• Battle Royale coming to Blu Ray in March: The cult classic about Japanese school kids who are forced to battle each other to the death will arrive to North America for the first time officially in a special edition Blu Ray set from Anchor Bay.  The set will include the theatrical and director’s cut of the movie along with Battle Royale II and a ton of special features.
• James Bond 22 Film Blu Ray set coming later this year: As it’s the 50th year of Bond on film and with a new Bond movie coming later this year, MGM & Fox are releasing a massive box set of all the previous Bond movies, from Dr. No to Quantum of Solace.  Nine of the movies have never had an HD release before and the set will include hours of bonus material.
• Mad Men returns March 25th:  Finally.
• Police Academy reboot in the works:  Scott Zabielski, co-executive producer of Tosh.0, has been hired by New Line to direct a remake/reboot of the first Police Academy.  The original 80′s movie has become a pop culture classic, being referenced by numerous other movies and TV shows and launching the rocket that is the career of Steve Guttenberg.
• Goodfellas TV show coming to AMC: A television adaptation of the Martin Scorsese classic gangster movie, Goodfellas, is coming to AMC sometime in the future but details are few and far between.  The author of the original book the movie was based on, Nicholas Pileggi, will be a writer on the show.
• Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and Ultimate Spider-Man debuting April 1:  DisneyXD is launching a block of programming in April called Marvel Universe that will feature the second season of the amazing Avengers: EMH cartoon and also see the debut of Ultimate Spider-Man, based on the fantastic series by Brian Michael Bendis.  Ultimate Spider-Man will seemingly tie in to the Marvel movie universe as Nick Fury and Agent Coulson will be recurring characters (with Chi McBride and Clark Gregg voicing respectively) and JK Simmons will reprise his role as J. Jonah Jameson.  Drake Bell will voice Peter Parker/Spider-Man.
• The Dark Knight Rises IMAX Tickets on sale now: It’s months away but AMC is pre-selling tickets for midnight IMAX showings of The Dark Knight Rises in select theaters in select cities.  By all accounts, they are going extremely fast.
• 24 and Party Down could be filming by Summer: Keifer Sutherland announced at the recent Television Critics Assosciation press event that the 24 movie should hopefully begin shooting by the end of April, early May and that will be a direct continuation of the show, picking up six months from the end of Season Eight.  Jack Bauer was on the run after going on a murderous rampage in NYC that involved several high ranking American and Russian officials.  Party Down, the cult Starz comedy, might also begin filming in the spring, according to Megan Mullally, and will pick up after season two of the show.
• Arnold Schwarznegger might be joining Stallone in The Tomb:  One of Sly Stallone’s upcoming projects is the prison thriller, The Tomb, where Stallone plays a prison security expert who is wrongfully imprisoned and must use his knowledge to escape.  The latest news is that Arnold has been approached to co-star which would be the greatest Stallone prison team up since Tango & Cash.

Starting in the 80′s and continuing into the 90′s, there was trend of taking hard R movies and turning them into kid friendly Saturday morning cartoons.  The Toxic Avenger, Police Academy and Rambo all had cartoon versions and Alpha Commando is actually the second Robocop cartoon.  After a five year hibernation, Robocop is reactivated in the year 2030 by federal agency Alpha Division to help them stop the evil terrorist group DARC or the Directorate for Anarchy and Chaos.  You can check out the first part of the pilot episode below, courtesy of Hulu.

If you’re a movie nerd then the answer is probably yes. In the newest issue of Toyfare (and I believe also mentioned on Slashfilm and The Totally Rad Show) a ridiculous amount of classic and cult movies came out in the year 1984.  Take a look and see if you agree.

• Ghostbusters
• Beverly Hills Cop
• Gremlins
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• The Karate Kid
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
• The Last Starfighter
• The Muppets Take Manhattan
• The Neverending Story
• Nightmare on Elm Street
• Police Academy
• Red Dawn
• Revenge of the Nerds
• Sixteen Candles
• Starman
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• The Terminator
• This is Spinal Tap
• Toxic Avenger

All those plus the birth of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Macintosh and the Marvel Secret War, that’s tough to beat.  If you have any memories of 1984 (and please share since I was -2 at the time) or if you think there’s a year that beats it let us know.