Welcome to CraveOnline's weekly movie news roundup - a weekly rundown of all the breaking news in the film world, with an eye for what Tinseltown's got in store for us in the near future!

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BOX OFFICE TOP TEN
1. Paul Blart: Mall Cop - $21.5 Million ($64.8 Million)
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans - $20.7 Million ($20.7 Million)
3. Gran Torino - $16 Million ($97.5 Million)
4. Hotel For Dogs - $13.3 Million ($36.9 Million)
5. Slumdog Millionaire - $10.5 Million ($55.9 Million)
6. My Bloody Valentine: 3D - $10 Million ($37.7 Million)
7. Inkheart - $7.7 Million ($7.7 Million)
8. Bride Wars - $7 Million ($48.7 Million)
9. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - $6 Million ($111 Million)
10. Notorious - $5.7 Million ($31.7 Million)

Okay, I know people are a little light in the wallets, but really, what the hell is going on here? For the second week in a row, Paul Blart: Mall Cop locked down the #1 spot at the box office, pulling in $21.5 million over the weekend. With a running total of $64.8 million, and a budget of $26 million, I feel fully justified in my fear for the future of cinema in the impending economic apocalypse.

Meanwhile, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans debuted strong at #2 at the box office, bringing in $20.7 million (not strong enough to unseat fat security guard... but I digress). The film had a budget of $35 million.

Gran Torino dropped a spot to #3 with $16 million over the weekend to raise its seven week total to $97.5 million. The film had a budget of $33 million.

Hotel For Dogs moved up a spot to #4 with $13.3 million, while the excellent Slumdog Millionaire hopped five spots to #5 with $10.5 million, for a running total of $55.9 million. The film had a budget of $15 million, and is nominated for ten Academy Awards.

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The upcoming G.I. Joe movie will be a throwback to the old school days of action films, according to director Stephen Sommers.

"I always loved the old Bonds," Sommers said. "It's funny now how Bond wants to be Bourne. I loved Quantum of Solace, but it was like, man, this is a completely different movie to the Bonds I grew up with."

"In a very contemporary way, G.I. Joe is inspired by the memory of the kind of movies I saw when I was younger," the director added. "I remember being in the theater for Thunderball and the big underwater battle at the end of that movie just blew my socks off. In G.I. Joe, there's an underwater battle under the polar icecap that's Thunderball times 10!"

The movie opens August 7th.

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Several reports are coming in that the new footage being shot for X-Men Origins: Wolverine will significantly expand the role of Deadpool (played by Ryan Reynolds). Evidently, entire new scenes that focus on Deadpool are being shot. Is this because of a possible change of plans for the character amongst the studio heads? It's too early to tell, but this flick is gonna be awesome.

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Speaking of which, last week we reported on rumors that Fox had ordered extensive re-shoots for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but this has been denied by both Fox and Hugh Jackman. While Fox told IGN.com that the delays were due to Jackman's publicity tour for Australia, and that they only have one more week of filming planned, Jackman actually sent a personal email to aintitcool.com to clear things up:

"I wanted to reach out and let you know that due to scheduling conflicts with certain cast members and location/weather considerations, we had to wait until now to shoot a couple of scenes. Please rest assured that Wolverine will be badass and hopefully meet all of your expectations. I am stoked by the positive response to the teaser, which clearly reflects the tone and scope of the film. If you like that, we've got much more in store!"

Awesome. X-Men Origins: Wolverine will be released on May 1st, 2009.

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Slumdog Millionaire emerged as favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar after taking the top prize at the 15th Screen Actors Guild awards on Sunday.
The film also won for best ensemble cast on a night where Hollywood actors traditionally tend to honor their own.

The SAG win followed four Golden Globes earlier this month and a Producers Guild Award on Saturday.

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Hellboy creator Mike Mignola will join the upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit as a designer, according to director Guillermo del Toro, who worked with him on both Hellboy films as well as Pan's Labyrinth.

"We are sketching and designing with Weta's John Howe, and [Adam Lee]," del Toro told MTV. "Mike Mignola is coming soon. He's going to do a stint on the design team."

Sounds exciting!

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Here we go again with the flippin' Batman rumors. Now that the Eddie Murphy nonsense seems to have dissipated, speculation on who the lead villain will be for the next installment of the Batman series has gone back to square one. And who better to think of at the starting point than Liam Neeson, aka Ra's Al Ghul, the man who trained Bruce Wayne to become the Batman. Sure, Ra's Al Ghul apparently died at the end of Batman Begins, but in the comic book universe, Ra's Al Ghul is immortal, which means that anything is possible.

MTV recently caught up with Neeson and asked him about the possibility of reprising the Ra's Al Ghul character. Neeson replied, "You never know… Christopher Nolan still has my phone number".

In addition, Producer Michael Uslan told New Jersey's Courier Post Online, that the third Batman film we be heading to theaters in 2011.

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I had to sit through that wretchedly awful Alvin and the Chipmunks movie on a transatlantic flight last year, and I'll never fly that airline again as a result. But somebody over at Warner Bros. thought it was an excellent idea - so much so, that they're bringing another batch of furry cartoon animals to the big screen: Tom and Jerry.

Personally, I'd imagine an Itchy & Scratchy movie would do a hell of a lot better, but according to Variety, Warner Bros. is looking to create a family-friendly franchise with Tom and Jerry, using a hybrid of CG animation and live action just like with Alvin and the Chipmunks and Scooby-Doo.

Eric Gravning is said to be writing the script, which is "an origin story that reveals how Tom and Jerry first meet and form their rivalry before getting lost in Chicago and reluctantly working together during an arduous journey home."

By the way, I hope nothing about your childhood was sacred, because it's the latest strip-mining victim in the great box office rush of the 21st century. Warner Bros. is currently developing two other Hanna-Barbera classics: The Jetsons and Yogi Bear.

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Comeback kid Mickey Rourke has a lot of doors opening for him right now, one of them being a very prominent role in the massively anticipated Iron Man 2 film. The only catch: he's been given a lowball opening offer of $250,000 from Marvel.

Marvel had a damn good year in 2008. Iron Man alone made $582 million at the worldwide box office, plus DVD sales. But these questionable finance tactics are dangerous stunts to be pulling, especially given that Marvel's tactics have already pretty much ruined the chance that Samuel L. Jackson will return to play Nick Fury. This shit is unacceptable.

Rourke, who's lucky not to be eating top ramen huddled around a barrel fire these days, will likely take the part - he's always been a true actor in the sense that the role means more than the paycheck - but jeez, Marvel. Have a heart.

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Seth Rogen as a clone of Jesus Christ? Alexandre Aja thinks that's a great idea, and so do we. Aja, writer/director of The Hills Have Eyes, is looking to adapt the bestselling French comedy novel The Gospel According to Jimmy.

Aja recently described the premise to SciFi: "A few years from now, the Republicans want to get back in the White House, and the only thing that they find is like an old cloning project - to clone Jesus from a blood cell on the Shroud of Turin. And one subject had survived, and he's fixing pools in LA, named Jimmy. And they're going to find him and ask him to come back and help them to get back to power."

I don't know about you, but that sounds like a riot to me. I don't know how good Aja is when screaming girls and buckets of red corn syrup aren't part of the equation, but you'd have to be a complete idiot to screw up the visuals of Rogen as a fat, hairy Jesus, cleaning pools, and the premise is comic gold. Let's just hope they get this into production quickly, before anyone forgets about the absurdity that was Sarah Palin (a 10,000 jigawatt sign of the GOP's desperation to win the '08 election).

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The Green Hornet has reportedly been placed on "life support" at Sony, making for the third failed development of a film for the character in the last 15 years or so.

HitFix's Scooter McWeeny claims that a source "close to the production" on the film said that the project's been backburnered, and will most likely not shoot in 2009. No word as to why. When the studio cited "creative differences" as the reason for Chow leaving the director's chair last December, everybody pretty much assumed that he wouldn't stick around to play sidekick Kato, as he'd planned to do. Now we'll be lucky if we ever see it at all.

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IGN.com talked to I Am Legend director Francis Lawrence recently about all these rumors of a prequel. Lawrence had this to say in response:

"We're waiting on a script. Will [Smith] and Akiva [Goldsman] and I sat down and talked about it and sort of came up with the bones of an idea. We hired a writer to work on it and we're just trying to figure it out."

When asked about the actual story of the prequel, and whether or not it would take place in between the outbreak and the time Will Smith is seen as the last human in New York, he said:

"I don't want to yet, just because I think part of the process and what's important to us is to really try and find the right way to getting back into that world. I think we were all really drawn in by the idea of what it would be like to be by yourself in this world, and I think [the challenge] is trying to find a new way of getting in there again, without it feeling like a repeat, a rehash, or it feeling forced, and feeling like there's a new story to tell within that world. So that's what we're trying to figure out."

As for "the original ending" of the film, which you can catch as an extra on the DVD, Lawrence was asked what ending he felt was the real ending to the film:

"It's interesting, because I think they're both good and very different endings. I think one is an ending based on an idea, and that's the original one we shot, which is the alternate ending on the DVD -- which is the idea that he misinterprets these things and they have humanity and they feel and that he's wrong and that it's not right to cure them. And he sort of goes off into the unknown, not knowing if there's anybody there. It's entirely based on an idea, and I also purely entirely understand why people rejected it when we tested it because you're basically saying everything your hero's been trying to do for the whole movie has been wrong. These things you've been setting up as horribly scary are not. And then you're setting them off into the world without knowing if there's anybody there. And I think people had a really hard time with that. The other version, which we had in the theaters, is more of a hero's ending, which is a guy who sacrifices himself to save what's left of mankind. And it's one version of the story."

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According to MTV.com, J. K. Simmons will reprise his role of J. Jonah Jameson in Spiderman 4, which is  set to begin filming in 2010, with a projected May 2011 release date.

Simmons recently had this to say about the film: "We've definitely brainstormed ideas for Triple-J, but I have no desire to make Triple-J more of the focus of those movies. The amount that I did in 1, 2 and 3, is just exactly right. Like be the wolf. Come in, blow in, do a week, blow out, be the comic relief, and hit the road. And let Tobey and everybody else do the heavy lifting."

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Mike Myers' dismal failure that was The Love Guru leads the contenders for the annual Razzie Awards, the tongue-in-cheek commemoration of the year's worst movies, organizers said on Wednesday.

The totally unwatchable film picked up seven nominations, including worst picture, director and screenplay. Myers will also compete for worst actor alongside some of Hollywood's biggest stars, including Eddie Murphy (Meet Dave), Al Pacino (88 Minutes and Righteous Kill), Mark Wahlberg (The Happening and Max Payne) as well as comedian Larry the Cable Guy (Witless Protection).

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Bill Hader and Judd Apatow to team up on a slasher flick? Huh? Here's what Hader had to say about the latest project for the Superbad funnyman duo:  "It's partially Straw Dogs meets Halloween meets Home Alone meets Monster Squad." So how did this idea get off the ground in the first place? "Judd met with us and said, 'I want to do a horror movie with you. I want to see you in a slasher movie.'"

What the hell? So what's the film going to be about? Hader offered the following: "It is definitely about guys nowadays, that idea that you watch fucked up shit on TV… You watch fucked up reality shows, I love true crime shows. The idea of that thing coming to your house, and what do you do? I would shit my pants. That's basically what the movie is about. What if that guy decided to come to your house? What would you and your dipshit friends do about it?"