With RED earning $199 million worldwide and RED 2 already bumped up for an earlier release this summer, it comes with very little surprise that Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate already gave the green light to writers Jon and Erich Hoeber to start work on a third installment. Due out on July 19, RED 2 already has some people* calling it the surefire best sequel of the year, while others** already believe that just by greenlighting a third film, this will become the greatest trilogy in movie history.

The first RED film featured a comedic take on the original, much more serious comic series, written by Warren Ellis, and starred Bruce Willis as the over-the-hill CIA operative fighting back against a younger agent misguidedly trying to assassinate him and his former associates (Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, among others). In the sequel, Willis and Co. team up with Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones to track down a nuke in the heart of Mother Russia.

And while I don’t know what the Hoeber brothers have planned for a third, I’d like to offer my own idea.

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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.

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“Hey, we should do heroin again.”

The first 24 hours after April Fool’s Day are the most difficult, because there is so much crap to sort through in these cat tubes and it’s hard to tell what is real and what was some awful joke story written by someone who turned to his cat and said, “See? I told you I could fool strangers.” But it seems that this news about director Danny Boyle wanting to make a Trainspotting sequel is pretty legit. You know, because he talked about it.

Boyle’s target date for Trainspotting 2: Dead Baby is Still Dead (title pending) is 2016, and the original was released in 1996. That means 20 years will have passed between the original and the sequel, so why even bother? You know, other than to make me incredibly depressed about where my life has taken me.

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Pixar today announced that the previously-announced sequel to Finding Nemo will be called Finding Dory, and is set for release in November 2015. Yes, it’s Finding Nemo, but also another sequel, raising the question of whether Pixar is still Pixar, or whether they’re now just a name that Disney will slowly bleed the credibility out of for money. Mickey blows goats, I have proof.

Ellen DeGeneres, who provided the voice of Dory, an affable but forgetful blue tang fish, in the original film, said in a statement that she had been waiting a long time for the movie to be launched. “I’m not mad it took this long. I know the people at Pixar were busy creating ‘Toy Story 16.’ But the time they took was worth it. The script is fantastic. And it has everything I loved about the first one: It’s got a lot of heart, it’s really funny, and the best part is—it’s got a lot more Dory.”

Phew, I’m glad we’ve got a quote from the person who will do at least two days of work on the project.

The new film will be directed by Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton, who directed the original film. “Finding Nemo” which won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

According to Stanton, the new movie is set along the California coastline about a year after the first film, and features such returning characters as Marlin and Nemo, as well as some new characters.

Only one of Pixar’s previous films, “Brave” (2012), has centered on a female protagonist. “Brave” won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film earlier this year. [WSJ]

Oh Jesus, thanks for bringing up the female protagonist thing again. Hey, can I just watch a movie without having to worry about my reaction being a litmus test for sexism? Thanks. Anyway, at the very least, Andrew Stanton gives me hope. Besides the original, he directed Wall E, which was amazing, and John Carter, which was a lot better than people said (it was silly and goofy and loud and big, pretty much exactly what it was supposed to be). And watching the original Finding Nemo was one of the all-time best marijuana experiences of my life. Probably less so for those kids I tried to pet on the way out, but hey, everyone needs an anti-drug.

Hi, I’m the ship’s doctor, this is how we look and dress in the future

The second trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness just hit the web, and as I’ve said all along, letting JJ Abrams direct both Star Trek and Star Wars was a weird idea, like the same guy running both Coke and Pepsi, or having Mick Jagger sing for the Beatles. In this new trailer, it looks like Abrams just gets confused as to which one he’s making and films an homage to that Star Wars scene where the Millennium Falcon has to turn sideways to fit between the asteroids:

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