Just a few hours ago, I sat down with Nicolas Cage for a fantastic interview about DreamWorks Animations The Croods.  While I’ve spoken to Cage a number of times, today was definitely the best interview by a mile.  Not only was he excited to talk about The Croods and how happy he was with the finished film, when I asked him about Superman, SNL’s Get in the Cage with Nicolas Cage, and even possible future projects like Ghost Rider 3, he was more than happy to talk.  I can’t wait to share the full interview.  However, rather than having you wait till the week of March 22nd (when The Croods gets released), fans of the Ghost Rider movie franchise will be happy to know that I’m posting what he said about that franchise today.  The big news is when I asked him if the movie is on the drawing board, or if it’s a possibility, he told me:

“It’s possible, but it won’t be with me.”

Continued after the jump.

Those of you who like a side of certainty with your box office entrée may want to dine elsewhere this morning. That’s because we’re witnessing an extremely close race between Safe House and The Vow for number one. As estimates currently stand, Safe House seems to have the edge – $23.9 million to The Vow’s $23.6 million. But the real news is how none of the new President’s Day releases – including the 3D sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance – could threaten the holdovers in their fight for first.

Another Friday, another surprisingly competitive box office race. According to estimates, three films were within one million dollars of claiming first place; though that is expected to change as the long holiday weekend progresses. In first place yesterday with $7.4 million was Sony/Screen Gems’ The Vow.  Even considering the film’s victory last weekend and its impressive seven day cume, analysts expected The Vow to fall to third in its sophomore frame.  Instead, the romantic-drama is making a play for another weekend on top, with a projected take of at least $25 million. On Friday, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance debuted with $7 million – just shy of The Vow’s first place finish. By Monday, however, the sequel should succumb to Nic Cage’s curse and drop to third behind holdover drama Safe House. The lingering success of The Vow proved a curse for the new romantic-comedy This Means War.  The would-be Valentine’s hit debuted in fourth place and is not expected to reach $20 million by Monday.  Finally, The Secret World of Arrietty may not have made the top five, but its projected four-day take of $7.5 million would double the highest debut of a Disney/Studio Ghibli animated film. Details and analysis tomorrow.

With Neveldine/Taylor’s Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance opening today, I recently interviewed a lot of the cast in New York City.  In the sequel, Johnny Blaze (Cage) is hiding out in Eastern Europe when a motor-cycle riding warrior monk (Idris Elba) recruits him to save a young boy (Fergus Riordan) from the Devil (Ciaran Hinds). The film also stars Violante Placido, Anthony Head, Christopher Lambert and Johnny Whitworth. For more on Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeace, here’s my Romania set visit, on set interviews, new images, five movie clips, and 12 minutes of behind the scenes footage from when the production was filming in Europe.

During my exclusive video interview with Mark Neveldine and Brain Taylor, we talked about how they got involved in the project, working with Nic Cage, the stunts and action sequences, deleted scenes, test screenings, what will be on the eventual Blu-ray/DVD, filming in Eastern Europe, and so much more.  If you’re a fan of Neveldine/Taylor, you’re going to love the interview.  Hit the jump to watch.

With Neveldine/Taylor’s Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance blazing into theaters this weekend, we’ve been provided with some awesome Ghost Rider t-shirts to giveaway to a lot of our readers.  If you remember this year’s Comic-Con, Sony premiered some very cool Ghost Rider posters on the sides of the buildings in San Diego.  While the posters never made it into movie theaters, the studio used the designs on the shirts and they’re great.  Unlike most t-shirts that are printed cheap so the material is thick and cumbersome, Sony spent some money on the shirts so it looks cool and fits great.  Trust me, you want one of these shirts.  Hit the jump for details on how to get one.

With Neveldine/Taylor’s Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance opening tomorrow, last weekend I interviewed a lot of the cast in New York City.  In the sequel, Johnny Blaze (Cage) is hiding out in Eastern Europe when a motor-cycle riding warrior monk (Idris Elba) recruits him to save a young boy (Fergus Riordan) from the Devil (Ciaran Hinds). The film also stars Violante Placido, Anthony Head, Christopher Lambert and Johnny Whitworth. For more on Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeace, here’s my Romania set visit, on set interviews, new images, five movie clips, and 12 minutes of behind the scenes footage from when the production was filming in Europe.

During my interview with Whitworth we talked about working for Neveldine/Taylor and playing blackout, which part he enjoyed filming the most, karaoke, do more people want to talk to him about Party of Five, Empire Records or Can’t Hardly Wait, his favorite movie, actor and director, and more.  Hit the jump to watch.

With Neveldine/Taylor’s Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance opening next weekend, the other day I interviewed a lot of the cast in New York City.  In the sequel, Johnny Blaze (Cage) is hiding out in Eastern Europe when a motor-cycle riding warrior monk (Idris Elba) recruits him to save a young boy (Fergus Riordan) from the Devil (Ciaran Hinds). The film also stars Violante Placido, Anthony Head, Christopher Lambert and Johnny Whitworth. For more on Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeace, here’s my Romania set visit, on set interviews, new images, five movie clips, and 12 minutes of behind the scenes footage from when the production was filming in Europe.

During my interview with Elba we talked about working with Cage, the stunts, filming in Romania, working with Neveldine/Taylor and what they brought to the film, and whether people want to talk about The Wire, Thor or Luther.   In addition, with Elba currently filming Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim, he talked about how that shoot has been going and I also asked his favorite movie, actor and director.  Hit the jump to watch.

With Neveldine/Taylor’s Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance opening next weekend, the other day I interviewed a lot of the cast in New York City.  In the sequel, Johnny Blaze (Cage) is hiding out in Eastern Europe when a motor-cycle riding warrior monk (Idris Elba) recruits him to save a young boy (Fergus Riordan) from the Devil (Ciaran Hinds). The film also stars Violante Placido, Anthony Head, Christopher Lambert and Johnny Whitworth. For more on Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeace, here’s my Romania set visit, on set interviews, new images, five movie clips, and 12 minutes of behind the scenes footage from when the production was filming in Europe.

During my interview with Cage we talked about playing both Johnny Blaze and Ghost Rider (in the first film Ghost Rider was played by a stunt man), working with Neveldine/Taylor and what they brought to the film, a great sequence where he’s almost transforming and the way his performance is amplified by CG, karaoke, his favorite movie, actor and director, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to watch.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, the sequel that no one wanted but which we will all nonetheless watch at least once in our lives to see Nicholas Cage pissing fire, hits theatres next month. In anticipation, the interwebs were flooded with a torrent of images from the film, featuring a heavily tattooed (and apparently still-alive) Christopher Lambert, helmers Mark Neveldine and Bryan Taylor (Crank) making a scene ten times more awesome by directing it on rollerblades, and Cage’s CGI alter-ego not only pissing fire, but vomiting it. Hit the jump for a bevy of images (some of which we’ve seen before) from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

With less than a month to go before directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance hits screens, a new behind-the-scenes featurette has been released. While Nicolas Cage remains the star of the film (upstaged only slightly by the flaming skull of Ghost Rider himself), directors Neveldine and Taylor are the focus in this short piece. Known for their insane camera work on films like Crank and Gamer, Neveldine/Taylor have only gotten crazier. The featurette spends as much time spotlighting the movie’s stuntwork professionals  as it does the directors themselves.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance also stars Idris Elba and Ciaran Hinds and opens February 17^th. You can check out Steve’s set visit here. Hit the jump to check out the explosive featurette.

We’ve got quite a few new posters to share with you today. First up are five new posters for the 3D re-release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. They’re pretty fantastic, as a few of them run off the theme of a lightsaber. The Darth Maul lightsaber one is sufficiently badass, though there’s a quote-laden one highlighting Maul’s face that kicks considerably less ass. We’ve also got a new international poster for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance that puts star Nicolas Cage on full display.

Finally, we’ve got the poster premiere for Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh’s West Memphis Three documentary West of Memphis. Though the three wrongly convicted men are now free, Jackson and Walsh are working hard to bring justice to the case and solve the 18-year-old triple murder. The poster is excellent and brings their message across loud and clear. West of Memphis will screen at the Sundance Film Festival. Hit the jump to check out the posters.

With awards-season upon us, I’ve been doing my best to catch up with any potential contenders that I may have missed up to this point. Without a doubt, the standout of late has been writer/director Tate Taylor‘s The Help. I had heard from several friends that the pic was solid but nothing special. After finally getting a chance to sit down with it myself, I have to say that I disagree. I think it’s better than that. Not only is it filled with great performances, but it also finds a way to be more than a story of how a caring white person can help those otherwise hopeless black people. If only 2009′s The Blind Side could go back in time and take note.

But enough of my own cinematic experiences, in this week’s “Top 5″ you’ll find a recap of our visit to the Romanian set of Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance, Benedict Cumberbatch talking about his villainous role in J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek sequel, our interview with Mondo creative director Justin Ishmael, the possibility of a Bridesmaids world without Kristen Wiig, and video interviews with War Horse‘s Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston and more. Hit the jump for a brief recap and link to each.

Nicholas Cage, Idris Elba and Violante Placido are walking into a very large cave.  As they get further inside, I notice the walls and huge metal shelving units are filled with hundreds of semi-automatic machine guns, sniper rifles, and boxes of ammo.  The cave even has old-school weapons like swords and armor decorating the walls.  It’s easily the biggest arms cache I’ve ever seen, and I can only imagine what they’ll be used for.  As I take in the extremely cool surroundings, I hear director Brian Taylor say cut.  I guess now would be a good time to mention I’m standing on a soundstage about forty minutes outside Bucharest, Romania.

Let me back up a second.

It’s Sunday, February 20, 2011 and I’m sitting on a plane flying back from Europe.  A few days ago I got to visit the set of the Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance with a few other online reporters and we were treated to a really great day filled with awesome interviews and I learned a tremendous amount about the movie.  While I have serious issues with the first Ghost Rider, everything I learned on set tells me they have a much better story and a much better team of filmmakers and actors trying to bring Spirit of Vengeance to life.  For a full recap, hit the jump.

The first thing people want to know about the Ghost Rider sequel is how will it be different from the first film.  So who better to answer the question than Nicolas Cage:

“I don’t want to compare too much between the two movies, but I will say that this movie is going to have some genuinely scary and wild moments that are going to make you wonder what you just saw. Moments that are for lack of a better word: freaky. You are going to be like, ‘Did I just see that happen?’ Hopefully it will mess with your mind, which is what I’m excited about.”

What you just read comes from an extended interview with Cage on the set of Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance.  Last year, when the production was filming in Romania, I got to visit the set with a few other online reporters.  We conducted group interviews with the cast and watched some filming.  It was an awesome experience.  Besides talking about the differences between the two films, Cage discussed working for Neveldine/Taylor, his passion for the character and the comic, the great cast, the stunts and the action scenes, the new bike, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to either read or listen to the interview.

Just like Ciaran Hinds, Idris Elba is one of those great actors that while you might not know his name, you’ve definitely enjoyed his work.  But after starring as Stringer Bell on HBO’s brilliant series The Wire, Heimdall in Thor, Mumbles in RocknRolla, Roque in The Losers, or John Luther on the great BBC series Luther, I think that’s going to change.

Anyway, last year I got to visit the set of Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance while the production was filming in Romania.  While on set, I participated in a group interview with Elba who plays Moreau, a religious but alcoholic monk.  During the interview, Elba talked about his character, what it’s like to work with Neveldine/Taylor and Nicolas Cage, how he prepares for his roles, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to read or listen to the interview.