Ta da, it’s your invisible ticket.

The box office chugged along unremarkably this weekend, with a series of films no one much cared about doing middling business. Hopefully I’ve already hooked you with this lede. Oz is doing okay business, but it’s not the kind of Alice in Wonderland-style success Disney was hoping for. Meanwhile, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone was either far from incredible or failed to make magic at the box office, depending on which hack headline you prefer. At $10.3 million, it opened half-again lower than even Semi Pro ($15.1 million), and made just a third of Blades of Glory’s opening ($33 million) on the same weekend in 2007 – thanks to BoxOfficeMojo for that thoroughly damning comparison. And that was all while side splitting and crowd pleasing its way to a rousing C+ Cinemascore. Jack Reacher, John Carter, Burt Wonderstone – hey, maybe stop naming movies after the lead character now.

I’m not sure studios are capable of making a decent comedy anymore. Every non-indie gets focused-grouped to hell, and running all your jokes by Joe Sixpack and Darla Diabetes first is a sure-fire way to ruin them. My favorite part of the Burt Wonderstone trailer was where they illustrated lackluster audience enthusiasm by using actual cricket sound effects. WE MADE A JOKE, DID YOU CATCH THAT, AMERICA? But for every Burt Wonderstone there’s an Identity Thief, 2013′s second-highest-grossing movie behind Oz, despite even worse reviews than Wonderstone. And if you’re only thinking short-term profit and not long-term health of the medium, that’s a win. It’s dumb. Come on, studio people, you’re going to be replaced in 18 months anyway, you might as well make movies you enjoy. It’s working for Megan Ellison.

1. Oz: The Great and Powerful (Disney) – $42 million ($144 mil. total)
2. The Call (Sony) – $17 million
3. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (Warner Bros.) – $10.3 million
4. Jack The Giant Slayer (Warner Bros.) – $6 million ($54 mil. total)
5. Identity Thief (Universal) – $4.6 million ($124 mil. total)
6. Snitch (Lionsgate/Summit) – $3.5 million ($37 mil. total)
7. 21 and Over (Relativity) – $2.7 million ($22 mil. total)
8. Silver Linings Playbook (The Weinstein Company) – $2.5 million ($125 mil. total)
9. Escape From Planet Earth (The Weinstein Company) – $2.4 million ($52 mil. total)
10. Safe Haven (Relativity) – $2.4 million ($67 mil. total) [Indiewire]

The one bright spot on the weekend was Spring Breakers, which opened in New York and LA, where it earned an impressive $90,000 per theater for Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures and distribution partner A24. That’s good enough per-screen average for 22nd all time. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that America loves art films. The people have spoken loud and clear, saying “we want a thought-provoking critique of crass commercialism!” Right? I mean that’s the only explanation. It could only be that or the underage tits.

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This man has six graduate degrees. Stay in school, kids.

When James Franco and Kids writer Harmony Korine, who last collaborated together on an art project about naked gangster chicks on BMXs, say they’re working together on a teeny-bopper movie about sexy bank robbers starring a bunch of half-naked Disney Channel chicks, you know you’re in for the best kind of dicknosing. In the latest trailer, the girls – Efron’s ex Vanessa Hudgens, Bieber beard Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson (dibs!), and Harmony Korine’s wife, Rachel – party with James Franco, who seems to be doing a Gary Oldman-esque impression of Riff Raff that alternates between playing it big and whispering to us like he’s in a CK One commercial. If you don’t know who Riff Raff is, like me when I was calling his character Kevin Federline at first, don’t look it up, you’ll be better for it.

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We hadn’t heard anything about the Terminator franchise in a while, but if you think people forgot about it, you’re wrong (IDIOT), because today Deadline reports that Megan Ellison has enlisted her brother David to help produce a new one. If you don’t know who Megan Ellison is, you should, because she’s basically my hero. Movies that the 26-year-old daughter of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison has thus far helped finance include: Zero Dark Thirty, The Master, Killing Them Softly, Lawless, Spring Breakers, True Grit, and upcoming projects from Spike Jonze and David O. Russell. Basically, if you hear of a movie aimed at adult film-lovers and not at dumb children in the last few years, there’s a 50/50 chance Megan Ellison had something to do with it. Her older brother David is also in the movie business, leaning more toward blockbusters, working on films such as Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Jack Reacher, Star Trek Into The Darkness, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and now Deadline reports that they’ll be teaming up for a new Terminator movie. Which sounds like a pretty logical plan to me, but then what do I know, I’m just a guy balls deep in a dead badger.

Nearly 18 months after Megan Ellison pledged over $20 million for the rights to finish The Terminator‘s storyline with a new series of films, she has finally closed the complicated rights deal with Pacificorp. Other than the fact no progress has been made all this time on a script, the surprise here is Ellison has enlisted her brother, David Ellison, to be her financial and creative partner.

New copyright laws allow for North American rights to The Terminator to revert back to creator James Cameron in 2019 (that happens after 35 years, and The Terminator was 1984). While that law hasn’t been tested in the courts, no major film company would want to move forward on a project with a potentially catastrophic rights crisis looming. So the original pricey deal — made with the expectations there would be three films — was scaled down because the reality is they might only get to make two installments.

The project has been moving in fits and starts, and most likely that has been due to the slow pace of the rights deal. At one point, Arnold Schwarzenegger had been attached, and so was Fast & Furious helmer Justin Lin. Because Ellison expected to put the first of two pictures in production in late 2012, Lin dropped out.

I’m not sure the Terminator franchise still has stories that are screaming to be told, but it’s a positive development to hear that Megan Ellison is involved and Justin Lin isn’t. Lin previously directed three Fast/Furious movies, which, even if you like them, are about as deep as pro wrestling, and Terminator is a franchise that requires a director with a bit of a brain. And if they are going to make another Terminator movie, I’d just as soon it not suck big farts. But hey, that’s just me, a guy who f*cks dead animals.

It seems like a lifetime ago that we were talking a fifth Terminator movie. Benevolent heiress financier Megan Ellison bought the rights last May with a plan for Justin Lin (Fast, Furious) to direct and Arnold Schwarzenegger to return to star. Then Arnold raw-dogged a few Mexican maids, Justin Lin signed up for two more Fast/Furious movies, and the project went out the window faster than a Mexican’s panties at Schwarzenegger’s house.

Well good news, because now Megan Ellison says that the film which might not ever happen will be rated R. Unlike the last one. Which had McG directing.

@terminatorfans We can’t really tell you guys anything about Terminator BUT it will be an R rated film as God and James Cameron intended. [MeganEllison'sTwitter]

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Joaquin Phoenix’s rap career didn’t really work out (and yet Willow Smith’s did, go figure), so now he’s back to taking real acting jobs. Namely, Twitch brings news that Joaquin is attached to an untitled political satire from Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman (the team behind Adaptation, and pretty much my favorite director and writer, respectively). Oh I’ll play your game, you rogues.

In March, Deadline described the story as “a satire about how world leaders gather to figure out all the seismic events that will take place in the worlds [sic?], from oil prices to wars that will be waged.”
Things have been quiet since but Twitch has learned that Warner Brothers have now also come on board. Plot details remain sketchy but Joaquin Phoenix is attached to star and Vincent Landay to produce with a March 2012 start date eyed for production. [Twitch]

It’s fun to give Joaquin sh*t (or take actual sh*ts on him while he’s sleeping like in I’m Still Here, whatever the case may be), but if I’m Still Here proved anything, it’s that he’s a brilliant (and clearly committed) actor. If Joaquin and Casey Affleck had approached their documentary from the standpoint of “look at this hilarious poop prank we’re going to film!” instead of “think of the profound implications of this ingenious Banksy stunt we pulled on the media and what it says about our times!”, it might have actually been good. (Yes, the media will write about you if you act insane and let your friends dook on you, brilliant deduction there, Einstein). Let’s not forget, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman made Nic Cage look like Philip Seymour Hoffman, I’m sure Joaquin Phoenix will be fine. Handling crazy weirdos is kind of what they do.