2013’s easily most maligned film is the Brad Pitt’s zombie drama, “World War Z.” Originally due Christmas 2012, the movie was delayed until just this past weekend because the principal creatives involved, including the studio suits, didn’t believe the ending of the movie worked. Eyed as a potential trilogy from the start, as news of the delay arrived, so too did reports of drama spring from the project like a leaky dyke. Seven weeks of reshoots were called for, writers had to craft a new ending, and things got so bad apparently Pitt stopped talking to director Marc Forster (his DP Robert…

Here’s one from last week I meant to post and never got around to.

Shortly before the release of Taken 2, star Liam Neeson sounded deeply skeptical about the prospect of a Taken 3. “I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he shrugged. “I can’t see a possible scenario where audiences wouldn’t go, ‘Oh, come on…! She’s taken again?’” But for an eight-figure salary, he’s apparently willing to keep an open mind.

Neeson is in final negotiations to star in the next Taken movie, which is being scripted once again by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen.

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For Taken 3, Deadline reports that…

‘Monsters’ scared off the box office in last weekend’s box office totals. ‘The Avengers’ is finally on Netflix if you have been waiting for a way to see the film. ‘Independence Day 2’ will not feature Will Smith, but Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum will be returning to the franchise. TJ has a bit more to say on ‘Man of Steel’ and morality. A ‘World War Z’ sequel has been greenlit. Mark Strong is a rumored contender for the role of Lex Luthor in the upcoming ‘Man of Steel 2’. Rick Santorum has been named CEO of EchoLight Studios which seems a bit odd but maybe good things will come of it. There’s a new co-host in town for ‘The MovieByte Podcast’ and TJ gives you a quick run down. Marvel has scheduled an untitled film for 2016, what it will be about is anyone’s guess. The new ‘Terminator’ film will be a reboot because of course, we must reboot all the things! Pixar has promised more original stories because (shocker) they’ve been focusing too much on sequels and prequels. And of course, TJ runs down the new films this weekend and what you might like to see.

This weekend the box office will really be “heating” things up and taking the “white house down” while vampires live their secret lives. Let’s take a look, shall we?

New This Weekend

The Heat - R

I’m kind of looking forward to this film but I have this nagging feeling that I’m going to be disappointed. Still, seems like there should be some good laughs in it, right? (surely there will be).

Uptight and straight-laced, FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) is a methodical investigator with a reputation for excellence—and hyper-arrogance. Shannon Mullins (Melissa…

Deadline reports that Julianne Moore is being lined up to star in the two-parter conclusion “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay.” She would be taking the role of President Alma Coin, the head of District 13, who leads rebellion against the Capitol and factors very heavily in the lines of Katiness, Prim, Peeta and more. It’s a major role, and while the paycheck is probably nice, we’d have to imagine the fact that the script is being written by “Game Change” scribeDanny Strong (you’ll recall she played Sarah Palin in that film to great acclaim) is likely a nice incentive as well.

I honestly…

Jackson and his team are currently finishing the second film, The Desolation of Smaug, as well as the Extended Edition of An Unexpected Journey.

This is presumably because the film had been cut so short and they left so much on the cutting room floor because of the amount of discipline they exercised in editing this film…

Will it enhance the film or just make it feel longer?

Well…

• “You are going to get some serious Dwarvish disrespect of the elves at Rivendell.” – Peter Jackson
• “You are going to get more of Hobbiton. We always wanted to wend our way through Hobbiton,…

One common complaint about Disney Pixar over the past few years concerns their reliance on sequel/prequel ideas.

Today, they’re admitting it’s become an issue and are pledging to change course.

Speaking to BuzzFeed, Pixar President Ed Catmull revealed that the animation studio now plans to release one original story a year.

“For artistic reasons … it’s really important that we do an original film a year,” says Catmull. “Every once in a while, we get a film where we want or people want to see something continuing in that world — which is the rationale behind the sequel. They want…

Ahem, your attention please. Another franchise is joining the reboot train:

Once known as “Terminator 5” colloquially, Paramount revealed in a press release that the new “Terminator” film will start over in reboot form and relaunch a new trilogy. Rebooting/remaking a film isn’t hard, it’s been done countless times (see the upcoming “RoboCop” or the rather lackluster “Total Recall” for recent examples), but it is harder to pull off in a satisfying and creatively unique manner when you don’t have as much source material to work with. Then again, there are four “Terminator” films of varying…

I may have not liked the film as much as I wanted to, but one thing I really did like about the film is the visual style. Well it looks like a lot more blue and green screens were involved in achieving that visual style than I had even thought. I mean this video is just astounding. It reveals so much of the what we thought were real locations in the film were not at all.

I know I like to rag on films for employing too much CGI, and sometimes I lament the demise of Celluloid film. But let me assure you that this is the sort of thing I love. We really are living in a great time period for…