Gareth S. Young - - 1000 Trillion Suns

Next year, Captain America celebrates his 75th birthday. No doubt the comics will celebrate this in fine style, and it's just been announced that ABC, the television wing of Disney, will be showing a 1 hour  75th Anniversary Special . Later in the year there is, of course, a third Captain America movie -  CIVIL WAR  - to be devoured by the fans. And all of this is great. I'm a fan of comics, movies and Cap, so I'm on board for all of it. What is interesting though is how OLD all of this comic book stuff is. DC's Holy Trinity There's a lot of excitement for DC's upcoming Batman versus Superman movie and the first "on screen" appearance of the Big 3  - Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman - together in one movie. Warner acquired Time Inc. in 1989 and with it, DC comics. About ten minutes later, a Batman movie was announced. That it's taken more than 25 years to get the Big 3 together is baffling to me. Supes, Bats and WW are three of the...

It's going to be one of the biggest box office years on record, but the news with the movie studios is more of a mixed bag than you might expect. Here are how the top 5 studios fared... The Big Two Right now the big two movie studios are Universal and Disney. 2015 has been dominated by blockbusters from both studios but Universal has taken the lion's share. TRIVIA BLAST: Universal's $2.2 billion dollars leads Disney's $1.5 billion, but there's the little matter of a Star Wars movie in December which will probably bring the House of Mouse out on top. #1 - Universal Universal have had colossal hits: Jurassic World , Furious 7 and Minions making the bulk of their record breaking box office. All three of these movies are in the worldwide box office top ten, with Jurassic World recently moving into third place. Other good performers for Universal - Straight outta Compton, Trainwreck, 50 Shades of Grey (ugh), and Pitch Perfect 2 - probably le...

2015 had the second biggest summer box office haul of all time. With more competition than ever for good spots in the summer schedule, some valuable "tent pole" movies had to position themselves differently to avoid being smooshed. Here are my post-Summer blockbuster movie picks. Matt Damon gets stranded on the Red Planet The Martian   (10/2) What is it? Movie adaptation of the surprise best selling book about an Astronaut stranded on Mars who has only his brains and a black belt in snark to help him survive. What to expect You had me at Ridley Scott. Sir Ridley is still one of the best in the business and Matt Damon is perfectly cast as the titular Martian, Mark Watney. The Martian was my favorite book of 2014, and I've been really looking forward to seeing how it is adapted for the big screen...since Watney spends a large portion of the book on his own and it's very heavy on the science. The cast is stellar, the previews looks great, and, if the mov...

Greetings, Earthlings... So, this week I watched a handful of movies and thought I'd share some thoughts with you. If you follow me on  TWITTER , you probably already know that I enjoy all kinds of stuff (and things) with movies being up there amongst my favorites. If you don't follow me on Twitter...why not?? You're missing the brilliant comedic styling of @Spartagus: *instals calories* *updates mood* Thank for installing Spartan 3.0 *sigh of relief* & Watching #Noah ...and Noah has just been punched in the head by a rock monster...so...there's that. The first tweet is me being...well, me. And the second tweet refers to the movie I watched last night...and I'll get to that in next week's post. For now though, let's start with  Guardians of the Galaxy ... So, you take Marvel's box of toys and Disney's marketing machine and what you end up with is a colossal $95M opening weekend for a movie with a talking Raccoon ...

Every summer, the movie studios release what they call "tentpole" movies. Normally, these are big-budget, effects-driven franchise movies, designed to prop up the studios and make them their profits for the year. I call them programmed franchises because they're not acquired with one movie in mind. The philosophy from the start is to produce at least a trilogy. So much money is invested in these movies that failure can cripple a studio. Trivia Blast!! - New Line Cinema had to merge with its parent company Warner Bros after the (relative) failure of  The Golden Compass:   Budget: $180M  Box Office: $70M ( The Golden Compass  was intended to follow the trilogy of His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman) Jaws   Stephen Spielberg is sometimes credited with creating the first summer "Blockbuster" movie with  Jaws .  Jaws  was the first movie to be distributed with a "wide release," meaning that it opene...

In recent years, yearning for a bigger slice of the money pie, movie studios have poured more resources into fewer films. Trivia Blast! - In 2012, 135 films made up 95% of the total Box Office in the United States. So, despite a huge increase in accessibility for fans (more theaters, online vendors), fear of losing profit dictates the movie slate and opportunities are dwindling to get an original idea made into a movie. Franchises Franchises are nothing new. When a studio hits on a money-making idea, they are not shy about green-lighting a sequel almost immediately. Generally, there are two types of franchise: "programmed" and "opportunistic". A programmed franchise example would be Harry Potter - a successful line of books purchased with the intent to make the entire series. Of course, if the first of these movies tanks, or even if it struggles later in the series, the franchise can be quietly buried and forgotten. (see: John Carter or The Lone Ranger) ...