Source: Brian Gallagher

BOX OFFICE NEWS
This is never normally a powerful weekend at the box office, but damn. Disturbia closed out the month of April with a hat-trick, taking the number one spot for the third time in as many weeks. The Shia LaBeouf thriller has owned the top spot for each week it's been in release. While that normally would be fairly impressive, it mainly acheived this because its competition was so much more less impressive. Disturbia chimed in at the top spot with just over $9 million. That performance for that movie really wasn't that bad, as it dropped just 30.6% from last weekend, but it's just sad that the newcomers couldn't even come close to hitting an 8-figure mark. The top two newbies were quite close together at the second and third spots, even though their grosses were attrocious. The Invisible and Next were almost neck-and-neck in the silver and bronze spots, taking in $7.7 million and $7.1 million, respectively. Both posted very low per-screen averages as well, with The Invisible, showing in just 2,019 theaters, taking in $3,882 per screen and Next, bowing in 2,725 theaters, averaging a paltry $2,617 per screen.

CASTING NEWS

Jason Stratham revs up for Death Race. This very well could be a winner, folks. It looks like Paul W.S. Anderson is ready to let go of the whole Resident Evil thing (he wrote all three, but only directed the first) and move on, and this looks like a great one to move on with. Based on the 1975 Roger Corman cult classic, this movie sounds like a darker version of The Cannonball Run, with a New York to L.A. road race, but with a Grand Theft Auto sort of spin, where the racers actually get bonus points for killing innocent bystanders. I'm actually intrigued enough by this premise that I want to check out the orignal Corman flick, starring David Carradine and Sly Stallone, although it might be hard to find. Statham is a wonderful choice for this flick and it sounds like they're well on their way here.

Michael Douglas to star in Tragic Indifference. This sounds like another great courtroom winner and, finally, a big big win for Michael Douglas. He's been appearing in a bunch of duds since 2000, when he had two wonderful flicks come out: Traffic and Wonder Boys. Stephen Gerard has a REALLY sketchy filmography, but this just seems like such a cool story that it might even be hard to mess it up. Douglas will play an attorney who sues Ford at the behest of a Texas woman who nearly died after rolling her Explorer SUV. It sounds like Douglas and this Gerard could use a big win here, and this story just might give them one.