Warner Bros. Pictures has cast Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and Jeremy Irons will play Alfred in the upcoming Superman-Batman film.

The castings, announced Friday, come two weeks after Warner pushed production on the untitled “Superman-Batman” movie to the second quarter of this year and set a release date of May 6, 2016 as the studio departed from a July, 2015 slot.

Huh. I don’t even… wait, what?!?

File this under, did not see this coming. But same with Affleck I guess. And again with Gal Gadot. Let’s just file this movie under, “least expected casting,” shall we?

After getting over…

TJ brings you up to speed on the goings on in the film world — and some stuff not really in the film world. First up, we’ve got Angelina Jolie’s new ‘Maleficent’ trailer. It’s spooky, scary, and really good looking. And it’s set to an unfamiliar arrangement of a familiar tune. And then TJ strayed a little off the beaten movie path this week to talk about Nintendo in three separate articles. But hey, he’s an adult, he can do what he wants, right? One of the more exciting films coming up in the beginning of this year is ‘The Lego Movie’ and TJ has lots of goodies for you on that front. Be sure to check out the clips from the upcoming film! Chad and TJ talked about ‘The Lone Survivor’ this week on ‘The MovieByte Podcast’. It was better than either of them were expecting. Paramount will bow to Christopher Nolan’s wishes and deliver the upcoming ‘Interstellar’ on both film and in digital format. And in the “say what?” category, ‘Taken 3’ is currently in the works. How many more times can these Bryan Mills and co go through this? And of course, as always, find out what to see this weekend!

Well, Man of Steel may have turned out to be one of the more terrible films I’ve ever seen in my life, but it had some doggone good trailers.  So I’m not sorry that The Lego Movie has given their latest trailer the Man of Steel trailer treatment. This is completely with Hans Zimmer’s triumphant soundtrack and everything.

I can’t wait to see this movie. It opens on February 7^th.

Reuters headline is a bit link-baity (which is why I wrote my own headline), but there’s information here I want to talk about.

Nintendo Co Ltd dug in its heels on a game console strategy that has dragged it into operating losses for three years in a row, ignoring calls to go mobile and promising instead to wow customers with health-related innovations.

Investors were unimpressed, wiping $1.2 billion from the value of Nintendo’s Tokyo-traded shares in little more than 30 minutes on Thursday, as CEO Satoru Iwata made his pitch for a “non-wearable” project in 2015 to help users stay… Read The Rest

I’ve gotta say this is pretty good marketing despite the fact that I am not at all looking forward to this film. Not in the slightest. But releasing part one of a two part trailer, the second part which airs during the Superbowl seems like pretty great thinking.

Unfortunately nothing in this trailer makes me change my mind at all. Check it out:

There is absolutely nothing new that I can recommend this weekend. That’s January at the cinema I reckon. Still, there are a few things holding out that are worth seeing. And some that aren’t. I’ll do my best to help you narrow down your choices.

Lone Survivor — R

I saw the trailer and I was really not interested. I just didn’t want another “guys war movie”. But then it was getting pretty good critical reviews. And audiences love it. So I decided to see it and talk about it. Let’s just say that I did not find it as compelling as many (including Corey, who wrote the MovieByte Review). But…

So I hate sports, I hate watching it, and most of all, I hate football. I know how unAmerican that is of me and I don’t care.

But, one thing cool that does happen during the Superbowl is we get a lot of spots and trailers for upcoming films. And a lot of them can be good and creative. I don’t know that this one is very creative, but it seems pretty good. While I’m still figuring on this movie being both bad and sacrilegious, I have a tiny shred of hope for it. So I’ll continue to wait tentatively.

It is interesting, this interest in Christian themed films of late. I don’t quite know what to…

“But hey, if she’s gonna run off with another man, why not Jesus?”

What. Did. I. Just. Watch? Oh my goodness this is so bad — SO BAD! Please tell me this is some sort of alternate reality. What is it about any Christian themed film that tends to be so cheesy? Forget the fact that the premise of this work by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is just so fatally flawed in terms of theology, I mean I can’t get past how terrible this clip is. Absolutely awful. And the music… geez…

Deadline reports that the awesomely named “Taken 2” helmer Olivier Megaton will be back to direct “Taken 3,” with Liam Neeson set to reprise his role as the man with special skills. Even more, Forest Whitaker is in talks to join the cast — which will also include Maggie Grace — though there’s no word yet on his role. Villain? Ally? Guess we’ll see, but hopefully Bryan Mills has learned that he probably shouldn’t travel in Europe for a while. In case you were wondering, Luc Besson and Kamen both wrote the script this time out too.

This is not going to end well. See also: Taken 2: Please…