70 years after a horrific alien war, an unusually gifted child is sent to an advanced military school in space to prepare for a future invasion.

That is the most concise synopsis you’ll find of the upcoming film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s 1985 science fiction novel Ender’s Game. Written and directed by Gavin Hood, Ender’s Game stars Asa Butterfield (Hugo) as the film’s child protagonist Ender Wiggin, Harrison Ford is Colonel Graff, Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) is Valentine Wiggin, Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) is Petra Arkanian, Viola Davis (The Help) is Major Anderson, and Sir Ben Kingsley is Mazer Rackham. There are many who thought a film adaptation of this sci-fi classic couldn’t be done, but take a look for yourself in the premiere trailer embedded above; as a big fan of the book I’m excited to see more. Are you?

Ender’s Game hits theatres November 1.

Jump after the break to view more trailers. (Click here for more…)

Real quick: here’s the very first photo from the production of Marvel’s Captain America sequel subtitled The Winter Soldier. Chew on this for a while because Cap doesn’t return to the big screen until April 4, 2014.

After the break, catch the official poster for another Phase 2 Marvel movie Thor: The Dark World, out November 8. Watch the debut trailer for it right here. (Click here for more…)

I present to you the most well put together trailer of the year so far; here is Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. This is sure to be one gritty and exciting Superman origin story as audiences will get to know the man behind the cape. Out June 14.

Jump after the break to view more trailers. (Click here for more…)

Last month Peter Jackson hosted a live event from New Zealand previewing his next Hobbit film The Desolation of Smaug and Warner Bros. was kind enough to allow him to upload an edited six-minute excerpt from it. In the clip embedded above Jackson takes questions from fans regarding his new Hobbit trilogy with two surprise guests. Though the excerpt doesn’t reveal all that much, Jackson gets to show off his humorous side and viewers are privy to concept art and some behind-the-scenes footage.

The journey continues in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug on December 13, 2013.

The next Disney-Pixar film in the works is the long-awaited sequel to 2003′s award-winning Finding Nemo. This time, moviegoers are Finding Dory, the friendly-but-forgetful blue tang fish voiced by Ellen DeGeneres. Nemo director Andrew Stanton returns with DeGeneres for the sequel. “There is no Dory without Ellen,” said Stanton in a press release. “She won the hearts of moviegoers all over the world—not to mention our team here at Pixar. One thing we couldn’t stop thinking about was why she was all alone in the ocean on the day she met Marlin. In Finding Dory, she will be reunited with her loved ones, learning a few things about the meaning of family along the way.”

Finding Dory takes place about a year after the first film, and features returning favorites Marlin, Nemo and the Tank Gang, among others. Set in part along the California coastline, the story also welcomes a host of new characters, including a few who will prove to be a very important part of Dory’s life. The remainder of the voice cast has not been confirmed, but who else except Albert Brooks could bring Marlin back to life?

DeGeneres also commented on the exciting news. “I have waited for this day for a long, long, long, long, long, long time,” the comic and talk show host said. “I’m not mad it took this long. I know the people at Pixar were busy creating Toy Story 16. But the time they took was worth it. The script is fantastic. And it has everything I loved about the first one: It’s got a lot of heart, it’s really funny, and the best part is—it’s got a lot more Dory.”

And get this: they’ve even set a date so mark your calendars accordingly. Finding Dory swims into theatres November 25, 2015.

[Via Disney]

Here’s the first full length trailer for the upcoming Carrie remake from director Kimberly Peirce starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore. You probably already know how this goes but, Carrie follows a sheltered high school girl who unleashes her newly developed telekinetic powers after she is pushed too far by her peers. The anticipated remake’s debut has been pushed to October 18.

Jump after the break for more trailers. (Click here for more…)

Ever since this totally awesome motion poster for The Wolverine came out fans have been waiting on pins and needles for a full blown trailer. This week it finally arrived. Hugh Jackman is back as one of the X-Men’s most formidable members in a standalone installment directed by James Mangold. Here’s the official synopsis:

Based on the celebrated comic book arc, this epic action-adventure takes Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the most iconic character of the X-Men universe, to modern-day Japan. Out of his depth in an unknown world, he will face a host of unexpected and deadly opponents in a life-or-death battle that will leave him forever changed. Vulnerable for the first time and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel but also his inner struggle against his own immortality.

The Wolverine hits theatres July 26. After the break catch the international trailer that plays out quite differently than what you see here.

Jump after the break for more trailers. (Click here for more…)

Here we have trailer numero dos for Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment’s Despicable Me 2. In it the minions are as entertaining as ever, and we get a better sense of what Steve Carrell’s Gru is up to this time around. The all-star voice cast lineup also includes Kristen Wiig, Al Pacino, Miranda Cosgrove, Russell Brand, Steve Coogan, and Ken Jeong. The animated flick is set to open July 3. After the break, catch a time-lapse clip of the “Despicablimp” getting made and pushed out across the nation.

Also after the break, watch more trailers! (Click here for more…)

Three years later we are finally getting a sequel to the breakout superhero flick Kick-Ass. Jeff Wadlow (Never Back Down) replaces Matthew Vaughn as director (Vaughn is still onboard as a producer) and stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse reprise their roles as Kick-Ass, Hit Girl, and the vengeful Red Mist, respectively. (Red Mist, however, bestows a new name unto himself in the sequel but I’ll won’t spoiler the reveal here.) Joining the cast is Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes, the leader of the city’s band of vigilante superheroes. A spectacularly red-band trailer packed with gory action and a foul-mouthed (not-so-little anymore) girl awaits.

Kick-Ass 2, based on Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.’s graphic novel, hits theatres August 16.

So many trailers, so let’s get right to it. First up is our very first look at the final installment of director Todd Phillips’ Hangover trilogy. The Hangover Part III brings back Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis as the three best friends that anyone could have and they’re going back to Vegas where it all began. The overall plot is still being kept under wraps and this teaser trailer doesn’t reveal much except that Alan’s dad played by Jeffrey Tambor passes away and John Goodman shoots someone in cold blood in front of the guys. The official terse synopsis goes like this: “This time, there’s no wedding. No bachelor party. What could go wrong, right? But when the Wolfpack hits the road, all bets are off.” A laugh-out-loud teaser and the promise that this one won’t mimic the wedding/get drunk and blackout/wake up and remember nothing formula from the first two films should have you extra excited for the Wolfpack’s last hurrah. The Hangover Part III opens May 24. (After the break check out the movie’s official poster that parodies the eighth and final Harry Potter ”It All Ends” poster.)

Jump after the break to view more trailers. (Click here for more…)

If you’ve seen the movie Pitch Perfect then you’ve already fallen in love with actress Anna Kendrick and her unexpected and infectious Bellas audition song featuring only her voice and a yellow cup. The simple song is currently the most popular track available for download on iTunes off the movie’s soundtrack. It even managed to climb Billboard’s Hot 100 list. The song is so hot that an extended, more produced version of the track has been made and soon it will find its way to radio stations this month. Though the remixed version strips away the track’s inherit a capella nature, it still manages to delight. The radio version is called “When I’m Gone” and you can preview it in its entirety in the box embedded above. And if you still haven’t seen Pitch Perfect, what are you waiting for?!

Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane proved to be a very entertaining host for the 85th Academy Awards on Sunday night. This year’s Oscars also shined the spotlight on musicals and even featured the First Lady announcing the winner of Best Picture which went to Argo. In addition to taking home the most coveted prize of the night, the Ben Affleck directed film also won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. The movie that won the most golden statues was Life of Pi with four; Ang Lee was named Best Director and the visually stunning movie also won Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. Les Miserables racked up three Oscars for Best Sound Mixing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Anne Hathaway was named Best Supporting Actress. Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for his uncanny portrayal of Lincoln and Steven Spielberg’s period piece also won Best Production Design. Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained also took home two awards for Best Original Screenplay and the incomparable Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor. Elsewhere, Jennifer Lawrence’s performance in Silver Linings Playbook crowned her Best Actress, Pixar’s Brave was named Best Animated Feature, and Adele’s “Skyfall” deservedly won Best Original Song.

For the full list of winners, jump after the break. (Click here for more…)

Did you know…

Although roughly a third of “The Avengers” is set in New York City precious little was actually filmed there. ILM crew members photographed 7-miles of city streets from a variety of heights and at different times of day totaling 250,000 images. The crew then digitally recreated roughly 20 square blocks of mid-town Manhattan using a variety of techniques. Live action shoots were held primarily on sound stages in New Mexico and in the streets of Cleveland.

Too many words for ya? Go “behind the [movie] magic” and discover how exactly the Industrial Light & Magic visual FX team assembled the Avengers in NYC without even being there. Incredible stuff.

Wedding Crashers duo Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are teaming up again for The Internship. The comedy directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) and written by Vaughn and Jared Stern follows the guys landing a coveted internship at Google. The all-star cast also includes John Goodman, B.J. Novak, Aasif Mandvi, Rose Byrne,Max Minghella, and apparently Will Ferrell makes a cameo. The question remains if he can one-up his Chaz “Mom the meatloaf, f–k” appearance from Wedding Crashers. A very enjoyable trailer for The Internship is above. It hits theatres June 7. And who cares if it’s really one giant advertisement for the company behind Android–this looks funny.

Jump after the break to view more trailers. (Click here for more…)

At this year’s D.I.C.E. summit (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain), co-founder of game developer Valve conversed with filmmaker J.J. Abrams about collaborating on future projects. Gamers and sci-fi fanatics alike, perk up. Newell and Abrams have expressed their interest in bringing some of Valve’s most popular titles–Half-Life and Portal, specifically–to the big screen. ”We’re going to try and figure out if we can make a Half-Life movie or a Portal movie together,” said Newell. Additionally, Abrams said that he’d be interesting in working with Valve to create video games inspired by Bad Robot films. Apparently this partnership has been in the making for awhile. “We sort of reached the point where we decided that we needed to do more than talk,” Newell admitted. Though details beyond these are sparse, this is something to definitely be excited about and when more comes through the pipeline you’ll know.

Update: The exciting announcement laid out above came at the very end of a rich 20-minute conversation during which the Bad Robot and Valve founders discussed storytelling methods in movies and video games. At first the two make friendly jabs at each other’s work but quickly the back-and-forth evolves into a stimulating discussion about the importance of the relationship between the viewer/player and the on-screen experience. Watch the full clip courtesy of D.I.C.E. after the break.

[Via Engadget; Joystiq] (Click here for more…)

The Muppets are coming! The Muppets are coming! After a hugely successful return to the silver screen in 2011′s The Muppets, Kermit and the gang are back for more in a followup sequel The Muppets …Again!. James Bobin is back at the helm and again he co-wrote the script with Nicholas Stoller. Also returning is Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords fame who won a shiny Oscar for Best Original Song “Man or Muppet” which was featured in the first film. What’s this one about? Read on…

Disney’s The Muppets …Again! takes the entire Muppets gang on a global tour, selling out grand theaters in some of Europe’s most exciting destinations, including Berlin, Madrid and London. But mayhem follows the Muppets overseas, as they find themselves unwittingly entangled in an international crime caper headed by Constantine—the World’s Number One Criminal and a dead ringer for Kermit—and his dastardly sidekick Dominic, aka Number Two.

Jason Segal and Amy Adams will not reprise their roles. Instead fresh blood will invigorate the franchise; Tina Fey (30 Rock) plays feisty prison guard Nadya, Ty Burrell (Modern Family) is Interpol agent Jean Pierre Napoleon, and comedian Ricky Gervais is the villain’s sidekick Dominic.

“It’s great to be back working with the Muppets,” said Bobin, “some of them even remember my name occasionally now. As for the movie, it’s a tip of the hat to the old-school crime capers of the ’60s, but featuring a frog, a pig, a bear and a dog—no panthers, even pink ones—along with the usual Muppet-y mix of mayhem, music and laughs.”

The Muppets … Again! will shoot on location in London and in Hollywood, as well as in the famed Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, just outside of London. Save the date: March 21, 2014.

Eye the Muppets in London in the colorful image pasted above (Walter’s back!) and after the break you’ll find Gervais keeping Kermit and Miss Piggy close to his vest. (Click here for more…)

Ever since Entourage came to an end in September 2011 fans of the longrunning HBO series have been drooling over the idea that the boys might return for one last hurrah on the big screen. Over the past couple years creator Doug Ellin and producer Mark Wahlberg have expressed interest in doing a movie; most recently in September Ellin told Deadline that he was fully invested in completing a feature-length script. And now, it’s officially a-go: Warner Bros. has given the green light for a theatrical version of Entourage. Ellin (who has completed the script by now) is set to direct and Wahlberg will produce with Stephen Levinson. Adrian Grenier (Vinny Chase), Kevin Connolly (E), Kevin Dillon (Johnny Drama), Jerry Ferrara (Turtle), and Jeremy Piven (Ari Gold) are all expected to reprise their memorable roles.

Ellin is keeping wraps on the film’s plot but he spilled this to Deadline in September. “There are interesting developments about Ari as a studio head…But foremost is the friendship between the guys who are still hanging out and going to fun parties, and it continues with the same characters,” he said.

And now we wait for the trailer!

[Via Deadline]

A cute little animated short called Paperman played in front of Wreck-It-Ralph back when it was in theatres and now Disney Animation has released the six-and-a-half minute black-and-white clip for all the world to see. If you haven’t seen it yet, set aside that short amount of time and literally get swept away by this romantic tale that doesn’t require dialogue to get its whimsical and charming point across.

A groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow today and you know what that means–spring comes early. And when it does there’s a scandalous movie coming out to celebrate the occasion. Disney girls Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens are all grown up in director Harmony Korine’s upcoming flick Spring Breakers, also starring Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, and James Franco with dreads and a grill. Basically it’s about four college girls who party too hard, land in jail, and get springed free by a local drug dealer. The trailer promises sex and drugs and money and girls. If that’s your speed, March 22 is the day to remember.

Jump after the break to view more trailers. (Click here for more…)

The Force is strong with this one. Today news spread like wildfire that J.J. Abrams–the same man who resurrected Star Trek for the big screen–will do the same for the other massively popular set-in-space franchise Star Wars. The Wrap broke it first.

This fall George Lucas sold his Lucasfilms to Disney for $4 billion and his partner Kathleen Kennedy signed on to ensure the making of a new Star Wars movie. Shortly thereafter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3) agreed to pen the script and now the immense project has a star director in Abrams. Star Wars: Episode VII aims for a 2015 release.

Neither Abrams nor Disney has commented on the story yet. What’s interesting, however, is that just a couple months ago Abrams told Entertainment Weekly that he wasn’t interested in taking on Lucas’ lucrative franchise. He admitted that he had “original stuff” he was hoping to do next. He went on to say how much Star Wars influenced him at a young age and that it ignited his passion for visually epic storytelling. “As a kid I was always a fan of special effects,” he said. “Watching movies I was constantly trying to figure out how they did it, whatever the effect was. Star Wars was the first movie that blew my mind in that way; it didn’t matter how they did any of it because it was all so overwhelmingly and entirely great. It was funny and romantic and scary and compelling and the visual effects just served the characters and story. It galvanized for me; not for what was exciting about how movies were made, but rather for what movies were capable of.”

In a two-part interview with Hero Complex conducted in 2009, Abrams talked about the challenge of reimagining Star Trek in a post-George Lucas Star Wars world. “I’m just a fan of Star Wars,” he said. ”As a kid, Star Wars was much more my thing than Star Trek was. If you look at the last three Star Wars films and what technology allowed them to do, they covered so much terrain in terms of design, locations, characters, aliens, ships — so much of the spectacle has been done and it seems like every aspect has been covered, whether it’s geography or design of culture or weather system or character or ship type. Everything has been tapped in those movies. The challenge of doing Star Trek — despite the fact that it existed before Star Wars — is that we are clearly in the shadow of what George Lucas has done.”

It is definitely going to be interesting to see exactly how J.J. Abrams plans to bring Star Wars back into the fold compared to the way he did it with Star Trek. He’s a powerful player in the sci-fi arena, and personally I have no doubt he’ll get it right. What say you?

Update (1/25): Disney has made the news official in a press release. Check out some choice quotes from Kathleen Kennedy, George Lucas, and J.J. Abrams after the break. (Click here for more…)