TRAILER: "Lee Daniels' The Butler"

What was once called simply The Butler has had its name changed due to a legal dispute from WB, claiming the title from a silent film they had released in 1916. The Weinsteins fought this of course, and reached a compromise to put the director's name in front of the title. So, we now have Lee Daniels' The Butler, based on the memoir by Eugene Allen, who served as a White House butler for eight presidencies during the 20th century. The film comes out Aug 16th.

 

Toronto International Film Festival Lineup

TIFF is widely considered to launch the Oscar race when it kicks off in the fall- there's always a movie that gets its breakthrough there, last year it was Silver Linings Playbook, which of course went on to win Best Actress and become one of the major nominees of the year. Here are the expected 2013 Oscar contenders set to debut here in 2013:

Opening Night Film:The Fifth Estate (Dir. Bill Condon, starring Benedict Cumberbatch; about WIkiLeaks founder Julian Assange)

Closing Night Film:Life of Crime (Dir. Daniel Schechter, starring Jennifer Aniston, John Hawkes, and Tim Robbins; a thriller based on Elmore Leonard's 1970's novel "The Switch") 

Other Contenders:

Gravity (Dir. Alfonso Cuaron, starring Sandra Bullock) 

Labor Day (Dir. Jason Reitman, starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin) 

August: Osage County (Dir. John Wells, starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts) 

12 Years a Slave (Dir. Steve McQueen, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender) 

The Past (Dir. Asghar Farhadi, starring Berenice Bejo; from France; premiered at Cannes and won the Best Actress Award)

Rush (Dir. Ron Howard, starring Chris Hemsworth) 

Dallas Buyer's Club (Dir. Jean-Marc Vallee, starring Matthew McConaughey) 

Blue is the Warmest Color (Dir. Abdelletif Kechiche, starring Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux; from France; won the Palme d'Or at Cannes) 

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (Dir. Justin Chadwick, starring Idris Elba) 

It's looking to be quite a year for Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch, who not only has The Fifth Estate, but shows up in August: Osage County and 12 Years a Slave as well. 

BOX OFFICE 7/19-7/21: R.I.P.D. and Red 2 Buried Under The Conjuring

Saw director James Wan's The Conjuring scored a $41 million debut this weekend, marking the second highest opening ever for an R-rated movie. The horror film was helped by some pretty great reviews (85% Fresh) and good word of mouth (A- CinemaScore) from audiences who aren't afraid to rate horror flicks from C to F if they don't like it. It will probably hold strong in the coming weeks to make at least $100 million. The other openings of the week were less impressive, with Red 2 hauling in $18 million, which is $3 million less than the original's debut in 2010, and R.I.P.D., with Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges, flopped hard, earning just $12 million for a film with a $150 million dollar budget, and not even making the top 5. The other new release on this crowded weekend was the Dreamworks animated film Turbo, which fell victim to Despicable Me's continued dominance in the family film arena, and earned a soft $21 million.

Top 5

  1. The Conjuring- $41.5 million
  2. Despicable Me 2- $25 million
  3. Turbo- $21.5 million
  4. Grown Ups 2- $20 million
  5. Red 2- $18 million

The holdovers continue to do well, with Despicable Me 2 amounting a huge $276 million total so far and well on its way to over $300 million, while Grown Ups 2 is at $79 million and likely to cross $100 as well. Unfortunately, Pacific Rim fell 57% since last week and looks unlikely to impress much in its domestic gross, but overseas totals are still to come on that one. Next week, it's a pretty open weekend for Hugh Jackman with The Wolverine, and Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (with an apparently Oscar-buzzy performance from Cate Blanchett) coming out in limited release.

More from Comic-Con: Superman and Batman to team up

The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop: WB's big news this morning is that Zach Snyder's follow up to Man of Steel will be a Superman/Batman team up movie, with a release date set for 2015. Henry Cavill will return as Supes, while it's not yet known who will play Batman in the film.  It was also announced that a Flash movie is set for 2016 and The Justice League for 2017 (but that's tentative). David Goyer is set to write the script for the Superman/Batman movie.

Call me less than thrilled by this news. To me this says WB doesn't trust the Superman property on its own (even though it's brought in a pretty hefty box office haul so far, if not as much as they wanted), and even though I had a glimmer of hope that the next Superman would be better, since they introduced Clark Kent, what this says to me is that it's just going to be more excessive fight scenes and pounding stuff.

And can I just say, where the hell is the Wonder Woman movie? Why does no one believe that a superhero movie about the most famous female superhero ever would make any money? That is absolutely ridiculous, there are just as many fangirls out there as fanboys (just look at The Hunger Games franchise), and to not even try it while beginning to trot out the second tier ones continues to piss me off.