Yesterday we told you that Ricky Gervais was in talks to reprise his character from the first Night at the Museum for its sequel, now titled Night at the Museum 2: Escape from the Smithsonian, and that whether or not he joined the film depended upon his very busy upcoming schedule. I told him he has to do it (seeing as he was the best part of the first film), and he definitely wants to do it, but we'll see. Now Variety tells us today that Night 2 will take Avatar's release date of May 22, 2009, with the highly-anticipated James Cameron 3D film shifting over to a December 18, 2009 release. This kinda sucks, as I'm sure a lot of you were looking forward to Avatar kicking off the summer of 2009 with a bang. Instead, it will arrive shortly before Santa does. (Am I the only one who would rather the big films come in summer? December is always so ... hectic. Shopping, lists, fat men in suits ... I could go on.) Then again, Avatar will now be released on the same weekend that saw Titanic back in 1997. So perhaps it's a lucky weekend for Cameron.

Now that Night at the Museum 2 is swapping locations, they can also include some more historical figures. Variety tells us that Reese Witherspoon has been approached to play Amelia Earhart. The trade also indicates that other cast members from the first film might return (like Gervais), but we won't hear about those moves for another few weeks. Ben Stiller is already attached to reprise his role from the first film. As a straight-up kids film, I kinda enjoyed the first Night at the Museum. While the plot was cruddy, and the bad guys weren't all that scary, the flick was very alive and entertaining ... for kids. I'm curious to see what they do with the sequel. On another front, Fox also announced that it will release Ice Age 3 in digital 3D on July 1, 2009.

By now, you're probably aware that Joel Silver is producing a big-screen version of Speed Racer, and that the Wachowski Brothers (those guys who dabble in S&M and cross-dressing, as well as helm films like the Matrix trilogy) are writing and directing. Well, not much was known about the project besides what I just mentioned (except for the fact that Vince Vaughn first pitched the idea a long time ago) -- but now, Silver is starting to leak a few little tidbits.

First, the Wachowskis were inspired to direct the film after watching Ice Age 2 -- yes, Ice Age 2 -- open to large box office numbers. They found that "very interesting" and thus were committed to making a big family-type film of their own. According to Silver, the film won't deviate too far from the cartoon series -- he says, "It's the story of Speed Racer, but in a way that you've never seen anything like that before in your life. The Wachowskis brought a tremendous sense of wonder and magic to that story. They just had a different way of seeing the story, in the way they do on everything they do. And we're going to shoot all of that in Germany". Ah Germany, where the speed limit is whatever you want it to be.

The last bit of coolness Silver offered up was a bit of a tease as to whether or not they'll be going live-action or straight CG. Says Silver, "I don't know if we'll even use any cars." Hmm, the Wachowski Bros. loved how much money Ice Age 2 made, they're shooting in Germany and not using any cars? What do you make out of that? Pic is set to race into theaters at some point in 2008.

While we haven't seen much of him lately (except for a vocal appearance in Ice Age 2: The Meltdown), Seann William Scott is looking to explode within the next couple years, what with eight films currently in different stages of production. Although I've never found him appealing as an actor (if there was an anti-Seann William Scott fanclub, chances are I'd be a member), Hollywood apparently loves this guy's shtick.

Case in point: Production Weekly reports the dude is in talks to star in Big Brother (which IMDB lists as Big Brothers), an edgy comedy to be directed by Luke Greenfield. Pic is said to revolve around a "selfish businessman who's forced to participate in the Big Brother program and is paired with a tough teen." As you can imagine the two initially butt heads, though later become friends after our shady hero teaches his new apprentice about all of the immoral things he used to climb the corporate ladder. Big Brother hopes to begin production in January.

Thanks primarily to the massive appeal of both Ice Age: The Meltdown and X-Men: The Last Stand, Fox International on June 9 became the first studio to pass $1 billion in international sales this year, reaching that mark in record-breaking time. Industry-watchers are mucho impressed by the studio's strength -- crossing that threshold only six months into the year is a sign of serious strength, apparently, particularly "in today's highly competitive international marketplace." Fox won the race to $1 billion last year as well, but that success came nowhere near this fast. Of course, when you've got one movie -- Ice Age 2 -- pulling in $441 freaking million, that gives you a pretty good push towards that billion dollar goal.

In addition to Ice Age 2, major profit-drivers for the studio thus far have been X3 ($160.1 million), Walk the Line ($64.8 million) and, troublingly, The Pink Panther and Big Momma's House 2, which made $74.4 million and $64.3 million respectively. Yikes. Yet to come from Fox this year are such potential moneymakers as My Super Ex-Girlfriend, The Devil Wears Prada, Night At The Museum and, sigh, Garfield 2.

Ice Age: The Meltdown demolished the box office competition this weekend, coming in with just over $70 million - a total that gives it the second-biggest non-summer open of all time. While the fact that the film was released on such a massive number of screens (almost 4000, the fifth-highest total ever) certainly contributed to the numbers, the total is nevertheless impressive and, depending on the final totals, could leave it tied with The Incredibles for the-second biggest animation debut. Whew.

Spike Lee's hit Inside Man held onto second place, its total of $15.7 million a dropoff of a not atypical 45% from last week's numbers. Finishing a surprising third was (the awesome) ATL, which made a very respectable $12.5 million on only 1602 screens, the second-lowest exposure of any film in the top ten. The fourth and fifth biggest earners this weekend were the still-strong Failure to Launch ($6.6 million) and V for Vendetta, which drew $6.5 million in its third week of release.

Slither, the weekend's third major debut feature, made a disappointing $3.7 million, despite strong reviews and a very wide open. Lucky for Slither, however, it was released in the same week at Basic Instinct 2, which was such an unmitigated disaster ($3.2 million on about 1500 screens) that no one will ever talk about how badly the movie about the slugs did. The full top 10 is after the jump.

AICN first reported yesterday that a teaser trailer for the new Simpsons movie would be showing before Ice Age 2. Tonight, a whole bunch of people confirmed the rumor to be true and, folks, it looks like we're really getting a Simpsons flick. Yay! Or nay?

From the reports coming in, it doesn't seem like it was a whole lot to get excited about. At least, not yet. Supposedly, the teaser opens up on a close-up of the Superman logo. Then, the image slowly widens to show Homer sitting on the couch with a Superman shirt on. A voice announces a Simpsons movie coming in 2007, then Homer says, "We better get started." After that, we hear Monty Burns' all-too-familiar phrase, "Excellent." Right now, it seems the official title of the film will be Simpsons: The Movie.

Word is this same teaser will play during Sunday's episode of The Simpsons - so be on the look out. Anyone else see the teaser and want to chime in? Was there more to it? Or less?

Four big new releases this week, and every last one of them was screened for critics. What is the world coming to? A couple of the movies earned surprisingly good reviews (hooray for ATL!), while one in particular is just as awful as we had hoped/feared/expected. In brief: ATL is surprisingly solid, Slither rocks, Ice Age: The Meltdown has a really funny squirrel in it, and Basic Instinct 2 is a huge, insulting, boring pile of crap. Read on for details.

• ATL: I'm not the only one who noticed with pleasure how gentle - no drinking, no juvenile drug use, hardly any swearing - ATL is. Not only does it not follow the expected Urban Drama path, but a lot of critics actually think it's pretty good. The handful who don't like it are are more "meh" than hateful, and generally acknowledge that the film's slew of debut performances are promising.
  

• Slither: Everyone pretty much agrees with Scott on this one: if you're a horror geek, you'll love it. The rest of us, however, probably shouldn't bother - not because it's bad, but because we're not really equipped to appreciate either the movie's clever gore or its references to the genre's illustrious past. (Or, as Robert Ebert put it, "If the name Troma means nothing to you, what are you doing reading a review of Slither in the first place?")
  

• Basic Instinct 2: Shock of shocks, the movie sucks. Suffering alongside James, few critics were able to wring any pleasure whatsoever out of this one, even in the old reliable "so bad it's good" sort of way. I mean, you know things are bad when a critic calls your Sexy-with-a-capital-S movie "unforgivably dull" (it's amazing how many reviews use the D-word), particularly when that's one of the kinder descriptions offered.
  

• Ice Age: The Meltdown: It's a bad sign when virtually every review (including Kim's, which is really the only one you need to read to know what the film is like) talks in glowing terms about a squirrel doing battle with a nut, a bit that is totally unrelated to the movie's plot and takes up minimal screen time. Very, very bad. That said, there are a few critics who disagree with the disappointed masses and think the film outdoes its predecessor - parents, you may want to limit yourself to these reviews, since you're likely to be seeing the movie 700 times.
  

Let's be perfectly fair here: I didn't hate Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. That isn't to say I loved it, either. More like I was just mostly indifferent to it, in much the way that I'm mostly indifferent to grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwiches. Admittedly, the film got off to a bit of a rocky start with me, with its opening scene of a gang of thuggish Ice Age animal children picking on and beating up on Sid the sloth, their camp counselor. Note to people in Fox script department: parents really hate it when you encourage their tykes to truss up the nearest adult and play pinata with him with a wooden baseball bat. Even my kids were appalled by that bit; my six-year-old son, eyebrows knitted in his "worried" look, whispered, "Mommy, why are those kids being so mean to Sid? That's not really very nice, right, Mommy?"

As you can probably guess from the title, the sequel to the popular Ice Age is about the global warming that caused the end of the Ice Age. You could probably get all scientific and actually prove that because Ice Age 2 had a (insert extinct mammal of your choice here) in it, there's no way the end of the Ice Age was happening by Ice Age 2, because everyone knows that (extinct mammal) was extinct well before the end of the Ice Age. I don't care. Things are warming up, the ice is melting into natural waterslide parks, and the thick fur coats are starting to feel a little out of season. Nobody's too worried, though, until a traveling salesman comes by warning of a gargantuan flood that's going to engulf the cozy valley you call home. The only way out, he says, is through the end of the valley, where a giant boat is waiting. Um...a boat? A flood? Wait, did I walk into a Veggie Tales movie by mistake?

 

Dear James,

You asked whether having kids makes me view kid flicks differently, and whether having kids makes reviewing a family film easier. To answer the first part of your question - to be honest, I'd have to say that my perspective on movies in general is inexorably affected by being a parent, especially when a film concerns parent-child relationships in any way. I remember bawling my eyes out when I took my then 2 1/2-year-old daughter to see Tarzan while I was pregnant with my older son; the whole "You'll Be in My Heart" sequence just tore me up. It's interesting that you used your niece's reaction to Finding Nemo as an example, because the opening of that film was upsetting to me as well. It's kind of a Disney thing to do in the mother within the first minutes of the film, though; I suspect it must be in the Disney Bible somewhere that the change that kicks off the movie should involve the death of a parent. That's a much scarier to most kids than the mythical boogie-man.

(As part of our constant efforts to not stop thinkin' about tomorrow, we at Cinematical are going to try yet another new thing: MovieMail. For a week, Kim and I will post small missives to each other about Ice Age 2 and whatever came up for us off the top of our heads ... and next week, two other Cinematical writers will talk about, uh, something else. -- J.)

Dear Kim:

It's not like this job offers immense possibilities for existential hand-wringing and angst; we're not transplant doctors or social workers, after all. But the one thing I do wonder is if, in fact, having kids makes you see kid films in a different way. I know you saw Ice Age 2, and I know you took a few progeny to it last Thursday night; I slumped in, childless and tired, for a 10:00 am screening here in SF last Saturday.

And when I watch a movie like Ice Age 2, I have to -- or, rather, I try to -- think like a parent. I know my nieces were traumatized by the opening of Finding Nemo; so when I watch a kid flick I wonder "Might there be anything in this that would be too intense for a kid? Any grown-up jokes that I might not want a hypothetical kid asking questions about? Could a kid follow the storyline?"

I guess what I'm asking is, does having kids there make reviewing a kid's film easier … or just different? Oh, and how'd you like it? And isn't it interesting that Jay Leno can be unfunny in almost every medium?

Yours,

J.