Kind of hard to not sound redundant at this point, but The Hunger Games once again beats off a flurry of new comers and takes the weekend. With a very solid hold from last weekend, the adaptation has now brought in over $337 Millions dollars. There  is no reason the film wont play well over the next few weeks and the box office world braces itself for a huge summer.

Unforgivably, The Three Stooges came in at second place with $17.a Million over the weekend. This actually represents the third highest opening for a Farrelly Brothers film which seems like encouragement for the future of these types of films. The general success of the film isn’t repulsive because of the film itself, but more so because it goes on record as beating whats at number 3.

The spectacular The Cabin in the Woods debuted in the third slot this weekend with a hair under $15 Million. In context to what the film is, and how it was marketed, that is a pretty solid number. It just stings a bit that a film as effective and crowd pleasing as this isn’t going to have a bigger audience in the movie theater.

Some are calling it Escape From New York in space, while others are calling it not worth making a pop culture reference, but that isn’t stopping the upcoming FilmDistrict/Open Road film from Luc Besson, Lockout from hitting screens this coming Friday.

With that, and an overall panic that the film isn’t going to play as well as the studio is anticipating, Besson’s banner studio EuropaCorp has released the first five minutes of the film for free on YouTube, for those who may need more convincing to see the flick.

Sure, there are some pretty campy moments before the title card even pops up, like why they felt the need to give Guy Pierce a “futuristic” haircut, or why they thought an effective way of giving backstory to the film’s hero would be through flashbacks in an interrogation.

Regardless, the film certainly looks pretty cool, and it’s nice to see LOST star Maggie Grace and Misfits star Joseph Gilgun get some solid work in a big budget sci-fi picture. Take a look at the first five minutes of the film after the jump, and catch Lockout in theaters this Friday.

We love when good movies inspire innovative ideas. For some reason, it happens much more in the Sci-Fi genre than anywhere else, but most good ideas stem from an even better classic film. That’s what we feel like is happening with the upcoming film Lockout, starring Guy Pearce.

Take a look at the official synopsis here and see if you can pick up subtle hints to a classic film.

Starring Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace and set in the near future, LOCKOUT follows a falsely convicted ex- government agent (Pearce), whose one chance at obtaining freedom lies in the dangerous mission of rescuing the President’s daughter (Grace) from rioting convicts at an outer space maximum security prison.

Just call Guy Pearce Snake Plissken and you’ve got yourself a sequel to Escape From L.A, but in space. You’ll even notice the line from the trailer “He’s the best there is, but he’s a loose cannon.”  The film also stars LOST star Maggie Grace, who’s quite good at getting herself kidnapped, as proven in Taken. This time, Liam Neeson won’t be there with his particular set of skills.

Take a look at the trailer after the jump and catch Lockout in theaters on April 20th.

Love Netflix but not always completely satisfied with the number of first run movies the service offers for streaming? Same here. Fortunately, it seems the company is taking steps to remedy the situation in the form of a new content partnership agreements.

Back in August, Netflix closed a deal with Epix, a a joint venture between Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate. And now, as of yesterday, the company entered into another agreement with new partner with producer/distributor FilmDistrict. Under the terms of the deal Netflix will license movies from FilmDistrict during what’s knows as the “pay TV window,” or the period of time when the films would have normally appeared on premium cable TV channels such as HBO or Showtime.

The first two movies to come to Netflix as a result of this partnership will be Drive, starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, and Lockout, starring Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace. Both films are set to be released early next year.

This is good news as other services like Google TV seem to be struggling a bit to make content deals. Netflix offers a good service for a decent price and I, for one, hope they can continue to do so. They do need more first run movies, however, and these deals do seems like steps in the right direction. Lets hope they can keep it going.

Click through for the full press release announcing this latest content deal.