Evil Dead was the clear box office champ this weekend. The horror remake earned an estimated $26 million from 3,025 locations, or about $5 million more than originally projected. The weekend’s only other ‘new’ release was Jurassic Park 3D. With $18.2 million from 2,771 runs, the converted-classic fell to fourth behind the more-current 3D hit, The Croods.

This week on Blu-ray Kristen Stewart’s summer fairy tale hits home video, James Cameron’s epic love story gets a multi-disc upgrade, and Vampires of a different sort come home.  Briefly:

• Snow White and the Huntsman (Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet)
• Titanic (Four-Disc Combo: Blu-ray 3D / Blu-ray / Digital Copy)
• The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Fifth Season
• The Vampire Diaries: The Complete Third Season
• The Devil Inside

Hit the jump for more details.

The epic love story Titanic, which earned two billion dollars at the box office and won 11 Academy Awards, is making its highly anticipated debut on Blu-ray, in high definition 2D and 3D, on September 10^th. Whether choose the 2D Blu-ray/DVD combo pack or you go for the ultimate experience in immersive 3D, you will get four discs that feature more than two-and-a-half hours of new bonus footage, including an in-depth exploration of the film with James Cameron, documentary footage, 30 deleted scenes, over 60 behind-the-scenes featurettes, more than 2,000 photos, commentaries and more.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, producer and longtime James Cameron collaborator Jon Landau talked about the phenomenal reward of having the hugely successful film also stand the test of time, the biggest way in which Titanic changed his life, what he’s most excited about fans getting to see on the Blu-ray, his favorite deleted scene, and the challenges of post-converting an older movie. He also talked about the possibility of converting Terminator 2 and Aliens to 3D, how he feels about 48 frames per second and the future of projection, the current status of the release date and scripts for more Avatar films, the recent advances in technology that he’s most looking forward to incorporating into future movies, 3D as the future of home entertainment, and the most rewarding part of his years of collaboration with Cameron. Check out what he had to say after the jump.

The Hunger Games cannot be stopped.  Director Gary Ross’s adaptation of the popular Suzanne Collins book took the top spot at the box office for the fourth weekend in a row with $21.5 million, bringing its domestic total to $337 million with a worldwide haul over $479 million.  Though Lionsgate is presumably extremely happy with The Hunger Games’ performance, they’re currently on the lookout for a director replacement for the sequel Catching Fire after Ross declined to return due to the tight schedule.  They have to start filming the follow-up this August in order for star Jennifer Lawrence to be wrapped in time to move on to the X-Men: First Class sequel in January, and to make Catching Fire’s November 2013 release date.  Hit the jump for details and analysis of the full top 10.

Despite three new wide releases this weekend, The Hunger Games is back at the top of the box office for the fourth (and not necessarily final) Friday in a row, adding another $6.5 million to its terrific $322 million domestic total.  The Three Stooges came in second with a $5.6 million opening day, which may be just enough to relaunch the franchise if the movie has legs.  The Cabin in the Woods trailed in third, premiering to $5.5 million.  That’s not a great total for a movie we love so much, but it could be much worse.  Look no further than Lockout, which landed outside the top five to a paltry $2.2 million, beat by last week’s offerings American Reunion and Titanic 3D.  Look for details and analysis on the full weekend tomorrow.

May the box office be ever in your favor! The Hunger Games outlasted competition from newcomers American Reunion and not-so-new Titanic 3D to top the box office for the third weekend in a row.  Hunger Games pulled in an estimated $33.5 million, a drop of about 43% from last week’s numbers, but still managed to cross a $400 million worldwide mark.   Second-week showings of Wrath of the Titans and Mirror Mirror rounded out the top five respectively. Hit the jump for the analysis, including a big mover who almost cracked the top ten.

It looks like The Hunger Games will be named the victor yet again on this fine Easter weekend, as the film brought in an estimated $12.9 million on Friday for a potential weekend haul of around $40 million.  The film has now crossed the $400 million mark worldwide against a budget of around $80 million, solidifying its status as a bona fide hit.  Lionsgate is working fast to get the sequel, Catching Fire, before cameras this fall (which Gary Ross may or may not be directing).  Elsewhere in the box office landscape, American Reunion opened to $9.2 million for a weekend total around $22 million, and Paramount’s Titanic 3D took in $7.1 million on Friday.  The re-release opened on Wednesday, so its cumulative is at $15.5 million and should fall short of the projected $30 million weekend, though James Cameron‘s original had famously strong legs in its initial run, so don’t count the disaster love story out just yet.  Additionally, 21 Jump Street has reason to celebrate as the ridiculously funny film has now hit $100 million cumulatively.  Check back tomorrow for details and analysis.

Given that you are a person and you’re alive, I’m assuming you’re quite aware that Titanic is being unleashed into theaters once again this weekend…in 3D!  Despite the fact that pretty much every person ever paid to see the movie in 1997, James Cameron is giving us the opportunity to pay to see it again, over a decade later.  Like the humorous honest posters we shared during awards season, an honest trailer for Titanic 3D has now gone online.  It hilariously makes some great points about the film itself (the Academy Award winner for Best Editing is nearly three and a half hours of establishing shots and waving), and throws in a Downton Abbey reference for good measure.  The gist of the trailer is that James Cameron is pretty much just stealing your money at this point.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer, starring Leonardo Da Vinci, Bill Pullman?, and Boobs.

A new featurette for the release of Titanic 3D has been unveiled. Whether you’re a fan of the movie or not, it’s obvious that James Cameron has put an insane amount of work into making sure the 3D re-release is well worth your money. Sadly, this featurette doesn’t give us a look into the actual post-conversion process, but we do get to see a number of pristine looking scenes from the film intercut with Cameron speaking about the film. He explains that before they began with the 3D they went back and cleaned up the picture, so even if you go to see it in 2D it should be pretty damn good-looking.

Steve caught 18 minutes of the 3D footage and he raved about it being the best post-conversion he’s ever seen. The third act of the pic is some of the most intense 40 minutes put to film, so I’m looking forward to having a panic attack while almost drowning in IMAX 3D. Hit the jump to watch the featurette. Titanic 3D opens April 6th, 2012.

New posters have been released for The Muppets, Jason Reitman‘s Young Adult, and James Cameron‘s 3D re-release of Titanic.  The Muppets ads continue to parody other 2011 movies and this time the target is The Twilight Saga.  If Taylor Lautner was replaced by Rowlf, it would be a dramatic improvement for the series.  The new poster for Young Adult doesn’t hold a candle to the excellent teaser poster, but it does make Charlize Theron look almost as horrifying as she was in Monster.  Finally, I’m not sure why Paramount felt the need to bury Kate Winslet‘s face in Leonardo DiCaprio‘s chest.  The poster is also sorely lacking a sad Billy Zane in the background.

Hit the jump to check out the posters.  The Muppets opens November 23rd.  Young Adult opens in limited release on December 9th before going wide on December 16th.  Titantic opens in 2D and 3D on April 6, 2012.

When James Cameron first announced he’d be post converting Titanic for a 3D re-release in April 2012, I was a bit skeptical.  After all, I think most of us can agree that post converted movies are usually substandard to ones being shot in 3D, and since the movie is 15 years old, I figured it would be an insane challenge to get it right.  However, earlier today I visited Paramount in Hollywood and got to see about 18 minutes of the converted film on the big screen.  So what did I learn?

Never. Ever. Bet against James Cameron.

The footage I saw this morning left me speechless.  I’m not joking around when I say it’s the best post conversion I’ve ever seen and it looks like they originally shot it in 3D back in 1997.  In addition, Cameron told us before they post converted they created a new 4K master and did a full color correction and cleaned the film.  So even if you see the film in 2D or 3D in April, you will not believe how crystal clear the images are and how good the film looks.   However, before you start to think Cameron made any changes to the actual film, he told us they are not editing a single scene.  He’s not pulling a George Lucas.  Hit the jump for more.

Empire Big Screen is a bit like Comic-Con in that studios come by the show off footage from their new movies and the filmmakers come to talk up those films.  The festival is run by the good folks at the world’s best movie mag, Empire Magazine, so I approve.  Since we don’t have anyone at the event, we’ll be running quotes from other sites who are attending.  The first piece of news comes from Empire who spoke with Sherlock creator/writer Mark Gatiss.  Gatiss says they’re only about a week and a half away from wrapping production and that this season will be “The Woman, The Hound and The Fall” trilogy.  To be more specific, this year’s episodes will adapt the Sherlock Holmes stories “A Scandal in Bohemia”, “The Hound Of The Baskervilles”, and “The Final Problem”.  The second season of BBC’s Sherlock will premiere in early 2012.

Hit the jump for reactions to footage from Titanic 3D, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and more.

James Cameron likes 3D. He spent years developing/inventing cameras in order to facilitate his vision for his first film since 1997’s box-office monster Titanic. That follow-up was Avatar and it toppled Titanic as the highest grossing film ever. Leading up to and following the release of Avatar, Cameron was everywhere trumpeting 3D as the most important thing for movies in the history of things. The 3D trend caught on, and now Cameron is back with that other worldwide hit Titanic, now in 3D.

The director has been working on converting Titanic to 3D for a while, and the film is poised to be rereleased in theaters April 6th, 2012. The post-conversion process has been painstakingly long, but at the international exhibitor event CineEurope Cameron premiered 15 minutes of a 3D converted Titanic. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

James Cameron and wife Suzy Amis were recently honored for their philanthropy at the Covenant House Gala in Los Angeles.  It has something to do with homeless youths, but more importantly, the event provided an opportunity to put a microphone to Cameron and ask him about the Avatar sequels and the 3D conversion in the works for Titanic.  Let’s start with Avatar:

“We’re shooting two films back-to-back, so I’m writing two scripts, not one, which will complete a free-film story arc — not really a trilogy, but just an overall character arc so I’m pretty excited about that.”

I first read this as a declaration, “Oh, we have no intention of stopping at Avatar 3.”  An alternate interpretation: Cameron’s current plans for the property end with Avatar 3, but the three movies are not necessarily linked by an arced plot structure centered on the characters we already know.  Instead, each movie is a chapter in Stories from Pandora.  Conveniently, the two interpretations are not mutually exclusive.  Surely more will be revealed in the years leading up to the release of Avatar 2 (December 2014) and Avatar 3 (December 2015).  In the meantime, Cameron has more to say after the jump.

James Cameron’s Titanic is headed back to theaters April 6, 2012 in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the ocean liner’s historic maiden and final voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in April 1912.  But this time, when Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet set sail on the big screen, they’ll do it in 3D.

Written, directed and produced by Cameron, the film was first released in 1997 and collected 11 Oscars along the way, including Best Picture and Best Director.  As the movie that was both the domestic and worldwide box office champion for more than a decade (until another little Cameron film called Avatar came along), Titanic had one of the most remarkable runs in history.  Hopefully, Cameron’s post-conversion job will produce a far better product than other 3D efforts that Cameron has publicly slammed, such as Clash of the Titans and Piranha 3D.  Either way, I expect people to come out in droves to experience what is sure to be one of the most anticipated releases of next year.  Check out the full press release after the jump, which includes a statement from Cameron on the conversion.