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The Batman crossed $300 million domestic on Sunday and $600 million worldwide earlier this week, and it will soon fly past the grosses of Batman v Superman ($330 million) and Joker ($335 million) to become the third highest grossing Batman film domestically behind The Dark Knight ($535 million) and The Dark Knight Rises ($448 million). The Robert Pattinson starring reboot doesn’t seem likely to pass Tdkr, but ending up as the biggest non-Nolan Batman film is a nice feather in its cap, as is being the second biggest pandemic-era film. There has been little else going on at the box office this month, but after three weeks of total dominance, The Batman finally faces a formidable box office challenger this weekend.

Though it could be a tight race, we’re expecting Paramount’s star-studded adventure rom-com The Lost City to dethrone the caped crusader for the number one spot, and the studio predicts an opening...

Love them or loathe them, the Transformers movies continue going from strength to strength at the box office, hence why Paramount Pictures is now hoping to expand the world with a shared universe – one which will include Bumblebee, a spinoff that just recently found a director in the form of Travis Knight.

It turns out that a number of prolific filmmakers were being considered though before Knight ultimately ended up landing the job. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, the studio was also eyeing Jaume Collet-Sera (The Shallows), Rick Famuyiwa (Dope), Seth Gordon (Baywatch), and Aaron and Adam Nee (The Last Romantic).

That’s an impressive list of talent, and the inclusion of Famuyiwa’s name is particularly notable, especially as he was being lined up to take the helm of The Flash before parting ways with Warner Bros. over creative differences. Now that he’s been passed over for Bumblebee,...

Principal photography has concluded on the comedic thriller that reimagines Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer as grown men.

Kyle Gallner (pictured at left) and Adam Nee (pictured at right) star with Matthew Gray Gubler, Hannibal Buress, Melissa Benoist, Eric Christian, Daniel Edward Mora and Stephen Lang.

Brothers Adam Nee and Aaron Nee directed Band Of Robbers. Their previous film The Last Romantic premiered at SXSW and IFC distributed in the Us.

Rounding out the cast are Johnny Pemberton, Beth Grant, Lee Garlington, Maria Blasucci, Cooper Huckabee and Creed Bratton.

John Will produces for Torn Sky Entertainment with Rick Rosenthal for Whitewater Films alongside Matt Ratner and Arun Kumar.

Nick Morton, Bert Kern, Tims Johnson, John and Margo Miller, Matthew Gray Gubler and Noah Lang are the executive producers.

Dean Haspiel strikes me as a creator who’s constantly growing. He’s an artist, he’s a writer, he’s won an Emmy for TV design work, and in the last year he’s started up a new project, Trip City, a “Brooklyn-filtered literary arts salon” with an eclectic mix of comics, stories, realism, sci-fi, and more. Now, don’t get me wrong – I obviously love superhero comics, and the people who create them, but I also love creators who can and do cross genres and try new things. Dean is clearly one of these.

While Dean is perhaps best known for his work with Harvey Pekar (e. g. American Splendor and The Quitter) and for his “last romantic anti-hero” Billy Dogma, his current project that’s caught my attention is Trip City, via the sample booklet Dean shared with me at Baltimore Comic Con. While there’s no...

Bridesmaids film-maker asks Academy to consider offsetting shortfall in comedy nominations by creating new award

The Oscars should feature a comedy category, according to Judd Apatow, the director of Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Apatow took to Twitter to ask the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider including a separate category for comedic films, similar to the one introduced in 2001 for animated movies.

"Since comedies are rarely up for Oscars it does make sense to have a comedy category," he tweeted. "It's been like five times in a zillion years that [a comedy has] won best picture."

Apart from animated movies, only six comedy films have received a nomination in the best film category at the Oscars in the past decade. Voters tend to plump for dramatic fare in the acting categories and action adventure, science fiction or fantasy in the technical categories, leaving comedy without much of a look in.

The new romantic drama "Dear John" unexpectedly ended the seven-week reign of "Avatar" at the weekend box office in North America on Sunday, pulling in large numbers of young female moviegoers.

"Dear John" grossed an estimated $32.4 million in the three-day period since opening Friday, said distributor Screen Gems, the low-budget division of Sony Corp..

It had hoped for an opening of about $20 million on a weekend when many Americans forsake movies to watch the Super Bowl, traditionally the year's most-watched television broadcast. The football championship starts around 6:25 pm in Miami.

"Dear John" stars Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried as lovers whose romance is curtailed by the September 11 attacks. It is directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallstrom and based on "The Notebook," a novel by Nicholas Sparks.

  Audiences for the film were 84% female and two-thirds were under the age of 21, Sony said.

The last romantic comedy to hit theaters was...

Animal Kingdom, The Red Chapel, Restrepo, and Winter's Bone Earn Grand Jury Prizes

Audience Favorites Feature Contracorriente, happythankyoumoreplease, Waiting For Superman, and Wasteland

Park City, Ut-The Jury, Audience, Next, and other special award-winners of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival were announced tonight at the Festival's Awards Ceremony hosted by David Hyde Pierce (star of The Perfect Host which premiered in this year's Park City at Midnight section) in Park City, Utah. Highlights from the Awards Ceremony can be seen on the Festival website, www.sundance.org/festival.

Films receiving Jury Awards were selected from four categories: U.S. Dramatic Competition, U.S. Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition and World Cinema Documentary Competition. All films in competition were also eligible for Sundance Film Festival Audience Awards as selected by Festival audiences. The U.S. Audience Awards presented by Honda and World Cinema Audience Awards were announced by Louis C.K. Joseph Gordon Levitt...

What are film festivals doing in increase distribution possibilities for their filmmakers and how are they using digital technology to do this and enhance their own position at the same time?

1) Sundance Film Festival is debuting films through VOD under a label called "Sundance Selects". Three films that premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival will debut simultaneously into 40 million Us households, via cable systems and satellite TV. The films will then be available for viewing for 30 days. The films include Michael Winterbottom's and Mat Whitecross's sociopolitical documentary The Shock Doctrine, Benny and Josh Safdie's comedy Daddy Longlegs, and Daniel Grou's drama 7 Days (Les 7 Jours du Talion).

"Moving the storytelling of the Sundance Film Festival beyond 10 days in Utah remains a top priority for us," said actor Robert Redford, founder of the Sundance Institute, about bringing the event to a wider audience, including selected screenings of Sundance films in other Us cities.

The lucky inaugural eight include: Habib Azar's Armless, Linas Philips's Bass Ackwards, Sultan Sharrief's Bilal’s Stand, Katie Aselton's The Freebie, Barnes Bros' Homewrecker, Adam Bowers's New Low, Michael Mohan's One Too Many Mornings and Eyad Zahra's The Taqwacores - which has nothing to do with the docu film Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam: (same subject, different film). - If you see or hear me calling this the Miranda July's (you'll have to have seen Me and You and Everyone We Know) section it's because of its no greater or lesser than emblem ( < = > ). John Cooper officially had a stroke of genius with the announcement of the section earlier in the year, and the batch of eight shows the festival is certainly getting back into the "indie" spirit of things again or, it will be seen as Sundance stealing some of the...

On Wednesday the Sundance Film Festival unveiled the films competing in late January 2010. Yesterday they announced the rest of the line-up of independent films vying for attention for industry types and the curious public.

The entire list of 53 films is below, but here are a few that stood out to me from the premieres alone:

Mumblecore directors the Duplass Brothers, have a new, untitled movie starring an unusually high-profile cast compared to their usual improvisational crew. John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, and Catherine Keener. Reilly and Keener are actually in two films at the 2010 festival.

The Company Men, starring Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt about corporate downsizing.

Rodrigo Cortes’ Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds as a man buried alive in a coffin. I’ve read the script and its great. More on that as soon as I can.

The Runaways, the...

We are 49 days out and counting down to Sundance 2010. Yesterday, we unveiled the list of competition films for the upcoming festival. Today, we have your list of out-of-competition films which include Premieres, Spotlight, New Frontier, and, my personal favorite, Park City at Midnight, which has featured past entries like Black Dynamite, The Descent, and Saw.

Check out next year’s lineup for the out-of-competition films:

Premieres

To showcase the diversity to contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors as well as world premieres of highly anticipated films. Presented by Entertainment Weekly.

Abel / Mexico, USA (Director: Diego Luna; Screenwriters: Diego Luna and Agusto Mendoza)–A peculiar young boy, blurring reality and fantasy, assumes the responsibilities of a family man in his father’s absence. Cast: Jose Maria Yazpik, Karina Gidi, Carlos Aragon, Christopher Ruiz-Esparza, Gerardo Ruiz-Esparza. World Premiere

Cane Toads:...

In addition to the competition titles which were announced yesterday, Sundance has announced the remainder of their line-up and it includes some titles we’re already familiar with along with a huge number of premieres.

Also on the docket are two new series: Next which showcases low/no budget films and Spotlight which highlights films which festival programmers deem worthy of extra love including Enter the Void (review) and Lourdes (the trailer for which I really liked).

I’m particularly excited to see some of the titles in the New Frontier program but overall, the line-up is an impressive one but the Kristen Stewart fan in me is excited to see her turn as Joan Jett in The Runaways and I think it’s fair to say we’re all dying to see Vincenzo Natali’s hotly anticipated Splice (trailer).

In the Midnight section, Adam Green's Frozen is sounding mighty find,...

Sundance released their slate for 2010. It includes:43 documentaries on the Middle East12 films about friends who 'discover' something33 movies about people you've never heard about1 comedyHopefully the lineup this year is strong but it doesn't look that way compared to last year. Last year we had Push (Precious), that Lil Wayne documentary that never went anywhere, Mystery Team which might make my top ten, Moon, Mike Tyson documentary, Cold Souls. Just so much last January that was excellent. I hope I don't go out therer and freeze my tail off just to see...I don't know, a documentary about a former Pakistani prime minister or something silly like that.Here's the lineup so far: Premieres To showcase the diversity to contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors as well as world premieres of highly anticipated films. Presented by Entertainment Weekly.

The Sundance Film Festival's competition lineup for 2010, announced Wednesday, might demand that audiences wear their serious caps. But the out-of-competition selections allow programmers and viewers to cut loose a little.

The 53 films that populate this year's Premieres, Next, Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontier sections run the gamut from the cosmically experimental to the star-studded and silly. There is indeed something for everyone at this year's event, which runs Jan. 21-31 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

As usual, Premieres collects work involving the industry's higher-profile talent, none more so than John Wells' feature directorial debut, "The Company Men," which stars Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper. Mexican actor Diego Luna's directorial debut, "Abel," will screen, as will Philip Seymour Hoffman's "Jack Goes Boating."

Michael Winterbottom has the rare distinction of having two films in...