Okay, fess up: do you know anyone who saw The Final Destination this weekend?  I know a few people (biblically, boosh), and I’m pretty sure no one I know saw it.  Yet it made almost $30 million and was number one at the box office this weekend.  Which leads me to believe there’s a giant underground city out there somewhere full of  three million toothless Final Destination-loving yokels.  Now there’s your horror movie plot.  Wait, no — chick with huge tits discovers underground yokel city.  There, now it’s perfect.  Pay me.  ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: This week’s number one was originally slated for home video release.  That’s right, some movie execs actually overestimated the country’s intelligence level.  That’s it, I’m buying a helmet.

Elsewhere, Nikki Finke writes:

But even Hollywood is embarrassed by the fact that this weekend’s Top 4 competing films featuring horror, death, gore, mayhem, war, Nazis, aliens, and sci-fi all did so well at the box office. “What a sad statement on movie-going humanity,” a top studio exec emailed me. “And let’s look at the ratings for the top 4 movies at the box office tonight: ‘R’, ‘R’, ‘R’, and ‘R’. Yikes.”

Oh please. Hollywood is embarrassed about Nazis now? They make a new Holocaust movie every two weeks. Or does it not count as a Nazi movie if there’s also a pianist with Bell’s Palsy? And aside from Final D and H2,  Inglourious Basterds and District 9 clocked in at number two and four, and both of those are clearly films aimed at literate adults, which is about the best we can hope for in the age of G-Force and Paul Blart.  But I can see how the success of challenging, auteur-driven, R-rated flicks might be scary to someone who spends all day preparing Venn diagrams about Kevin James talking to zoo animals.  Dear “top studio exec”: F yourself.  F yourself in your huge vagina.

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Opening this weekend:

The Final Destination
We can only hope.  Directed by the guy who did Snakes on a Plane.  Titties n’ death, y’all.

Halloween II
Aka H2, Rob Zombie’s sequel to his remake of Halloween.  Hopefully it will be twice as good as his last Halloween movie and I can not watch it twice as hard.

There’s some other stuff out in limited release — Big Fan, Taking Woodstock — but I’ll probably take the weekend to catch up on Inglourious Basterds and District 9, or possibly drink enough to forget that they’re still making Final Destination movies.

Jay Maynard, aka Tron Man, who’s a computer consultant (shocking, I know), has been forced to sell his private plane on eBay due to the tightening economy.  I can’t believe this guy used to own his own plane. He must’ve had to beat the pussy off with a lightsabre. |Wired|

Universal bought the rights to Larry Doyle’s novel outline for a novel Go Mutants!, “a teen comedy/adventure set in a high school where all of the tropes from classic 1950s alien invasion movies came true. Years later, the children of those mutant creatures have assimilated among the other kids.”  Hopefully it’s as good as the film adaptation of Doyle’s other novel, I Love You, Beth Cooper, which is perhaps most generously described as a cinematic skid mark. |Variety|

Cher is set to play Christina Aguilera’s mentor in Burlesque, a film about “an ambitious small-town Iowa girl with a big voice who comes of age in a neo-burlesque club on Sunset Boulevard.”  So these burlesque places actually exist?  Are they like strip clubs for gay guys?  Drag shows with girls?  Anyway, I liked this when it was called Coyote Ugly.  Wait, no I didn’t. |Variety|

Kevin Lima has been hired to direct Frank, a modern retelling of Frankenstein, centering on “a teenage prodigy who’s on the cutting edge of cell research in medical school. After several unsuccessful attempts at socializing with her peers, she decides to use her scientific prowess and piece together a friend out of the med school’s instructional cadavers.”   Fingers crossed Mickey Rourke plays Frank, who’s always trying to get her to have a beer and pet his dogs.  |Empire|

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^{Apathy Rabbit surveys the new H2 concept art}

BloodyDisgusting has the announcement along with some teaser art for H2, Rob Zombie’s creatively titled sequel to his 2007 remake of Halloween.  That’s right, a sequel to a remake.  I plan on taking a picture of myself, photocopying it, and faxing it to the theater in lieu of actual attendance.