Let’s face it: the holidays are here and most people’s brains are already on vacation. Since it’s just too hard to come up with an original movie idea right now, a lot of talk has turned to potential sequels. Some franchises, like Gremlins and Mission: Impossible already have more than one movie in the books while others, such as Colombiana and Pineapple Express are open to sequels just because they can be. So we’ve ransacked the internets to find some updates on sequels you’ve been dying to see and others you never dreamed of being produced. Hit the jump to check them out.

Summer’s penultimate weekend was never going to be a blockbuster, but now – with Hurricane Irene closing theatres up and down the Eastern seaboard – it is shaping up to be one of the worst frames of the entire year at the domestic box office.  Three new releases rolled out on Friday but reduced traffic and theatre counts from North Carolina to New York meant that none of them came close to knocking The Help out of first place.  Last weekend’s top film earned an estimated $4.4 million on its third Friday; bringing its US total up to $86.6 million in 17 days.  The revenge-thriller Colombiana was Friday’s newbie king, taking in an estimated $3.75 million, followed closely by the Guillermo del Toro-penned Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark with $3.6 million.  The Weinstein’s Our Idiot Brother closed out Friday’s top five with $2.4 million.  The uncertainty of the hurricane means that it is more difficult than usual to predict how well any of this weekend’s offerings will fare, but I can tell you that The Help is the only film that is expected to get much above $10 million by Sunday.  We’ll have an update tomorrow.

Graceful and gorgeous, Zoe Saldana is God’s gift to action movies.  I am not totally convinced Colombiana will be a great movie, but there’s a chance, and a much higher chance Ms. Saldana will excel within.  Take this new clip for instance, which shows Saldana’s assassin character Cataleya swimming with sharks, then sacrificing the bad guy with a pair of choice gun shots.  If the movie is made up of a couple dozen scenes of this caliber, count me in.

Olivier Megaton directs from a script by producer Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen — the three previously collaborated on Transporter 3.  Colombiana opens August 26.  Watch the new clip after the jump.

A new poster has gone online for Oliver Megaton’s Colombiana.  The film stars Zoe Saldana as an assassin who hunts down the men who killed her parents.  The movie has also moved up from September 2nd and into the final week of the summer.  Colombiana will now open on August 26th against the found-footage sci-fi horror flick Apollo 18 and the Guillermo del Toro-produced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.  Hit the jump to check out the poster.

New posters have been released for Conan the Barbarian, Colombiana, and the documentary Page One: Inside The New York Times.  Hit the jump to check out the posters along with a synopsis and release date for each film.

The trailer for the action-thriller Colombiana has gone online.  Working from a script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (Taken), the film stars Zoe Saldana as woman who, after witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota, grows up to be a stone-cold assassin.  While she works during the day as a hitwoman, at night she deals out vigilante justice in her quest to take down the mobsters responsible for the death of her parents.   I like the idea of a female batman who uses a gun, but this may be the most generic action movie trailer I’ve ever seen.  I’m a fan of Saldana so hopefully the movie has more personality and individually than the trailer.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film also stars Michael Vartan, Callum Blue, and Cliff Curtis.  Colombiana opens September 2nd.

We have a slew of new release dates for you.  Here’s a list of the films with announced release dates [via Box Office Mojo and Variety], ordered chronologically:

• The Mechanic starring Jason Statham and Ben Foster – January 28, 2011
• Kids in America starring Topher Grace – March 4, 2011
• The Dark Fields starring Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper – March 18, 2011.
• The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey – March 18, 2011
• Bad Teacher starring Cameron Diaz – April 1, 2011
• One for the Money starring Katherine Heigl – July 8, 2011
• Colombiana starring Zoe Saldana – September 2, 2011
• Dolphin Tale 3D starring Morgan Freeman – September 16, 2011
• Jack and Jill starring Adam Sandler – November 11, 2011
• Premium Rush starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt – January 13, 2012

Hit the jump to learn about the other films coming out on these dates.