Globetrot/ Dark Horse

Lone Survivor, the true story of a failed U.S. Navy SEALS mission to capture or kill a Taliban leader in Afghanistan, collected $38.5 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales, topping movie Frozen to win the weekend box-office race.
The film stars Mark Wahlberg as Marcus Luttrell, the only one of four SEALS to return from the mission and who wrote the 2007 book on which the movie is based.
Frozen, a Walt Disney Co. animated film and last week’s box-office winner, was second with ticket sales of $15.1 million from Friday through Sunday, according to estimates from Rentrak.
The Wolf of Wall Street, a tale of greed starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was third with $9 million, while this week’s other new major release, The Legend of Hercules, starring fashion model and actor Kellan Lutz, was just behind, selling $8.6 million in tickets.
Hercules was tied for fourth place with American Hustle, an awards-season favourite directed by David O. Russell and starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper.
Lone Survivor, directed and written by Friday Nights Lights director Peter Berg, was the subject of a Hollywood bidding war in 2007 won by Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures. The movie cost $40 million to make, Universal said.
The heavily marketed film far exceeded industry projections of about $23 million in domestic sales, including theatres in the United States and Canada. It was the second biggest January opening weekend ever, behind only Cloverfield, which made $40 million, according to Rentrak. “You can’t make predictions on films like this,” said Nikki Rocco, Universal’s president for domestic distribution, adding, “You just don’t know how the public is going to embrace it.”
But decent reviews along with what Rocco called “a grassroots campaign to tell Americans that this is a story of patriotism and heroism, and you’re going to want to be a part of the water cooler conversation about it on Monday,” sent its box-office sales soaring.
The film received a 73 rating from aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences gave the film an A+ grade, according to CinemaScore, which measures ticket buyer reactions.
The Legend of Hercules, which was forecast to have ticket sales of $8 million, is the first of two films based on the son of the Greek god Zeus. The second Hercules stars professional wrestler Dwayne Johnson, also known as ‘The Rock’, and is scheduled for release on July 25. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was sixth with $8 million in ticket sales. After leading the domestic box-office during the last three weeks of 2013, the movie, the second of a three-part adaption of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel, has hauled in $242 million domestically and $809 million globally.
Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures released Wolf of Wall Street. Warner Bros, a unit of Time Warner Inc, released The Hobbit. Sony Corp’s movie studio distributed American Hustle.

Michael Douglas wants to surprise audiences with Marvel’s Ant-Man

After throwing audiences a curveball by playing flamboyant pianist Liberace, leading man Michael Douglas is ready to make another unconventional career choice, this time playing scientist Hank Pym in Marvel superhero film Ant-Man.
Disney-owned Marvel said that Douglas, 69, will play Henry ‘Hank’ Pym, the creator of the technology to shrink a human to the size of an insect and thus become Ant-Man. Anchorman star Paul Rudd, 44, will play Scott Lang, the alter-ego of the diminutive Marvel superhero. “I’ve been dying to do a Marvel picture for so long,” Douglas told Reuters. “The script is really fun, the director is really good. Dylan (the actor’s 13-year-old son) will love it. He’ll have a picture he can see.”
Pym’s character first appeared in the 27th issue of Marvel Comics series Tales to Astonish in January 1962. Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, said in a statement posted on Marvel.com that Douglas will play Pym with “charm and fortitude.” Douglas, who won a Best Actor Oscar in 1988 for Oliver Stone’s financial drama Wall Street and picked up a Golden Globe award recently for his turn as Liberace in HBO movie Behind the Candelabra, is taking a rare step into the world of big-budget franchise action films.
“Sometimes — like (when) they didn’t see you for Liberace — you’ve got to shake them up a little bit and have some fun,” Douglas said of surprising both studios and audiences with his decision to do a superhero film. Walt Disney Co’s foray in bringing Marvel’s superhero universe to the big screen has proved to be a lucrative choice, with films such as Avengers and Iron Man 3 crossing the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box-office.
The plot for Ant-Man is being kept firmly under wraps. The film, directed by Edgar Wright, is scheduled to be in theaters in July 2015.
And while Douglas has only done one sequel in his career spanning more than 40 years — Gordon Gekko in 2010’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps — the actor teased about his involvement in future Ant-Man sequels. “(Marvel) reciprocated well, there are sequels. Who knows?,” the actor said.