Step aside, Julia, Reese, and Meryl — Sandra Bullock is officially unstoppable. At some point over the weekend, her Jesus, race and football film, “The Blind Side” became the first female star driven film to take in $200 million at the box office, as reported by Variety. With the wild, word-of-mouth success of this film and last summer’s “The Proposal” she’s the Box Office Queen of Hollywood. ‘The Blind Side’ has garnered her noms from SAG, the Golden Globes and the Broadcast Film Critics, and people are starting to talk Oscar, maybe even for Best Picture too. Inexplicably, the Globes also tossed her a nomination for best actress in a musical or comedy for ‘The Proposal.’ This milestone will definitely help drive the momentum of the film and firmly cements Bullock as the go-to female star for any watered-down, mildly heartwarming tales for middle-aged housewives and the hubbies who love them, “All About Steve” be damned.
The Sundance B-Side site has your first look at “Holy Rollers,” the film starring Jesse Eisenberg, about Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn smuggling Ecstasy in the late 90s. Eisenberg stars as a young man caught between the allure of the secular world and his religious life. This is the feature debut from director Kevin Asch, and also stars Justin Bartha and Ari Graynor. Great cast, thought provoking topic, late 90s period piece? Count us excited for this. Look for it sometime this year after it hopefully gets distribution at Sundance.
Anne Thompson reports that social media movie site Flixster has acquired critics site Rotten Tomatoes from IGN/News Corp, creating one movie site behemoth with an estimated 30 million monthly visitors worldwide that will reach viewers on multiple platforms to compete with leading movie sites IMDb, Yahoo Movies and AOL Moviefone. The partnership combines the critics reviews of Rotten Tomatoes with user reviews of Flixster to be the definitive destination site for movie trends and content such as trailers, reviews, and news.
Disney sealed their deal with Marvel Entertainment and also acquired a 10% stake in Marvel guru Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment, via THR’s Heatvision Blog. In 2007 they created a first-look deal with POW!, and the projects of that marriage are still in development including “light-hearted mystery tale” Nick Ratchett, action-adventurer “Blaze,” and something called “Tigress,” rowr. POW! also has several home entertainment projects on fire, which means straight to DVD (home entertainment is increasingly becoming a lucrative sector for filmmakers and studios). THR posits that POW! might be an access point for Disney to Lee’s creative concepts for everything from gaming to the Disney 3D channel and maybe even give a little insight into their new baby, Marvel.
