Jurassic World had another monstrous weekend with $102 million dollars making it the highest grossing second weekend of all time.  It will be the fastest movie to gross over $400 million at the domestic box office and will be interesting to see how high it goes.  Will it break James Cameron’s hold over the 1 and 2 spots of the highest domestic grossing movies of all time?  Only time will tell. 

Despite Inside Out being the first Pixar movie to not open at number 1it broke some records of its own.  With $92 million this weekend it is the highest grossing weekend for a movie that wasn’t number 1.  It is also the second highest grossing weekend for an animated film (Toy Story 3 has the record with $110). But the biggest accomplishment is that it is the highest grossing opening weekend for a movie that is not a sequel or adapted from another source material. 

Another interesting fact is that with these two movies making tons of money you would think that it would be one of the biggest weekends in box office history but it was only the 4 largest of the year and 9th all time.   This shows that moviegoers are not really spreading the wealth to other movies.  The big gap between 2nd and 3rd movie at the box office is huge.  And again proves that we are heading to a future where there will probably be fewer movies and just one or two big blockbusters out at a time.  

William Shtatner will be at this years San Diego Comic Con on July 7th part of a panel talking about a new book The Autobiography of James T. Kirk.  The book written from the point of view of Captain Kirk chronicles his boyhood to his career as one of the greatest captains in Starfleet.  The book's author David Goodman will be moderating the panel.  Shatner will be reading excepts from the book and advanced copies of the book will be on sale at the Titan booth. 

Deadline broke some news last night that took a lot of people by surprise.  Rob Zombie noted for his horror movies like House of 1000 Corpses and Halloween is set to direct a movie about Groucho Marx.  Yes you read that right.  The horror director is branching out to the biopic.  

Zombie acquired the rights to Steve Stoliar's book "Raised Eyebrows" about the final years of Groucho Marx.  Zombie said he has been a life long fan of the funny man and based on the description of the book it sounds like it will make for an interesting transition out of the horror genre.  Zombie describes the story at "It is a sad, funny and very dark tale of a one of Hollywood’s greatest stars final years.” The book is an autobiographical story about how Stoliar became Marx's personal assistant in the comedians waning years and sometimes your dream job isn't always what you thought it would be.  The movie will be written by Oren Moverman who previously cowrote the screenplay to the Bob Dylan movie I'm Not There.  


What do you think? Will Zombie be a good fit for this project? Let us know. 

Going into this year we knew it was stacked with big blockbuster movies. All eyes have been on The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars Episode VIII: The Force Awakens as the two movie people thought could possibly break the all time opening weekend record. When Ultron failed to do it it looked like we would have to wait till December for anything else to have a chance. While Jurassic World was always considered a player it was always assumed it would do well but not spectacular. Well looks like everyone underestimated it.

 Jurassic World took the world by storm and surprised everyone with its final domestic tally of $208 million, an international tally of $315 million for a total worldwide gross of $523 million. All three are records. It also had the largest Friday and Saturday grosses of all time. Before the weekend started it was only expected to make around $120 million.

How did it exceed expectations that much? It's hard to say. Could be that there is superhero fatigue and people are just looking for something different? Or nostalgia for the Jurassic Park is that large?  Could be that there hasn't been that many movies lately that people have been excited about. I don' know but what I do know is that it was a historic weekend that no one expected.  Looks like Star Wars will have it's work cut out? 

Do you think Star Wars Episode VIII will beat Jurassic World opening weekend?  Let us know in the comments.  

By Christopher K. House

One of Hollywood's most prolific character actors, Christopher Frank Carandini Lee has passed away at the age of 93.
Lee. a breakout star of many Hammer horror films transcended time and became known to a new generation of film fans with roles in The Lord Of The Rings and, The Hobbit. Star Wars as Count Dooku, among many other genre films of this generation. Lee struggled with his acting career in the beginning. He never could find his footing in the numerous small films and television roles he had. It was his first breakout film with Peter Cushing, The Curse Of Frankenstein for Hammer Films in 1957 that Lee found his true calling. Lee would go on to star in Hammer Films until 1976. In 1977, Lee made the trip to Hollywood, starring in numerous American films and plays. Even appearing on the iconic show Saturday Night Live. In 2011, after nearly 3 decades he made an appearance in a Hammer production. Lee gave a  "superbly sinister" performance in The Resident, alongside Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilary Swank.

Lee died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on 7 June 2015 at 8:30 am after being admitted for respiratory problems and heart failure shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday in the hospital. His wife delayed the public announcement until 11 June, in order to break the news to their family

We will have more on the life and work of Christopher Lee in the near future in a more detailed article.

After news that the planned two part movie version of It fell through it made us wonder what was going to happen to the planned four part movie version of The Stand.  Well we had an update on the plans the other day. 

We have known that Josh Boone director of A Fault in Our Stars is set to direct the movie but According to The Wrap we are getting something completely different.  They are reporting that Boone is set to direct and write an eight part mini-series followed by an epic movie.  If that is the case this will be something unprecedented.  

As fans of Stephen King's book know The Stand is about a group of people that survive an apocalyptic plaque.  The survivors of the plaque are drawn by their dreams to either Colorado or Las Vegas.  The Stand is one of King's longest books and turning it into a movie always seemed like a big undertaking.  It has previously been turned into an 8 hour miniseries in the 90's.  Doing an 8 episode miniseries then a movie allows the filmmakers to really get into the back story of the characters before the final confrontation between good and evil in the movie.  While nothing like this has been done before if done correctly it can work.  If you look at something like The Avengers while you don't need to see the previous 5 movies to enjoy the movie it helps.  Right now the talk is that the mini series will be on Showtime but no specific deal has been worked out yet.  

With popular miniseries like True Detectives a lot of stars feel comfortable doing one and shouldn't be hard to get a great cast together.  Something like this has been talked about for another Stephen King adaption of the Dark Tower Series but that never happened.  

Let us know what you think of this idea.