Category: Films

HAPPY FEET: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE carried momentum from its record-breaking opening weekend with a strong performance through the Thanksgiving holiday, posting the highest grossing second weekend ever in IMAX theaters for a DMR release. On 79 IMAX screens, the 3D-animated feature made at Animal Logic contributed an impressive $2.25 million of the film's weekend total of $37 million. The cumulative domestic IMAX total now stands at approximately $6 million, with the film's overall domestic total topping $100 million.

ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN, from Blue Sky Studios and Twentieth Century Fox Animation, which grossed an exceptional $193.4 million domestically, arrives Nov. 21, 2006, on DVD (Twentieth Century Fox Home Ent., $29.98). This pre-Thanksgiving positioning for Black Friday, of course, is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year.

"We had tremendous success four years ago with a similar release date for the original ICE AGE,'" said Steve Feldstein, svp marketing communications for Fox Home Ent. The first ICE AGE sold more than 14 million units.

BORAT!: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN easily held its lead atop the box office chart for the weekend ended Nov. 12, 2006, taking in $28.2M for Fox. The politically incorrect and controversial comedy now has a two-week cume of $67.1M.

Holding second and third were THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE (vfx from Tippett Studio and Furious FX), which delivered $16.9M and $41M or Buena Vista, and the 3D-animated FLUSHED AWAY, which captured $16.6M and $39.8M for Aardman/DreamWorks.

Last night (Nov. 8, 2006), 300 director Zack Snyder introduced 30 minutes of footage for his upcoming feature based on Frank Millers graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

Set for release March 9, 2007, by Warner Bros., there was plenty of gory battle footage screened along with the opening 10 minutes that set up the epic struggle between Greece and Persia, which helped usher in the worlds first democracy. Gerard Butler plays Spartan King Leonidas, Lena Headley plays his Queen Gorgo and Rodrigo Santoro plays Persian King Xerxes.

Walt Disney Pictures has set June 27, 2008, as the release date for Pixar’s upcoming animated feature, WALL-E, directed by Andrew Stanton (FINDING NEMO) and produced by Jim Morris, formerly president of Lucas Digital and ILM’s exec in charge of production.

The premise about robots marks the ninth Pixar animated feature, with Stanton also serving as a writer on the TOY STORY, A BUG’S LIFE, TOY STORY 2 and MONSTER’S, INC.

Meanwhile, Brad Bird’s RATATOUILLE, the next Disney/Pixar release, comes to theaters June 29, 2007.