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It was close, but Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby beat Step Up by a nose at the box office. The Will Ferrell comedy came in first place for the second week in a row, finishing with $23 million. That brings the NASCAR-laugher up to $91.2 million for two weeks, making it an enormous success for Sony, considering the budget was $72 million. Disney’s Step Up danced its way into second place with an extremely impressive $21 million....

Chloë Grace Moretz may only be in her twenties, but it feels like she’s been with movie audiences for a long time now. After moving to New York City with her mother and brother, Moretz developed an interest in acting after helping her brother read his lines. After landing a role on the CBS series The Guardian, it was only a matter of time before she transitioned into larger roles. She was six years old when she started acting in a professional capacity and twelve years old when she landed her breakthrough roles in the films Kick-Ass and Hugo....

Get ready for some apples and arrows on the silver screen. According to Variety, The Adventures of William Tell is moving forward through producers Fred Caruso and D. Constantin Conte and their Caruso/Conte 2010 Pan-European Fund, as well is independent investments. The script by Cornelius Schregle is based off the 1805 play by Frederich von Schiller, which encompasses the life of the Swiss hero who once had to shoot an apple off his son’s head to gain freedom from Austrian persecuters....

Along with shows like Car 54, Where Are You, and The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy is one of those classic sitcoms that not only serve as excellent examples of the time, but also still hold up today. Aside from the occasional dated reference (and the unavoidable, yet thankfully sparse, negative depictions of marginalized people), these shows continue to make audiences laugh, thanks to sharp writing and superb performances. Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Fred Gwynne, and Lucille Ball continue to be heralded as masters of the form, with Ball serving as an icon for multiple generations of comediennes making some of the greatest shows of all time (via Rolling Stone)....

The horror genre isn’t just haunted houses, jump-scares, and exorcisms. While those are all great elements that are the focal point of many a hit horror movie, some entries in the horror catalog lean on other genres — like action — to make a well-rounded scary movie. From fighting zombies to barely escaping danger, there are a lot of horror-action movie hybrids out there. On paper, it may sound like an odd match-up, but the horror and action combo works out really well....

The Good An entertaining tale with two winning performances by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. The Bad Overall, I honestly have no complaints about this DVD. As I sat watching The Brothers Grimm I was beside myself. I was not in this state because what I was watching on screen was not agreeing with me, but more because I kept waiting for the movie to get bad and it never did....

Warner Bros. is in negotiations with Robert Zemeckis to remake the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. According to Deadline, the studio plans to use the original script (which is credited to thirteen different writers) in bringing this old tale back to life. Walt Disney Pictures has long been trying to return to the Emerald City with its own planned prequel Oz: The Great and Powerful, which Sam Raimi is developing to direct himself....

The Good This show brought real family problems into real family homes The Bad I am used to these Roseanne ad> Roseanne: The Complete Fifth Season was an interesting one that saw a lot of changes befall the Conner household. As this season took place in 1992 and the US was in the midst of a recession, the 25 episodes in this set deal with what a lot of Americans were going through at the same time (we just couldn’t have all our problems solved in 30 minutes or during a season)....

Robin Williams is set to take on his first feature role in a televised sitcom since making a name for himself on the ABC hit Mork & Mindy. He will play father to Sarah Michelle Gellar on the CBS workplace comedy Crazy Ones. The series will be a single-camera take on the world of advertising, and will revolve around the dynamic relationship between Sydney Roberts and her dad Simon, who have decided to work together....

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has become the most widespread and varied franchise in the history of Hollywood. With new films, shows, shorts, animated series and more releasing in a near-constant stream, the franchise is expanding at an exponentially quicker rate every year. In the 15 years since the beginning of the franchise, it has grown from releasing one or two entries a year to, this year alone, having now released three feature films, three live-action series, two hour-long “Special Presentations” and more in the last year that has expanded the MCU in new directions....

Star Trek is boldly going where the past has gone before. At a Paramount+ panel during the Television Critics Association press tour, a select few who received press badges were treated to the first official footage from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Although the clip focused on Celia Rose Gooding’s Nyota Uhura, the panel included some other tidbits that Trekkies are sure to go wild over. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Akiva Goldsman, the co-showrunner of the upcoming Paramount+ streaming series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has confirmed that a link exists between the show and one of Trek’s most notorious villains, Khan Noonien Singh....

Starz announced today its first original unscripted series, The Chair, created by Chris Moore, the Executive Producer of Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting and Emmy-nominated Project Greenlight. The Chair is a competition documentary series that follows two directors through the process of bringing their first feature to the screen. The up-and-coming directors, who have unique backgrounds and skill sets, will be provided with an identical screenplay which they must craft as their own film....

In a bold vote of confidence, Starz executives announced plans today to order a second season of the ground-breaking new original series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, set to premiere Friday, January 22nd at 10 pm ET/PT. The unusual timing of the renewal, more than one month prior to the debut of the highly anticipated program, gives returning executive producers Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi, Joshua Donen and Steven S. DeKnight (who is also the head writer on the show) the green light to start production in New Zealand on 13 new episodes in the first quarter of 2010....

Warner Bros. is hoping to lure in Steven Spielberg to direct their epic Gods and Kings, which was formerly known as Moses. No formal offer has been made yet, but it is said that the director has read the script written by Michael Green and Stuart Hazeldine. The story is said to chronicle Moses’ entire life span from birth to death. The script is based off the Book of Exodus and other stories from the Bible’s Old Testament....

Stranger Things is one of Netflix’s most popular original shows and will debut its long-anticipated fourth season next month. The show has always had a sizable budget, but the upcoming fourth season of Stranger Things will be the most expensive one yet. As per The Wall Street Journal, Netflix has spent a whopping $30 million per episode on season 4. That’s three times more than the previous seasons of Stranger Things, which cost around $8-$10 million per episode....

Beat-em-ups have been a staple of drunken bar crawls and childhood memories for a long time now. There’s something oddly hypnotic about the genre’s simplicity – walk right, punch things, grab food and improvised weapons, repeat. One of the best in its genre, the Streets of Rage franchise perfectly encapsulates everything that makes beat-em-ups so enjoyable: the amazing soundtrack, the colorful cast of characters, and the simple, ’80s-tinged setup of fighting the criminal mastermind Mr....

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY CABLE MOVIE BEATS THE NETWORKS In a rare instance of a cable television show beating the broadcast networks in the ratings, Sunday night’s telecast of Broken Trail, starring Robert Duvall, wound up as the highest-rated program of the night, drawing 9.8 million viewers. The first part of a two-parter (the second installment aired on Monday), drew more than twice the number of viewers who tuned in to watch Desperate Housewiveson ABC (4....

i>SEMI PRO IS SLAM DUMPED Box-office receipts barely dribbled in over the weekend for Will Ferrell’s basketball spoof Semi-Pro. Although it beat all other contenders for the top spot, the movie wound up with only $15.3 million in ticket sales, yet another disappointment for its ailing distributor, New Line Cinema, which last week learned that it was being absorbed by Warner Bros. Many box-office analysts had predicted that the movie would earn $25-30 million, somewhat below the $33 million earned by Ferrell’s 2007 ice-skating comedy Blades of Glory....

Superman casting rumors are going to keep coming until an official announcement is made whether you like it or not, and the latest one is certainly from left field. Though Joe Manganiello seems to be the smartest choice to play the son of Jor-El thus far, Movienewz is reporting that Zack Snyder wants his former Watchmen star Matthew Goode to play Clark Kent. Despite being British (hey, that didn’t stop Andrew Garfield from winning the coveted role of New York born and breed Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2....

CBS has ordered two more editions of Survivor to be broadcast during the 2009-2010 season. These will mark the 19th and 20th editions of broadcast television’s longest-running reality competition series. Jeff Probst, who won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Series, will continue as host. “Survivor is one of CBS’s signature series and a symbol of enduring quality and entertainment on prime time television,” said Nina Tassler, President, CBS Entertainment....