There are apparently two truths in Hollywood; people love watching Milla Jovovich fight zombies and they love watching Kate Beckinsale fight werewolves.  Just like Resident Evil, Underworld is somehow still making money and getting movies in the franchise and the latest, Awakening, was the top movie at the box office this weekend, making $25.3 million, up from the last entry, Rise of the Lycans, but a little under the last Beckinsale starring movie, Evolution.  Second place went to Red Tails, George Lucas’ tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen.  The movie made $18.8 million.  Last week’s number one, Contraband, dropped down to third with $12 million and putting it’s total to over $45 million and putting it past other recent Wahlberg joints like Shooter and Max Payne.  Getting a massive boost from it’s wide release was the divisive Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which went from 36th place last week to fourth this week with $10 million.  Beauty and the Beast 3D isn’t doing nearly as well as The Lion King re-release, dropping to fifth place from second and making another $8.8 million.  It’s all basically profit at this point but Beast probably won’t get the extended stay that the Lion King got.  The other new release, Haywire, had a pretty disappointing opening weekend with sixth place and a little over $8 million.  As far as Steven Soderbergh movies go, Haywire is definitely on the low end, only beating Solaris and his weird limited release movies.

The Resident Evil movie franchise has been resembling the zombies it features by refusing to die and now the fifth entry is set to debut this fall.   Milla Jovovich returns as Alice who, according to the official plot summary but in no way clear in the trailer, is captured and taken to Umbrella’s main operations facility.  She, of course, breaks out and must fight her way through the facility.  Favorites from the game series, Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong, make their film debuts and returning characters like Jill Valentine are featured as well.  Michelle Rodriguez’s character also seemingly returns, despite getting turned into a zombie in the first movie, but there’s so much cloning and shit going on in this series that anyone could die and come back.  It looks like the same Matrix rip off action that the movie’s have always featured, so if you’re into that sort of thing, you’ll probably be excited.  Check out the trailer below.

Name: Selene

Occupation: Vampire Death Dealer

Family: Mother, Father, Sister (All killed in the Middle Ages)

Allies: Michael Corvin, Alexander Corvinus and his mercenaries

Enemies: Lycans, Viktor, Lucian, Kraven, Marcus Corvinus, William Corvinus

Weapon(s) of Choice: Pair of Beretta 92FS pistols

Body Count:at least 17

Memorable Quote: “I am a Death Dealer, sworn to destroy those known as the Lycans. Our war has waged for centuries, unseen by human eyes. But all that is about to change”

See Selene in Action:

Another victim of the MGM bankruptcy delays is the Joss Whedon written and produced horror movie “Cabin in the Woods”, co-written and directed by the writer of Cloverfield, Drew Goddard.  Cabin in the Woods stars Chris Hemsworth as he and a group of friends go to an isolated cabin for a weekend of partying, which seems like they’re going to quickly become backhills murderer bait but there’s something way more complex going on as there looks like a Resident Evil style underground complex in control of the area around the cabin, which includes a force field and hordes of zombies.  That twist on the “backwoods party weekend goes wrong” formula makes this movie seem a little more interesting than the usual fare.  Lionsgate picked up the rights to the movie and are releasing it in April of next year and you can check out the trailer below.

One of those franchises that continues to live on for apparently no reason is the Underworld series.  The first two were incredibly stupid but had sort of a Matrixy stylishness and Kate Beckinsale in tight leather, so they were sorta fun.  I haven’t seen the third one but it’s apparently not good.  For the fourth movie, Kate Beckinsale is back as the vampire Selene, who has been locked in some sort of cryo stasis for 12 years but escapes to find a futuristic world where humans have discovered the existence of both the vampires and lycans and are trying to exterminate them.  If you threw zombies into this series it would probably be indistinguishable from the Resident Evil series.  The movie is out this January and you can check out the trailer below.

The Uncharted movie is being written by Kyle Ward.  Ward also wrote the script for a movie adaptation of the game Kane and Lynch, a Heatesque action/crime game.  He is also set to write a script for Hitman 2.  Yes, you heard right, a sequel to the absolutely atrocious Hitman.  I don’t remember that movie making that much movie but apparently it made enough to warrant a sequel.  No word on whether Timothy Olyphant will be back as Agent 47 but I kind of hope not as he was not the slighest bit intimidating or believable as the bald assassin.

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=25130

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