“Yo, follow atcha boy, mistah prez.”

One of the most commonly asked questions that people have regarding White House Down is “Why? Why on Earth was this film necessary?” After all, we just watched the same movie, Olympus Has Fallen, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman and Aaron Eckhart, so why, then, do we want to see Roland Emmerich, Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx drag us through another story about terrorists taking over the White House and a secret service agent/wannabe rescuing the president?

And the answer is White House Down, like the chicken, was created first. At least I assume it was, because Sony paid screenwriter du jour James Vanderbilt $3 million for his Die Hard clone, while Olympus was written by first-timers Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt. So if Sony ponied up $3 million to create a duplicate, well, that’s a sucker move.

So what exactly does a $3 million spec script include anyway? According to the new trailer for White House Down, it’s the black President of the United States shouting, “Don’t! Ever! Touch! My! Jordans!” Seriously, this trailer is a work of art.

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you ladies ready for the news of the week? Naw, HELL NAW, the news of the month? I said, are you ladies ready? I can’t hear you…

Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh says that Channing Tatum’s dream of making a sequel to last year’s smash hit, Magic Mike, is now a reality and it is “pretty far along”. Unfortunately, Soderbergh will not direct Magic Mike 2, but he told PrideSource (via ThePlaylist) that he’s going to help out to make sure that the film is done correctly, because he thinks that they have a great and “hilarious” idea ready.

Read the rest of this entry »

First thing’s first, amigos – HAPPY 33rd BIRTHDAY, CHANNING MATTHEW TATUM! While 2012 will forever be known as the Year of the Tates, what with his success in having three blockbusters earn more than $100 million each, this has so far been the laid back vacation year that C-Tates very much deserves. So tonight, when you’re out at a bar, perhaps waiting to perform Nelson’s “Love and Affection” at karaoke night, raise a beer or white wine spritzer in honor of Tatum’s birthday, knowing that he’ll be looking up at that same night sky after vomiting from too many Alabama slammers.

That said, my HOTT GOSS email inbox has been pretty empty lately, what with several lawsuits claiming that my special brand of celebrity gossip is “100% wrong” and “completely fabricated”, but rest assured that I will walk away victorious. Fortunately, I woke this morning to find one email, and talk about convenient – it’s an exclusive White House Down storyboard from one of the film’s few deleted scenes.

Read the rest of this entry »

As we all know, 2012 was the year C-Tates broke, with the hardest twerkin man in show business scoring huge hits with The Vow ($196 million worldwide), 21 Jump Street ($202 million), and Magic Mike ($167 million). Who would’ve thought 21 Jump Street would get a sequel? People liked him so much that Paramount pushed the release of GI Joe: Retaliation back almost a year just five weeks before its originally-scheduled opening. Well guess what? It made $41.2 million over the weekend and Paramount has already ordered the sequel. He is risen.

The G.I. Joe sequel grossed an estimated $41.2 million this weekend, which ranks as the second-highest Easter debut ever behind 2010′s Clash of the Titans ($61.2 million). Including Thursday, the movie has earned $51.7 million; that’s a bit below G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra‘s $54.7 million three-day start in August 2009. For its three major stars, this is also a potent opening: it ranks third-highest for Channing Tatum, second-highest for The Rock, and it’s remarkably the top debut ever for a Bruce Willis movie.

I don’t what part of that last sentence is more incredible, that Bruce Willis’s highest-opening movie is GI Joe 2, or that Channing Tatum already has two higher-opening movies than Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis! That’s incredible. He’s been a movie star since C-Tates was sagging his diapers.

Elsewhere, Tyler Perry continued to print money with Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, starring Kim Kardashian, which earned $22.3 million. Can you believe that’s not a joke? I’m still not convinced.

It’s also Perry’s ninth movie ever to open over $20 million; the only two other directors who have that many $20 million debuts are Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis. [BoxOfficeMojo]

Read the rest of this entry »

Olympus Has Fallen has been in theaters since Friday and has already grossed $33 million on a $70 million budget, and it is also holding strong on Rotten Tomatoes with 50% and 79% critics and audience ratings, respectively. The plot, in case you have amnesia, involves a shamed Secret Service agent (Gerard Butler) rescuing the president (Aaron Eckhart) after an attack on the White House by North Koreans. Olympus was written by first-timers Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, who sold their script to Millenium Films in March 2012.

Opening on June 28, White House Down also involves an attack on the White House, but this time it is by a paramilitary group, and the right place/right time hero is a local cop (Channing Tatum) on a tour of the president’s crib. WHD was written by James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man, Zodiac, Basic, The Rundown, etc.) who sold his script to Sony for $2 million, also in March 2012.

As for which movie White Housed it better, that has yet to be determined. But we finally have a trailer for White House Down, and that’s a crip walk in the right direction.

Read the rest of this entry »