Sci-Fi Storm

Iron Man 2 took an impressive estimated $133.6 million this weekend – although the buzz about it overtaking the opening-weekend record holder The Dark Knight ($158.4m) was unwarranted, and in fact fell just short of the number two spot, held by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($135.6m).

If you were hoping for another flash, think again…ratings for Flash Forward dropped 19% this past week to 4.7 million viewers, and could signal the end of this show when the season concludes.

I thought I mentioned this before, but can’t find it…Fox is planning on a prequel to Planet Of The Apes, now called Rise Of The Apes, and has now given it a release date of June 24th, 2011. This has been simmering for a couple of years, and it seems to not be connected to the Tim Burton 2001 film, dealing with the chimpanzee named Caesar and his leading of a revolt against the humans. Perhaps this is more of a remake of the original films but more in chronological order, skipping or glossing over the time loop? This time around the apes will be CGI and not costumed actors, which could be good or bad (I think the costuming of the Burton film was decent).

There is a lot of buzz about Iron Man 2 potentially beating out The Dark Knight for the opening weekend gross receipts weekend record, and it is getting a good start with $7.5 million from midnight showings on more than 2500 screens in the U.S., but it is well short of the target record of $18.5 million. Batman did have the advantage of almost 2000 more screens at the time, and Iron Man will gain around that today, so we have yet to see what the ultimate results will be.

Omnilab Media and The Jim Henson Co. announced a sequel (PDF) to the 1982 cult classic The Dark Crystal entitled The Power Of The Dark Crystal, and like the original will blend live action and visual effects, but this time will also incorporate 3D. Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig (Daybreakers, Undead) will direct from a screenplay written by Craig Pearce (Moulin Rouge).

The finale for Lost on May 23rd was already clocking in at two hours, but ABC has now added another 30 minutes after the episode completed post-production. The show will now run from 9:00-11:30pm ET, and push back local news and the “Aloha to Lost” Jimmy Kimmel special.

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory snapped this interesting image – is Apollo giving us a message?

In honor of today apparently being “Star Wars Day” (May The 4th Be With You) and this year being the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, you can now star in your own personal version of the movie, thanks to JibJab.

It seems a production still from the upcoming episode of Doctor Who, entitled “Amy’s Choice”, has fans all a-twitter…as companion Amy Pond is visibly pregnant. Of course we have no idea what is going on, but in this show pretty much any speculation is conceivable, and it will probably still be wrong. UK viewers will find out at least some of the story on May 15th, but the US will have to wait two more weeks…as River Song says,”Spoilers…”

The entire 1987 TV series of Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future, a series perhaps ahead of its time (hundreds of TV channels competing for the limited attention spans of viewers in a cutthroat business), finally comes back to the future with a [sfs=1024]DVD release on August 10th[/sfs]. Ah, the Commodore computers (I owned one at the time), the Amiga graphics…I’m getting nostalgic…