After the success of Taken and Gran Torino, Hollywood has been on a vigilante kick. And right now, Bryan Singer (along with studio execs all over town) has been seriously considering getting his revenge on with The Prisoners, a much-sought-after thriller script to which Mark Wahlberg is attached to star as a Boston dad who takes the law into his own hands when his young daughter is kidnapped. The screenplay, which has been compared to The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, has been buzzed about as a calling card for its unknown writer, Aaron Guzikowski, and as a rare project targeted at adult audiences but with real commercial potential. When asked whether The Prisoners will be his next movie, Singer told EW: 'I don't know yet. But I'm definitely intrigued. It's a great script. And I'd love to work with Mark.' source: EW
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Box Office – Obsessed wins with $28.5 mil

April 28, 2009 | Posted by Staff in Movie News| 0 comments
obsessedBeyoncé Knowles thriller Obsessed(Watch Trailer), which raked in an estimated $28.5 million and left the competition behind. Despite a widespread critical drubbing (Metacritic smacked it with a 22 score), Obsessed clearly tapped into a female-driven audience bloodlusting for some schlocky, catfighting fun with its story of a woman (Knowles) battling to keep a mentally unhinged secretary (Ali Larter) from stealing her husband (Idris Elba). Knowles pulled in her biggest three-day opening since 2002′s Austin Powers in Goldmember.

Zac Efron managed to keep his matinee-idol face relatively unharmed, meanwhile, with 17 Again dropping a respectable 51 percent to come in second with $11.7 million, for a 10-day total of $39.9 million. Hot on Efron’s heels, however, was the weekend’s second donnybrook-ing flick. Fighting, starring Channing Tatum as, well, a fighter, made a higher-than-expected $11.4 million, and very well may end up passing 17 Again for the No. 2 slot when final numbers come out on Monday.

The Soloist, alas, suffered the worst beating, banking just $9.7 million for fourth place, an anemic number for the already enfeebled adult drama. Critical indifference — just a 61 on Metacritic — probably didn’t help the film’s cause, and the film may have never recovered from Paramount’s decision to move the film from its prestige picture slot last fall to the far dicier spring season.

The Disneynature doc Earth landed a fifth-place finish with $8.5 million, and its $4 million opening on Wednesday (a.k.a. Earth Day) lifted the film to a $14.2 million five-day total. Although those numbers are shy of what some thought the film could do, it remains the second-best opening weekend ever for a documentary, next to just Fahrenheit 9/11.

Finally, The Informers, based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel, opened in limited release to a puny $300,000, or just $622 a theater. The highly regarded Mike Tyson documentary Tyson, by contrast, debuted at $86,000 on just 11 screens for a vigorous $7,818 per-theater average, one of the best of the weekend. It seems fisticuffs of any stripe were your best bet for this weekend, which, according to figures from Box Office Mojo, was up a whopping 30 percent from last year, when the significantly less violent Baby Mama was tops.

Source: Variety

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