Disposable Media is re-launching just in time to be present at the October version of the London Expo. Held twice a year in London, at Excel, with a similar event in the midlands it always tends to be worth turning up to. After enjoying a bash at Batman: Arkham Asylum a couple of months before release at the last event this one does have something to live up to. But it is always pretty good.

Acting as the opening ceremony for London games week, there is plenty on offer. An impressive list:

Left 4 Dead 2
Assasins Creed 2
Bayonetta
Tekken 6
Monster Hunter Tri
Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom Ultimate All-Stars (including a playable Frank West, of Dead Rising fame)
Borderlands
Tales of Symphonia
Katamari Forever

And much cooler than any of those, maybe, a life-size Halo Warthog. There tends to be a few older games getting play too, Smash Brothers, Rock Guitar Hero Band type things. And so on.

Comics wise, the London Expo is rapidly becoming a significant event on the calendar. Guests include Alan Grant, David LaFluente, Bryan Talbot, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie…and about a billion more. Full list is here.

And finally on the movies front, perhaps most exciting is a panel with the creators of Colin, the no-budget zombie flick being released on Friday. Director Marc Price, actor Alastair Kirton and special effects guy Leigh Crocombe will all be present. Also on Saturday, a panel discussing the forthcoming The Losers will take place on the Saturday with the creators of the comic book it is based on, Andy Diggle and Jock (who really should be in the comics list too), there to chat about it as well as one of the actors from the flick.

There is a ton of other stuff too (we’ve not even mentioned the fact that there tends to be quite a lot of people who turn up in their cosplay outfits, frequently looking awesome), manga drawing competition, various anime stuff and the fact the place is filled with stuff to buy. Have a peep at the website for more information, ticket info and suchlike:

http://www.londonexpo.com/

Expect some form of thorough write-up after the weekend. Maybe a bit of twittering while we’re there, too.

Have fun and feel free to say hello…

The most succinct review of Brütal Legend would be a glance at the title. Note the umlaut. An umlaut may sometimes change the pronunciation of a word, but it also acts as storage for the amount of metal contained inside a product.

Brütal Legend contains a lot of metal.

After an accidental blood offering to the god Ormagöden, roadie Eddie Riggs is transported to an alternate-history fantasy world oozing with Norse mythology and loud music where demons have enslaved humanity and a strum of a guitar can do almost as much damage as the swing of a battle axe. In the hands of anyone other than Tim Schafer, creator of Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, this might not work. He makes it work.

The story is easily good enough to make you keen to play the whole game and the script is consistently funny and well-written. The characters (featuring voice work from an excellent Jack Black in the lead role, as well as support from metal icons Lemmy, Ozzy and Rob Halford) are rounded individuals that are each strong enough to carry the story forward. The world they live in is interesting, filled with impressive relics and fun to explore. Every aspect of the art direction is excellent, from the gorgeous metal-influenced landscapes to the fetishistic demons. Not only are the majority of the vast 108 track selection of metal included in the game excellent, they are treated as a proper soundtrack - tracks are selected to accompany specific points of the game before being unlocked to play on your car radio. The selections match the actions so well it almost makes Through the Fire and The Flames acceptable for a few moments. Almost. In any of these regards, it is unlikely you’ll find a better game all year.

It’s hard to apply that level of positivity to the rest of the game, sadly, which amounts to quite a generic third person action adventure. The combat is basic button bashing, with none of the fluidity seen recently in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Car handling for exploring the open world sections is fine, but specific driving sections rely too heavily on trial and error to find the correct route. Stage Battles, which take a large amount of the play-time, are basic real-time strategy sections that are a complete mess. They require you not only to defend yourself as normal but also to capture resources and build an army of various units to defeat an enemy doing the same things. The controls are both too complex and overly simplistic, requiring numerous button presses to achieve very little. Sometimes troops will go off on their own and win the battle, sometimes they will do seemingly nothing at all. As an idea it works, but the reality doesn’t come close to the intention.

Despite the problems, the majority of players will reach the end of the game. Some will be grateful that they are given the opportunity to see the whole story without spending hours, but anyone in a position to blast through it will likely feel short-changed as it can easily be completed in a weekend. Exploring the world will add a bit of time onto the end, but the numerous side missions are nothing more than generic padding - race this, deliver that, kill those - and will only appeal to the completist or those desperately seeking their money’s worth. Multiplayer doesn’t add much either, the implementation is fine but the stage battle sections of the game on which it is based soon become tedious and the thought of playing more is unlikely to appeal to many. It adds a selling point to the back of the box, but little more.

In buying Brütal Legend you are buying a flawed game, there is certainly no denying that. But for every flaw and crack that appears there is something entertainingly ace that helps to fill the cracks. The story is great from start to finish, the characters and the voice artists work brilliantly and there is some gorgeous art direction. The presentation and story ensure most of the game will be enjoyed and the rich vein of metal-love that seeps out of every pore of the game is a significant factor in that.

Great game? No. But awesome nonetheless. Awesöme, in fact.

It is reasonable to say that we are re-launching into a different world to the one we launched into in 2005. Our first issue was met with warmth, but criticised by some for how long it took to download on a 56k modem. When Volume 2, Issue 1 is released it will feasibly be downloaded by young folk who have never used a dial-up modem. Whilst we were a million, billion miles from being the first such online magazine it is probably accurate to say we were there a little too early. Combine a fair hop in the average monitor resolution and the speed of internet connections and something like DM becomes a lot more feasible.

Such developments have had impacts on everything we cover, too. Piracy is the obvious one, but equally there are exciting new opportunities opening up. Some are firmly established successes, such as iTunes for music and movies. Some are finding their feet, slowly but surely, such as Spotify. Others are new, such as Games on Demand, making Xbox 360 games instantly available or Longbox being the first piece of software that both acknowledges the existence of pirated comics and also sells perfectly legal content too. It isn’t just software either - the PSPgo and the DSi both make digital downloads of games simpler and legal. The iPhone even more so

In all these changes the content itself hasn’t been sitting still either with a massive variety and some fantastic quality coming from all angles, with both firmly established and brand new creators vying for attention. It’s impossible to write a list of all the fantastic stuff being released of late, but DM certainly has plenty to write about

Of course, it hasn’t all been good news since we went away, and it would probably be a little amiss to ignore the cult phenomenon of global recession that still seems to be kicking around. As the unpaid editor of a free magazine it seems unlikely to have a massive effect directly, but it will be affecting everything we are covering as well our readers. Hopefully things are going to be getting better quite soon

Despite the economic climate, we’re convinced that now is the right time to be re-launching. The run up to Christmas, especially for games, is always the most fruitful time of the year so we will definitely be hitting the ground running. But Disposable Media isn’t really about big budget releases, it’s about the smaller things. If you are a creator, whether you’re a musician or comic book writer, director or game designer and you’ve completed something you’d like us to take a look at, drop us a line

Likewise, if you are interested in joining Disposable Media as a writer, designer or illustrator, drop us a line with your CV and a few examples of your work (whether published or not…either is fine). In either case, check out the contact page to the left

In short, welcome back to Disposable Media. We’re very glad to be back, and we hope you enjoy it too.

Andrew Revell, Editor, Disposable Media

Madagascar rules the roost!

After the pre-teens made HSM 3 a resounding success it was the turn of the preschoolers this weekend with the release of Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa. The sequel to the 2005 hit sees the same voice cast returning as the animal heroes find themselves in Africa. With little competition, especially for the family market, Madagascar 2 could clean up with ease and while it’ll face some competition from Quantum of Solace next weekend, it’s already well on track to be a $100M+ movie. While not in the range of the mammoth Shrek Franchise, Madagascar and now the sequel still score big for Dreamworks. The first film ended up just shy of $200M ($532M global total) and there’s every chance this will see similar numbers. This has been a good year for Dreamworks Animation thanks to Kung Fu Panda back in the summer and now this successful sequel. Expect a third Madagascar movie to be greenlit for 2011, alongside the already announced Kung Fu Panda sequel.

A bit of a way behind but still an impressive debut, Role Models teams Seann William Scott with Paul Rudd, as two guys given a choice - jail time or community service helping out two troubled kids. Given that plot it needed an R-rating to cut down on the potential saccharine level. The comedy seems to have an air of Apatow about it (especially with Rudd’s involvement) but for once he’s nowhere to be seen. Rudd co-scripted the movie and it actually reviewed better than most of the release in the past few weeks (Changeling included) so some good word of mouth could keep it from dropping too quickly. Helped by just one major release next weekend, Role Models could see a decent return on its relatively low budget.

Having spent two weekends in the top spot High School Musical 3 drops a couple of spots as it quickly slows down. After a disastrous Halloween Friday the film recovered somewhat over the rest of the weekend but was still down over 60% from opening weekend (to be expected to some degree, given how incredibly front loaded the movie was). This weekend, while its drop is nowhere near as rough, the writing is on the wall for the film after just three weekends on release. But does Disney really care? The film cost just $11M and has a worldwide gross of $161M. That’s just the film itself, that doesn’t factor in the huge amount of merchandising that will have gone with the release of the film that stands every chance of having already eclipsed the motion picture grosses.

Changeling did well to debut so high in the top ten last weekend given its 1800 strong location count. The strong word of mouth helped, built up from its debut in a much more limited capacity a week earlier. Faced with three new releases the film still manages a decent weekend with a drop of just 22%. Changeling might have fared better in December but given Eastwood has another film set for release then, things might have gotten a little confusing.

Our final new release is the Samuel L Jackson/Bernie Mac comedy drama Soul Men. The deaths of Bernie Mac and co-star Isaac Hayes gave the film some sad notoriety but that hasn’t translated into box office. Both men have films still awaiting release which will hopefully be more fitting tributes. Soul Men features Jackson and Mac as two feuding band mates who agree to a reunion to celebrate the life of their recently deceased band leader.

After the slightly inflated total last weekend Zack & Miri is off just 35% in its second frame. More impressive is the fact that the film’s Friday to Friday percentage drop is zero. Either good word of mouth is working its magic or Smith fans were out trick or treating last Friday and made up the numbers this weekend. Smith has a fervent fan base and his film’s DVD sales often far outstrip their cinematic grosses. Add into the equation the low budget (Clerks 2 cost just $5M and Zack & Miri $25M) and we begin to see why Smith is a very profitable film-maker for The Weinstein Company. Zack & Miri stands every chance of being his biggest release to date and with only Quantum of Solace out next weekend, it should manage at least another couple of weeks in the top ten.

Saw V has recouped its budget and then some and is happy to drop quicker than its release partner High School Musical 3. Saw V looks like it’ll end up somewhere between Saw III & IV in terms of box office grosses. Meanwhile The Haunting of Molly Hartley, which has already recouped its $5M production budget and is just treading water waiting for its DVD release. No one is quite sure how this managed to score a cinematic release when there’s a wealth of straight to DVD horror which never does. A quick Halloween profit for producers Freestyle Releasing.

Rounding us out are The Secret Life of Bees, the Dakota Fanning drama and Shia LeBeouf’s thrille Eagle Eye. Both films are in profit but at least one of them is seeing its last weekend on the top ten.

Next weekend
Quantum of Solace

There is good news and bad news for the band. The good news is that whoever is doing their PR these days is clearly doing a better job. As well as putting on a show for their fans at the O2 Arena in London where they’re charging just £5 to get in (and the money that is made is going to charity, rather than the band) and that even Lars seems a bit more relaxed about the concept of the album leaking, even trying to sound almost convincing:

“Listen, we’re ten days from release. I mean, from here, we’re golden. If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days. Trust me. Ten days out and it hasn’t quote-unquote fallen off the truck yet? Everybody’s happy. It’s 2008 and it’s part of how it is these days, so it’s fine. We’re happy.”

Which all spells out a much nicer approach for the band, makes them almost likeable again.

The bad news for the band? A quite low quality MP3 leak of the album has escaped 9 days before the album is officially released. On a single torrent site, it has already been downloaded more than 5000 times with just over 1000 downloading it at the time of writing. From a single site.

All that remains to be seen now is if they react by moving the official release date forward.

It’s a pretty decent album though. Apparently.

If there is one thing that the internet is full of today, it’s Google releasing a beta of its new browser, Google Chrome. As it happens, this blog post is being typed in it and rest assured that everything about the Disposable Media website seems to work as expected from a quick scout around, which is pretty nice as it saves me mending things. 

Much as we love the internet and Disposable Media certainly wouldn’t exist in its current form without it, new browsers and suchlike aren’t something we tend to post blogs about. But google, being the clever folks that they are have managed to find a reason for us to post about it - they announced it in the form of a comic. (Which they accidentally leaked too early).

It’s not a half-hearted attempt at scoring some cool points either - it is 38 pages of explanation of what the new browser is, what it isn’t, how it works and what it wants to be. It goes into some pretty impressive detail, explaining how it manages memory, explaining its approach to stopping phishing, how its tabs work…all kinds of things. And it really should be boring, perhaps to the point of being unintelligible. But it is neither.

How does it manage it? By being written by Scott McCloud, basically. If anyone has ever read more than a couple of comics then “Understanding Comics” by McCloud is almost required reading. It explains the form brilliantly and is quick and easy to read despite being, basically, a lecture. The same goes for this Google Chrome infocomicmercial (that is never going to catch on, is it?) - it’s a lecture. And putting together a lecture takes research, something McCloud clearly did in spades, from interviewing the developers to playing with the browser itself. It treats the readers as intelligent, but still explains everything anyway. In short, it is very impressive for what it is and well worth a read.

And no, we probably don’t want comics to become synonomous with distributing corporate information and we don’t want it to become Scott McCloud’s niche either. But as a one-off, this is a work of excellence. Plus it convinced me to download the browser on day one, so it must have done something right.

The browser itself? Seems pretty good so far (the one thing that has impressed me most is a “close tabs to the right” button) but it’ll be days until I decide whether it has anything that annoys me or not…although the EULA seems to mean that Google own this post now, which is a bit odd. But they can have this one on me!

For those not familiar with Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken it is essentially a professional version of people putting on funny voices and being silly while playing with toys. This special Star Wars version is perhaps its ideal format - for a lot of people memories of Star Wars feature the action figures as strongly as it features the films themselves. Usually tainted with a slight hint of regret that they took the figures out of their packets and made them pretend-kiss each other when they could have been worth hundreds of pounds…

Once you’ve got your head around the high concept there isn’t much left to explain. It’s some very, very funny stuff - some sketches don’t work as well as others of course (the George Bush has force-powers section springs to mind) but they are very much in a minority compared to the good stuff. Boba talking to Han’s carbonite-encased body, talking space slugs complaining about not catching the Millennium Falcon as it flies off and so on. Plus how often have we been able to say that Jar Jar Binks is the best bit of anything Star Wars related?

The job of this review isn’t to try and highlight every funny bit, but rest-assured that it does a very good job indeed in that regard. But buying a DVD at a little less than full price for a single episode of a show is pretty hard to justify. The special features could really have made it worthwhile, but unless you have a massive crush on Seth Green you’re quite likely to reach for the fast forward key to avoid the extended footage of him and his “kerazy” staff being well “kerazy” and “zany” and suchlike. It genuinely made me wonder how they made something so funny as the main episode…but if you like that kinda thing then there is a good couple of hours to get your teeth into.

So what it comes down to is whether it is worth the money and what decides that is how much of a Star Wars geek you are. If you’ve only seen the flicks once and forgotten them there is very little here for you, but if you’re as much of a geek as the creators clearly are then you’ll probably get your moneys worth from repeat viewings with friends. It’s something almost everyone will enjoy, if not enough to buy it.

Despite that, it is still hard to recommend universally.

We are now truly in the doldrums of the August release schedule. The studios have run out of blockbusters and are happy to get off their hands all the trash they’ve been unsure what to do with for the past six months. Anything that should have gone straight to DVD but had a theatrical release clause written into its contract will see an airing this week and next. If you don’t believe that August is a dumping ground remember that there’s a Paul WS Anderson film released this week.

After a decent, if unimpressive start last weekend, Tropic Thunder has built upon the good word of mouth surrounding the project. It’s down less than 40% from last weekend’s taking and it needed to be, given the amount of new releases vying for business and it’s $92M budget. It’ll face five more movies next weekend (four new, one expanding), three of which are comedies. Many are blaming the slightly disappointing first weekend ticket sales on its poor release date while others have blamed increased competition (the film did open against five other movies and at least two strong older releases). Tropic will get hit again next weekend but needs to keep its drop below 50% if its to have any kind of chance of seeing $100M. On its side, the film has yet to open in a vast number of foreign locations.

It was Anderson’s Death Race that was expected to take the top spot but couldn’t even manage a number two position, that goes to Anna Faris’ Playboy Bunny turned sorority sister movie, The House Bunny. This is Faris’ first major lead that doesn’t have the word Scary in the title. On paper it shouldn’t have worked at all but the same could probably be said for Legally Blonde, a film which The House Bunny has much in common. Faris plays a Playboy Bunny who is kicked out of the mansion for being too old and ends up in a college sorority house full of geeks and losers, which simply won’t do. I think you can figure out the rest. Trailers weren’t enticing and while its been pretty much trashed by critics, Faris has been singled out for some good notices. The public obviously favoured laughs over ultra violence this weekend and it did well against fellow comedy Tropic Thunder (it was actually leading as we went into the weekend). There’s every chance the film cost less than $20M to make so come next weekend it’ll already be into a nice tidy profit and the studio will begin prepping a straight to DVD sequel.

The scourge of the internet fanboy returns this weekend with another disaster of a movie in the guise of Death Race, a retooled remake of the 1975 cult classic. Paul WS Anderson manages to rope in a bit of talent this time around, with Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson and well respected thesps Joan Allen and Ian McShane . It didn’t work. The film took a kicking from every side - the action fans still seemed to largely favour the six week old Dark Knight while everyone else wanted a few laughs. No budget details where available at the time of writing but one hopes for the sake of the film it was in the low thirties as it won’t have a chance to recoup much of anything. With the exception of Soldier, Anderson’s films generally turn a decent profit (which must be why Hollywood keeps employing him because it’s not for the quality of his work) but he’ll need some good international grosses and strong DVD sales to help this one out.

After becoming the second biggest film of all time last weekend, The Dark Knight has now set its sights on the $500M prize. It’s still in double figure takings in its sixth weekend of release, which is nothing short of amazing given the sheer amount of new films it’s come up against. Internationally things have really started to kick off with its gross now bordering on $330M, with plenty more locales yet to see a release. Expect a final domestic tally of around $530M. The question now - will Warner’s attempt a re-release closer to Christmas in a hope of pushing it closer to Titanic’s epic total?

Having not made much of an impact last weekend, The Clone Wars drops hard this weekend, off a nasty 61%. Seen largely as an extended advert for the upcoming animated series, The Clone Wars will be lucky to see another weekend of more than $3M. Even the Star Wars fanboys stayed away from this. The Pineapple Express, faced with yet another comedy, takes a hit (no pun intended) but manages to cross the $70M mark this weekend as it moves towards tripling its production costs. It fell perhaps a little quicker than the studio had hoped but it was always going to get a tough ride from Tropic Thunder, especially with that film’s release being just five days later. Expect the film to finish up around the $85M mark, and clean up on DVD. Meanwhile Mirrors, which had an ok start last weekend sees its horror audience switching loyalties to Death Race in its second frame of release. The film will now have to rely on foreign ticket sales in order to recoup its $35M budget.

Our final new release just about scrapes a place in the top ten. The Longshots, Fred ‘Limp Bizkit’ Durst family comedy, based on real life events, features Ice Cube as the former coach of a high school football team who gains notoriety when he hires the first female quarterback to enter in the Pop Warner Football Tournament. Reviews have been quite kind to the film but the public gave it a wide berth. Being one of the few family friendly releases at the moment was about the only thing that got it that place in the charts. Mamma Mia! moves into third place on the all time biggest musical chart, with only Chicago and Grease being more successful. Internationally the film crossed $200M this week and stands every chance of seeing a total global gross (factoring in its US take) of over $400M.

Rounding us out is The Mummy 3, which might just manage $100M before the end of its theatrical run. Thank god for its international take of nearly $200M you can hear the studio execs shout. Elsewhere, the Rainn Wilson comedy The Rocker failed to break into the top ten even though it was in more location than at least half of the chart. Hamlet 2 saw a limited release (and some strong reviews) this weekend and scored just under half a million dollars from 103 locations. It’ll expand into 1500 locations next weekend. Finally Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona might have dropped out of the top ten but was off just 20% from last weekend, giving it a box office total of $8.5M.

Next Weekend -

Babylon A.D

Disaster Movie

College (Red Band Trailer)

Traitor

Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Jane’s Addiction - Nothing’s Shocking
Megadeth - Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying
Stevie Ray Vaughn - Texas Flood
No Doubt - Best Of collection (specially compiled, much like The Who one)

Personal favourite is probably the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but you’ve got to expect Megadeth to be the most popular announcement. Perhaps the most interesting is No Doubt, who up until now have been very chummy with Guitar Hero rather than Rock Band - their tracks appeared as DLC for GH3 and on the tracklistings for both the DS version and Guitar Hero World Tour. Good news for those not keen on bands becoming exclusive to one franchise or the other.

Secondly, and much, much more interesting is a rumour Disposable Media has turned up itself directly from someone who really ought to know what they are talking about when it comes to releasing the game, but has to remain nameless. The rumour is that Rock Band 2 will be rocking a worldwide release date, meaning the UK gets it shortly after the US release date of September 14th. It’s backed up by a couple of things - EA have stated they want it out in 2008 in the UK and more recently that a Rock Band 2 DLC section recently appeared on European Xbox Live.

The only thing that seems odd about this is that Rock Band, ie. the first one, has finally gained a European release date for PS2, PS3 and Wii versions and happens at about the same time, September 19th. Rock Band 2 for 360 owners coming out the same day Rock Band comes out for everyone else? Sounds crazy, but it could just work…

2 The Dark Knight $16.7M - $471.1M

3 Star Wars: The Clone Wars $15.5M - $15.5M

4 Mirrors $11.1M - $11.1M

5 Pineapple Express $10M - $62.9M

6 The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor $8.6M - $86.6M

7 Mamma Mia! $6.4M - $116.4M

8 The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2 $5.9M - $32.1M

9 Step Brothers $5M - $90.8M

10 Vicky Christina Barcelona $3.7M - $3.7M

After four weeks in the top spot, The Dark Knight drops down a place but still manages to see off two wide opening new releases in the guise of Mirrors and The Clone Wars (more later). Our number one movie this weekend is the Ben Stiller directed comedy Tropic Thunder, about a group of highly strung actors who have to use their boot camp training when they find themselves in a real war zone. Robert Downey Jnr. adds another set of good reviews to the ones he scored with Iron Man earlier in the year and the film generally impressed critics. Thunder, like Pineapple Express last week, opened on a Wednesday, perhaps to avoid the five other releases debuting this weekend. It’s Wednesday take was well below the par of Pineapple Express too but unlike that film, had a higher Friday than its day of release. Going into the weekend the film scored $8.3M and combined with its Wednesday & Thursday total has done pretty well, but perhaps on the lower end of expectations.

Tropic Thunder wasn’t cheap to produce, with a rumoured budget of between $100-150M, so it needs subsequent strong weekends to keep it shored up. It should easily become Ben Stiller’s biggest grossing film as a director, with only The Cable Guy ($60M life time gross) offering any competition in that area, but won’t trouble some of his bigger films as an actor. Where does it go from here? It’ll face off against four wide opening releases next weekend so it needs a weekend-weekend drop of less than 50%, something it might not achieve if its as heavily front loaded as it seems, so Stiller will be relying on some good word of mouth to help out. I can’t imagine the recent controversy over the ‘Simple Jack - Full Retard’ topic has damaged the film in any serious way, though Stiller’s critics may disagree.

The Dark Knight might have dropped a place but is still performing ridiculously well in its fifth weekend of release. It’s officially the 2nd biggest grossing movie of all time in North America, having overtaken Star Wars some time on Saturday. (Though it’s worth noting that that Star Wars gross includes ALL releases of the film, including its 1982 reissue and the retooled version in 1997) It’s widely admitted that the film won’t best Titanic now but should go on to see $500M by the end of its run. Internationally the film is sitting on over $275M and still has a large number of foreign locales awaiting the release of the film. Expect a global total of over $1 billion.

Speaking of Star Wars, the animated The Clone Wars is our second new release this weekend but isn’t seeing the kind of numbers usually associated with the franchise. In fact, given it’s the only animated family movie in the top ten, that relatively low gross might have been inflated further by parents just looking for a film for the kids to see. The Clone Wars is said to sit in the same time frame as the 2003 series with the same name - somewhere between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. It’s also being seen as a lead in for the (new) TV series set to debut later this year. It marks the first time that Fox haven’t distributed a Star Wars related films, this one being handled by Warner Bros. Critics savaged the film (something it shares with the Star Wars Prequels) and given its low start and the four new films released next weekend, it won’t be hanging around long. The film should perform well on DVD, but it’ll be interesting to see how successful the TV show ends up being. George Lucas won’t worry though, he’s said to be prepping Star Wars 3D.

Mirrors is Alexandre Aja remake of the Korean film Into the Mirror and features Kiefer Sutherland as a security guard patrolling a department store, recently ravaged by fire, that used to be a psychiatric hospital involved in schizophrenia experiments. From that description you can kind of see it won’t be a pseudo-sequel to Night at the Museum. We’ve not seen much horror in recent weeks (save for The Love Guru) so fans of the genre have turned out in their droves, and having Kiefer Sutherland star hasn’t harmed the film either. Less bloody than Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes remake or Haute Tension, it’s still pretty grisly and served as perfect alternate programming to Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express. It should finish up around $35M (recouping its budget) and do well as an unrated DVD release.

Pineapple Express, faced with the Wednesday release of Tropic Thunder, is off 57% in its second frame of release. Having lost out on the top spot last weekend thanks to its Wednesday release hampering its overall weekend total, the film has been crushed somewhat by Thunder and the other new releases (not to mention The Dark Knight). All that said, the film has already almost doubled its production budget so no one is worrying to much about the quick dropoff of this release.

The Mummy 3’s international take is more than making up for its poor performance domestically. It should just about make $100M in the US before the end of its theatrical run but on the international stage the film is already sitting on over $145M. It should overtake Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which has dropped from the top ten and shed around a 1000 locations this weekend. Sisterhood 2 comes off a bit better than its release counterpart, Pineapple Express, but like that film, it’s already in profit. A second straight to dvd sequel is not out of the question.

This week should see Mamma Mia! cross the $300M mark in total global sales, over $110M of that in North America. It’ll surpass Hairspray’s $118M within the next ten days. The Abba themed movie has been in profit from some time and will no doubt clean up on DVD at Christmas. Step Brothers won’t see $100M before leaving the top ten but it shouldn’t take many more weeks to reach that level, making it Ferrell’s fourth $100M+ movie of his career (while he was in Wedding Crashers, it was only in cameo role so has not been included in his $100M movies).

Woody Allen, whose last top ten entry was 2000s Small Time Crooks, just about sneaks in with Vicky Christina Barcelona, the success of which appears to be based solely on a same-sex kissing scene between Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson (Allen’s current muse who has featured in three of his last four films). Expect a number one for Allen if his next film is called Scarlett Does Penelope.

Next weekend…

Death Race - Restricted NSFW Trailer

The House Bunny

The Rocker

The Longshots

Hamlet 2