I think it’s safe to say that more than a few people are interested in Christopher Nolan’s conclusion to his Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. Indeed Empire is convinced it’s big enough that they are billing their latest issue, featuring the first interviews and pics from the movie, as ‘The Ultimate Exclusive’. They’ve also got dual covers you can see above and below, featuring Batman and Tom Hardy’s Bane.
The mag hits shelves on Thursday, at which point we’ll be able to tell for ourselves whether it really is the ultimate exclusive, or if Nolan is being as ridiculously secretive as he normally is (we wouldn’t be surprised if Empire had to wrestle these images from the director’s hands as he’s so reluctant to let anyone know what he’s up to until its time for a films’ release). The Dark Knight Rises hits cinemas July 20th, 2012.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
It seems that after a hell of a lot of behind-the-scenes issues, Warner’s live-action version of Akira is finally going to go into production. However before that they need to sort out a cast, which is proving surprisingly tricky. After much machinations over who would play the main role of Kaneda, they finally settled on Garett Hedlund, and now it appears they’re hard at work looking for Kaneda’s friend, Tetsuo.
Warner is going in an interesting direction with their upcoming take on the Arthurian legends, Arthur & Lancelot, as rather than going for star names, they’re filling the cast with relatively obscure up and comers. Joel Kinnaman, from the TV show The Killing, signed on to be Lancelot a couple of weeks ago and they’ve now cast Game of Thrones’ star Kit Harington as King Arthur, according to 
It seems every actor at some point wants to turn director, and now it’s Scarlett Johansson’s turn. According to 
Actor Dwayne Johnson has joined the cast of The Monster Hunter’s Survival Guide, according to 
Steven Soderbergh is a man who doesn’t like to compromise his vision, and as his vision often involves idiosycratic or unusual approaches to subjects, that often leads to him butting heads with studios. For quite a while now he’s been attached to a big screen version of The Man From UNCLE at Warner Bros, the studio where he made the Ocean’s movies, but now he’s bailed on the movie.
The question this weekend wasn’t whether Twilight: Breaking Dawn would have a good opening, it was just how big it would be. That question has now been answered with the latest in the series taking $139 million in its first three days in the US, and $283.5 million around the world. It’s the fifth biggest North American opening in history, but didn’t quite take the franchise record, which is still held by New Moon’s $142.8 million. It also scored the third biggest opening day gross ever, after the final Harry Potter and New Moon, taking $72 million in America on Friday.
Weekend is undoubtedly one of the best reviewed films of the year, but due to the fact it’s a low-budget, somewhat arty movie about a burgeoning gay relationship, it’s not exactly been warmly embraced by mainstream cinemas.