be an interesting few months indeed.

It goes without saying we’ll be watching all the developments of Batman 3 very closely and will bring you the news as soon as we get it.

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.

When writer David Goyer left his post as showrunner for TV’s Flashforward there were rumblings about what he was up to. At the time the most obvious answer  was that he was helping director Christopher Nolan with the third Batman script. At the same time, DC had confirmed Nolan would be helping to get the Superman franchise back on track.

Well, today all the pieces are falling into place as we learn Goyer has been hired to write the next Superman movie.  A source confirmed the news to Latino Review and gave a little indication of what we can expect:

“I can tell you that Goyer’s story involves Luthor and Brainiac.  It is NOT an origin and assumes audiences already know about Lois, Clark, Jimmy and Perry.  I know the Daily Planet is struggling due to the internet.  And I know it sets up a huge Kryptonian mythology.”

Some other points of interest are that Bryan Singer and Brandon Routh will probably not return. Also, the film may be called The Man of Steel instead of Superman: The Man of Steel.  Contrary to prior rumors Mark Millar will not be involved  from the sounds of it.

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Saturday morning I thought that The Book Of Eli might actually pull off the feat of toppling the unstoppable Avatar, because it did lead the box office on Friday. Well, close, but no cigar. Avatar reigned supreme once again, and made an astonishing $41.3 Million in its 6th week of release, and it is still playing on over 3,000 screens.

Avatar has now surpassed Star Wars as the number three highest grossing movie of all time with a cumulative total of $491 Million. The Dark Knight stands at number two, with $533 Million.

The Book of Eli had a pretty decent showing, with $31.6 Million on just over 3,000 screens. If the movie gets good word of mouth, it should do well in upcoming weeks. In third place was The Lovely Bones, which fared better than I thought it would. It was postponed from last year, and has received somewhat of a critical drubbing, but it still managed $17.1 Million.

In my opinion, this is a testament to how much readers loved the book. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, hung around and made $11.5 Million for fourth place. The movie is closing in on $200 Million, as it now stands at $192 Million.

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Well, it is the first box office recap of 2010, and it looks like I’ll be dropping  the “B” word, as in “Billion.”  Avatar sailed over the billion dollar mark in only its third week in release. Thanks to this worldwide total, it now sits comfortably at the  number four position of highest grossing movies of all time, right behind Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

It has already exceeded the total that took The Dark Knight its entire theatrical run to achieve, and Avatar has shown no signs of  slowing down. The movie dropped less than 10% from last weekend and made $68.3 Million, bringing its domestic total to over $352 Million.

There was plenty of box office love to go around this weekend, and several movies did exceptionally well. Sherlock Holmes added another $38.3 Million to its two week total, which now stands at over $140.7 Million. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel made $36.6 Million, for an impressive two week cumulative of $157.3 Million.

The adult comedy It’s Complicated only dropped  15% from its Christmas weekend opening, and racked up $18.7 Million for a strong fourth place. Fifth place went to The Blind Side, which has been in the top ten for over seven weeks now. It actually increased its total 10% over last weekend, and has made over $209 Million now.

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Inception, Christopher Nolan’s new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and a whole slew of other great names including Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine has finally got a new poster. Other than the fact that its brand new, the big hullabaloo about it is it’s uncanny resemblance to a poster for The Dark Knight, which featured Heath Ledger’s ‘Joker’ facing away from us, with a couple of cards in one hand and a knife in the other.

Both also feature their single character in the middle of a street with a city’s high-rises walling them in. Of course, one of the main differences in the poster for Inception is that DiCaprio’s character is knee-deep in water. The tagline that has already become an Internet meme in itself, “You mind is the scene of the crime,” sits at the top.

The other more interesting question raised by this poster is at the bottom where it states “see it Summer 2010 in IMAX.” I understand that it’s becoming a normal occurrence for summer blockbusters to be released in this format and Nolan has even become obsessed, you might say, with using the IMAX format, but I can’t help but wonder if this movie will actually benefit from being on the larger screen.

I trust that Nolan knows what he’s doing, and the teaser trailer that’s been released, looks pretty amazing.  Anyway, check out the larger poster after the break and mark July 16 2010 on your calendar.

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The Superman franchise continues to struggle as more details emerge from Warner Brothers.  In short, Warner Brothers still isn’t doing anything with the project. According to Warner Brothers insiders:

“The studio is still seeking the right direction. No writers are working on a Superman script. ‘We’re working on a strategy for DC,’ says one Warners exec. ‘Superman is the trickiest one to figure out.’ “

Still “seeking the right direction”? No writers? Tricky to figure out? How “tricky” can this be?  You only have several movies and hundreds of comics to draw inspiration from. Get it together Warner Brothers.

Now, there is the legal matter to deal with which is rather tricky. I can appreciate the fact WB wants these legalities with the Siegel Estate put to rest but seriously, get moving. Providing some indication that you’re actively developing a new movie could certainly help your case instead of simply squandering time.

Sadly, the only direction left for this property is the dreaded “r” word-reboot. Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns hardly met the studios expectations (but I for one liked it).  Having made $391 million worldwide it cost $232 million to make. Do the math and you can’t even compare that film to something like Christopher Nolan‘s billion dollar Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

As we’ve noted on The Flickcast before the Siegel family will reclaim the Superman rights in 2013.  That means at a minimum film production has to start by 2011 (and that’s pushing it). The clock is ticking. Time to start moving faster than a speeding bullet Warner Brothers.

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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Zombieland opened this week and let me tell you it is, in my opinion, one of the best films of 2009. Only a day into its release Hollywood insiders were predicting the movie could go onto make $30 million in its opening weekend. If that happens it means Zombieland will have made back the $26 million and change it cost to make. While those numbers may not carry the weight of the billion dollars The Dark Knight made Zombieland’s rapid return on investment cannot be overlooked. Hollywood, take note, Zombieland should be the new standard of success.

All that said, I’m not writing a review of Zombieland by any means (Chris already wrote a great one), nor am I looking to talk about the merits of the film, of which there are many. No, I’m casting all the business stuff aside for the moment to speak about one thing: inspiration. You see, immediately after watching Zombieland I got home and was compelled to write (in this case a novel I’m working on). I had in me a burning desire to create. Therein lies the true success of Zombieland. For this writer, it spurred the creative forces that drive cinema.

How did it do this?  Simply put, the film was honest. There was no allusion to a grand design or twist ending. The characters were endearing and story practically A to B simple. Moreover, it defied stock conventions of the genre.  The girls weren’t running away screaming and guys not always the most heroic. These were characters anyone in the theater could relate to personally or through friends they probably know.  Being able to create that rapport with the audience was the secret weapon of Zombieland.  It connected with viewers (trust me on that, I saw the response from the packed theater first hand) and even if only for a few moments at a time they could see themselves in that world of zombies and loved it. Those are the moments writers, specifically, aspire to.

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