Tomorrowland and Poltergeist open in wide release this weekend. Jennifer Aniston comes to your local Redbox with Cake and Unfriended opens at Keller 8 Cinemas.

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Recapping Last Weekend

Pitch Perfect 2 (and 35-year-old Rebel Wilson) easily won the weekend box office in its debut with $69.2 million in receipts, officially. Mad Max: Fury Road and its $150 million budget opened with $45.4 million. Avengers: Age of Ultron‘s receipts dropped 50 percent in its third weekend of release, but still brought in just shy of $39 million. Hot Pursuit saw a drop of in its second weekend’s receipts to $5.7 million. Furious 7 rounded out the top five with $3.6 million in its seventh weekend of release. Furious 7 has now brought in almost $344 million domestically and just shy of $1.5 billion worldwide.

 

Tomorrowland

George Clooney, Britt Robertson and Hugh Laurie star in this “live-action spectacle from Disney“. Disney has been somewhat secretive with the marketing for Tomorrowland, causing me to not really be sure what the film is about. After reading this piece by Mark Hughes over at Forbes, I definitely plan on seeing this over the weekend. Brad Bird, who previously directed The Incredibles and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol turned down the opportunity to direct Star Wars: The Force Awakens to direct this Disney project.

Variety expects Tomorrowland to pull in about $40 million this weekend with another $10 million coming on Memorial Day.

Tomorrowland opens tomorrow at MX Movies in downtown St. Louis.

Poltergeist

Gil Kenan directed this remake of the 1982 Tobe Hooper-Steven Spielberg horror classic. Justin Lowe of The Hollywood Reporter called this “a solid remake“. While there’s no official word this remake will spawn a trilogy like the original, here’s an interesting look at 20 Things You Might Not Know About The Original Poltergeist Trilogy. Let’s hope none of the cast members of the remake mysteriously die.

Catch It Before It’s Gone

Keller 8 Cinemas in South County welcomes The Longest Ride, Get Hard and Unfriended this weekend. Of these three, I only saw Get Hard, which I enjoyed. Not as funny as Kevin Hart’s last film, The Wedding Ringer, but still pretty funny. That being said, if you like the feeling of seeing a scary movie in a dark theater, this weekend may be your last chance to see Unfriended.

Make It A Redbox Night

Among the new releases at Redbox this week are Taken 3, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and Cake. Jennifer Aniston drew rave reviews during the last awards cycle for her performance as the troubled Claire Simmons in Cake. Anna Kendrick also appears.

 

In Other Movies News

Independence Day 2 will hit theaters in Summer of 2016, without Will Smith in the starring role. Vivica A. Fox, who played Smith’s wife in the original will reprise her role. She recently talked to Edward Pevos of Mlive at MotorCity ComicCon where she dropped a few hints about the sequel. Among the tidbits those were that Jeff Goldblum will be returning for the film, which takes place about 15 years after the original.

There are talks for Tom Cruise to return as Jack Reacher in a sequel to the 2012 film based on the Lee Child novels. As a big fan of the books, I’m still not pleased that Cruise was picked to portray the character, but I’d still be happy to see a sequel. It’s being reported that Edward Zwick is being looked at the direct the sequel.  Zwick previously directed Cruise in The Last Samurai, which worries me.

Cooties Trailer Released

You may never let your kids eat chicken nuggets again after seeing this trailer for Cooties. Elija Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill and Jack McBrayer star as teachers trying to stay alive in the face of an outbreak of a virus that is turning the students into flesh-eating monsters. Cooties is scheduled to be released in theaters and on demand on September 18.

 

Pan Trailer #2 Released

Hugh Jackman stars as Blackbeard, Garrett Hedlund is Hook, Levi Miller stars as Peter Pan and Amanda Seyfried stars as Mary in this big budget live-action Peter Pan story. Joe Wright directs Pan, which hits theaters across the country on October 9.

 

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