This week on The Flickcast Chris and Joe once again dig deep into all the geek news, views, and more, you could possibly need. The boys kick it off this time around with a discussion on “Blockbuster” screenwriting and movies and the recent interview with writer Damon Lindelof.

There’s also more discussion on Expendables 3 and the final casting for the movie and the success and relative merits of World War Z. Then, they shift gears and talk about who should play Batman in the next movie now that Christian Bale is out. Who do they like? You’ll just have to listen.

They also get into other topics like the absurd charms of the movie Olympus Has Fallen, a recent fan poll ranking Star Trek movies that put Into Darkness last, even after the parody movie Galaxy Quest, recent leaks of trailers for X-Men: Days of Future Past and Guardians of the Galaxy, the current state of sci-fi movies and a whole lot more.

This weeks picks include Joe’s pick of the A&E TV series Longmire and Chris’ pick of the recent sci-fi movie Europa Report.

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, Google+ or via email.

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Animated sequels in recent history are hardly a slam dunk at the box office, for every Toy Story 3 there are three Happy Feet 2. Thankfully for all of the principles involved, Despicable Me 2 was every bit the hit the former was.

The popularity of the Minions can not be denied as Despicable Me 2 brought it more money than any animated film has ever earned over a five-day span. Granted the Fourth coming on a Thursday is a near perfect storm for a major release, but the final tally of over $142 Million speaks for itself. Even when you shave the first two days off the tally, the traditional three-day weekend was right in line with the monster $80+ million Monsters University brought in a few weeks ago.

Coming up in second place for the holiday stretch was the sputtering Lone Ranger. It seems like high-profile bombs have become commonplace, and everything about the action western screamed this would be another one. Guess what? It was! Coming in at just over $29 million for the three-day, and just under $49 since Wednesday, the film was not the same abject failure John Carter was, but it is far from the performance one expects from the same crew that gave us the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

One was a slam dunk, the other was a blockbuster to be that came into the weekend stinking of behind the scenes drama. Yet in the end both hit theaters this week and obliterated expectations.

Monsters University is the prequel to one of the older PIXAR classics, telling the tale of how everyone’s favorite boogie men, Mike and Sully, learned their scare trade. The film took in $82 million over the weekend giving PIXAR its second highest opening ever, and their 14th strait number one debut. Lets just ponder that for a second, even as the creative armor of the premier animation house of the west shows some chinks in their armor, they maintain a perfect record on the financial side of the movie equation. The quality of the recent PIXAR films is up to some debate, but what can’t be denied is they still know how to make a movie people want to see.

While everyone and their mother knew MU would be a hit, the big surprise of the weekend came from the Brad Pitt zombie blockbuster, World War Z. The studio had modest expectations initially, and the general geek community had no expectations. The film veered far from the source material that is much beloved, the movie was plagued by re-shoots and seeming instability from the set, and it is a PG-13 zombie film which just feels wrong. Despite all of that working against it in the buzz department, the film was well sold and generally positive reviews helped to make all those other issues all but disappear. The net result was $66 million at the box office and a lot of turned heads.

Do you remember the lead up to John Carter? How most people had a big problem with the marketing but many held a faint glimmer of hope that remained until the first reel ran in theaters opening weekend. Yeah, World War Z wishes it was generating that kind of reaction.

Basically, all of the worst parts of the bible would be an upgrade over the current approval rating of the upcoming PG-13 zombie epic. The stench of the film has been brewing for years, delays and behind the scenes instability have not provided any faith of a good adaptation of a book that is already hard to envision in cinemas. The problem is the structure of the book, it is an oral history not a linear narrative, and no one understands how a Brad Pitt saves the world film was the best that could be done.

So consensus is the film will be a terrible, no good, very bad adaptation and the best we are hoping for is a fun diversion wearing a WWZ pelt for warmth. Of course this leads to all the bitching and moaning about how the film’s existence is an affront to the loyal book fans who deserve better. Well cool your jets book worms and hipster wanna bes, there is a silver lining to this story and it alone more than justifies the looming horror of the upcoming film.

We were as excited as anyone when we first heard Max Brooks’ novel World War Z was heading to the big screen. It’s a great book and from the moment we first read it, we were convinced it would make a terrific movie.

Obviously, we weren’t the only ones who thought so. Cut to several years later and the World War Z movie is finally about to arrive in theaters. And even with all the troublesome news surrounding the shoot, we’re still excited for the movie.

After having already seen the trailer, there’s a new clip from the movie that’s hitting the Interwebs this week. In it we find Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and his wife (Mireille Enos) and kids on an aircraft carrier. Once there some government types convince Gerry that’s he’s humanity’s last hope to stop the zombie apocalypse.

Can it be stopped? Who knows. You’ll have to wait and see the movie. Until then, check out the clip after the break and look for World War Z in theaters on June 21.

For a minute, let’s just forget about all the trouble (or supposed trouble) the big screen adaptation of Max Brooks’ novel World War Z may have gone through. Let’s just pretend all is well so we can come to this first trailer for the film with all the confidence and optimism in the world.

And you know what, we don’t even have to do that. This trailer makes the movie look pretty awesome. In fact, if it’s really this good, nobody will even remember that it may or may not have been in trouble, had reshoots or had its release date moved back.

If the movie is this good, all of that just won’t matter. Okay, we know you’re as interested as we were to see this trailer, so check it out after the break.

Look for World War Z to arrive in theaters on June 21, 2013.

Max Brooks’ World War Z is a masterpiece of modern zombie fiction. Successfully merging the traditional zombie tropes with a grand scale and an eerie realism that makes the story of the great Zombie War come alive. So at the height of Zombie popularity it is a natural that the book would be getting the big screen treatment.

On the surface everything seemed good for the film, it had a major movie star, a solid director and studio support. Yet something happened along the way, the movie started to fall apart. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the studio is bringing in some help try to right the ship:

Screenwriter Damon Lindelof has been brought in to save Paramount’s zombie movie World War Z… Its release has been pushed from December 2012 to June, 21 2013, and is awaiting significant reshoots. Lindelof, the Lost co-creator and co-author of Ridley Scott and Fox’s Prometheus, is said to be focusing on World War Z’s third act. The production hopes to begin reshoots in September or October.

The book has a pretty non-film friendly structure so it is no surprise that they are having difficulty on the writing end of things. It is just unfortunate that the problems are only just now being addressed after the main production and not much earlier in the process. Linedlof is a big idea guy, so hopefully he can crack the code.

The Flickcast will retain optimism on the project, keep posted for any new updates as they develop.

If you’ve been keeping with our previous posts, you can see that this year is going to be quite the melting pot of horror films. In today’s installment, we sum it all up with the final films of 2012.

Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t yet. Now onto the rest.

October 5, 2012 – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D

(Distributed by Lionsgate Films) This film is intended as somewhat of an alternate sequel to the original 1974 film directed by Tobe Hooper and advances thirty five years into the story.

October 19, 2012 – Paranormal Activity 4

(Distributed by Paramount Pictures) The film is a continuation of the series.  If you’ve seen one then you’ve pretty much seen them all.

The upcoming World War Z is one of the more interesting high profile films of 2012. It is based on one of the best pieces of Zombie fiction yet written, and it has a stellar cast and crew. Yet there are reports that the studio wants a PG-13 rating and any one familiar with the source material is concerned about the structure this film will take.

So any positive sign from the people involved with the film is encouraging, and we got exactly that when Brad Pitt sat down with the Los Angeles Times:

For Pitt, the big sci-fi thriller also represents his strongest bid to have a big film franchise of his own, which might be viewed as the missing piece of his career jigsaw puzzle. Forster and Paramount Pictures each view “World War Z” as a trilogy that would have the grounded, gun-metal realism of, say, Damon’s Jason Bourne series tethered to the unsettling end-times vibe of AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

World War Z is not a strait narrative type book, with many stories that are generally unrelated but come together to form an oral history of the great Zombie war. Knowing that they not only have faith in the product to view it has a franchise, but also have no intention of wrapping up the Apocalypse in one film is fantastic to hear.

Even as those of us here in the US celebrate our independence day, our friends across the pond are hard at work still bringing the news. One awesome bit that’s surfaced today are the first set photos from the eagerly anticipated film World War Z.

The Daily Mail has a bunch of photos from the Malta set, dressed to look like an Israeli border checkpoint, featuring the film’s star Brad Pitt and the first glimpse of the evil zombie hordes that will menace him, and the world, during the film.

In the film, Pitt will play the author of the World War Z book Max Brooks, and tell the story of his exploits collecting the stories and experiences of those who have survived the human victory over the zombie hordes, also known as World War Z.

Even though we seem to be getting a lot more zombie stories these days, the fact that this book is finally getting the big screen treatment is welcome news. Love the book and can’t wait to see the film. For more, you can check out my interview with the real Max Brooks over at ComicMix.

Click through to check out all the pics. The Marc Forster-directed World War Z is expected sometime next year.

World War Z, by Max Brooks, has been gestating in Hollywood pre-production limbo for years now. It is a tough nut to crack with most of it’s narrative being told in one-on-one interviews between Brooks and his fictional characters. Despite the academic structure, Brooks still managed to craft an apocalyptic world that is engrossing and terrifying in it’s realism.

According to Bleeding Cool, production on the feature film version is finally making serious forward momentum as Director of Photography has begun preparations for the shoot, and it is a good one:

Robert Richardson, who recently wrapped Martin Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret down at Shepperton. This time he will be working out of another one of our big production bases, over at Elstree. Amongst Richardson’s other credits are Kill Bill, Natural Born Killers and Eight Men Out.

San Diego Comic-Con has barely started and we can already bring you some pretty cool news about a great project. During an interview with MTV during preview night at the Con, World War Z writer Max Brooks confirmed that not only is the big screen adaptation of his novel finally moving forward, but Brad Pitt has officially been attached to star in the film.

Back when I interviewed Brooks over two years ago, his novel was just being adapted by Babylon 5 and comics writer J. Michael Straczynski. Since then, writer Michael Carnahan has penned a draft. In addition, the film is still moving forward with Quantum of Solace director Marc Forester attached.

Also according to reports, the novel World War Z isn’t the only zombie story from Max Brooks headed for the big screen. Both The Zombie Survival Guide and The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks graphic novel have also been optioned and will be adapted for the big screen by writers yet to be determined.

According to Brooks, the studio is currently targeting a Summer 2012 release for World War Z, which chronicles a worldwide zombie outbreak through the first-hand accounts of survivors. No further information is available on the other two projects at the moment, but when it is you can be sure we’ll bring it to you.