By the end of today James Cameron’s Avatar will have grossed more than $1,119,110,941, and will therefore take the #2 highest grossing film spot held by The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. This means that Cameron is indeed ‘King of the World’, and now possibly ‘King of the Galaxy’ as he is the only director to have two films gross over $1 billion worldwide.

Avatar’s box office gross was given a boost with it’s release in China earlier this week, where it broke the opening day record with 33 million yuan (4.8 million dollars). According to a spokesman for distributor China Film Group Corporation Avatar will likely surpass 2012 as the highest-grossing film of all time in China. 2012 made 460 million yuan ($67.3 million) last year.

Can Avatar make another $700 million and overtake Titanic?

Yesterday it was announced that The Lord of the Rings trilogy would be making it’s was onto Blu-ray next April, and now a trailer for the release has been revealed. All the trailers for the trilogy were epic, and even though the films have been out for nearly a decade they still give me ‘movie chills’. This one is no exception.

There’s still a few months to go but you can now pre-order the Blu-ray trilogy on Amazon.

We heard last month that some sort of Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit announcement would be made, and now we know what it is.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy will finally be released on Blu-ray next April. According to Video Business the nine-disc set will contain the original theatrical versions of the three films along with more than seven hours of special features. The supplemental package will contain mostly special features that were on the various DVD versions of the movies, including featurettes that were originally on LordoftheRings.net. However, the Blu-ray versions will offer high-def trailers.

The extended editions will be released at a later date, presumably when The Hobbit is released in 2011.

Click here to pre-order your copy at Amazon!

Last week Peter Jackson was asked about the status of The Hobbit and he said that filming would now take place is the summer, which is a few months after the original March shooting date. This prompted questions as to whether the films would be pushed back a year to 2012, however Jackson cleared things up when speaking to Collider recently:

Nothing has changed as far as I am concerned. Somebody wrote something on the internet and a lot of nonsense happened. You don’t want to believe everything you read on the internet. We were due to deliver the scripts and be shooting sometime around April and now I think I said in an interview we were shooting in June. And somehow people are now saying the film is delayed. As far as I am aware, they are not delayed at all. I am not even sure when we are going to start shooting…we are delivering the scripts just after Christmas they’ll be finished and we’ll be shooting as soon as we possibly can. But you need a certain amount of time to finish the pre-production.

He also commented on the Lord of the Rings Blu-ray release which was originally set for this month:

Well, it keeps changing. I am not the best person to ask about that believe it or not as I am not in charge of the Blu-ray, Warner Home Video is. I believe it is scheduled for sometime next year. They keep changing the date…I don’t know why. I’ve seen the Blu-ray as they sent it to me to approve and I looked at the film and it looks fantastic on Blu-ray but I don’t know the date.

He also says that it will most likely only be the theatrical versions released on Blu-ray first, and one can assume the extended editions will be released around the time The Hobbit is released. Typical studio tactics to make us buy the films on Blu-ray twice!

According to TheOneRing.net The Tolkien Trust, New Line Cinema, and HarperCollins Publishers have resolved the lawsuit relating to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The lawsuit was filled against New Line last year as The Tolkien Trust wanted their share of the profits. Everyone from director Peter Jackson to extras have sued New Line in the past. I guess that’s what happens when films make billions.

Commenting on the settlement, Christopher Tolkien said: “The Trustees regret that legal action was necessary, but are glad that this dispute has been settled on satisfactory terms that will allow the Tolkien Trust properly to pursue its charitable objectives. The Trustees acknowledge that New Line may now proceed with its proposed films of ‘The Hobbit.’”

Warner Bros.’ President & Chief Operating Officer Alan Horn said: “We deeply value the contributions of the Tolkien novels to the success of our films and are pleased to have put this litigation behind us. We all look forward to a mutually productive and beneficial relationship in the future.”

Now everything is sorted out The Hobbit can continue as normal. If the settlement dragged out or a deal wasn’t reached then it could have affected production on the upcoming Hobbit films. Thankfully filming can now start next March as originally planned.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is finally making it’s way onto Blu-ray. However, there is only one problem.

From The Digital Bits:

Sources close to director Peter Jackson have informed me that he’s saving the extended editions of the films for an “ultimate” box set release closer to the debut of the new Hobbit films – that’s why these BDs are set to be theatrical only…

…I’ve officially confirmed with the studio that this initial Blu-ray release is real and it’s coming before the end of this year, but I’m told it won’t be officially announced for another few months yet.

So we can either experience the epic trilogy in Blu-ray form this year, or we can wait another few years (2012) for the extended editions. Personally, i’ll probably play their damn game and buy both.

You can pre-order from Amazon below:

With 3D all the rage lately and many upcoming movies either being filmed fully (Avatar) or partly (Iron Man 2) in 3D, it doesn’t seem an unreasonable question to ask whether we will be seeing a three dimensional Middle Earth. Well that very question was asked by MTV to director Guillermo Del Toro.

“IMAX is a fantastic medium. I am a shareholder. I love IMAX. I remember seeing ‘Polar Express,’ and then seeing ‘Polar Express’ in 3D and IMAX and having my life completely transformed,” he enthused, excitedly discussing the format’s immersive capabilities. “I think it would be a worthy discussion. But it hasn’t arrived.

“I think that we are experienced enough, I guess would be the term, to know that we should not daydream about [things like that] when we write the screenplay,” he said of whether or not he was even flirting with 3D or IMAX as possibilities. “Right now what we have is, you don’t have two filmmakers and two screenplay writers – you have four screenplay writers. We’ll be talking about 3D, on IMAX – but [not] right now.”

So maybe, maybe not…

There was talk a while back of Peter Jackson planning to convert the Lord of the Rings trilogy into 3D and re-release it, which would be amazing if true.

ComingSoon spoke to DreamWorks Animations CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg on Tuesday and learned that George Lucas is looking to turn the six Star Wars movies into 3D.

Katzenberg told us that Lucas is very excited about it and that he’s got the technical resources to pull it off. “He isn’t going to put a product out, I think, that isn’t anything other than first rate,” Katzenberg said.

There has been talk of other movies being converted into 3D such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Is this another ploy by George Lucas to milk the ‘cow’ that is Star Wars or is this what the fans want?

Update: Apparently he said the same thing in 2005.

Lucas said he hadn’t yet committed to a precise schedule but hoped to have the first film ready for the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars movie in 2007 and that he would then rerelease one Star Wars film per year in 3-D.

I guess that he got a little ahead of himself back then, but now that we have a good amount of movies being released in 3D, and more 3D screens, it is more likely this will happen.

Edward Norton has said that if it were not for The Lord of the Rings trilogy he may not have taken on the role of Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk.

He says, “I remember when I heard they were making The Lord Of The Rings, I was like, ‘God, if they cheese those out, I’m going to be so disappointed.’

“(But) those films were inspiring to me in terms of deciding to take The Incredible Hulk.”

Norton was known for taking on ‘good movies’ such as American History X and Fight Club, so a comic book adaptation was a bit of a risk for him, and we will soon see if it paid off.

In other Hulk news, director Louis Leterrier spoke to MTV about the possibility of the Hulk being the villain in The Avengers. Click here to read what he had to say!

This image is showing how many people are involved in the movie making process nowadays compared to years ago. Take a look!