With Marvel furiously planning and plotting movies a good five or six years ahead at the moment, it's no surprise that some of its slots are set to be filled up with sequels. Whilst Iron Man 3 is likely to be the end of that particular franchise for a while, it'd been assumed that the plan was to get Captain America and Thor to trilogy status as well.

Anthony Hopkins had already revealed that he'd been keen to make Thor 3, but it was down to Natalie Portman at Disney's D23 convention over the weekend to all but confirm it.

When specifically asked about Hopkins' keenness for another movie, Portman said that "Yeah, well I think they are going to make a Thor 3, so I think Anthony will be pleased". Her words may be slightly vague, but given the veil of secrecy that generally surrounds Marvel announcements, it's surprising that it's being talked about at all. Our guess is that Thor 3 conversations have started already, and unless Thor: The Dark World flops (unlikely), it'll be full steam ahead.

The full interview with Portman is at E! Online, here.

With rumors of various key cast members in consideration to return for Star Wars Episode VII, this is one that's quite unexpected: Ian McDiarmid is reportedly set to return to reprise his role as Emperor Palpatine.

Now, we've got what we suspect are the same questions as you regarding this. After all, Palpatine did die at the end of Return Of The Jedi. Even in the various re-edited versions. So, er, did he survive the fall? Or will this be a clone of the character? Perhaps flashback sequences? Time will tell.

No big casting announcements meanwhile landed at Disney's D23 Expo over the weekend, to the surprise of many. Given that production is set to start on Star Wars: Episode VII next year, we're expecting to hear something in the next couple of months. Sorry we can't be more specific.

Star Wars Episode VII is set for release in summer 2015 (that's now been confirmed). More news on the movie when it's available.

Jedi News

As we reported recently, there's a growing groundswell of support for a campaign to try and convince studio chiefs to get work moving on a sequel to Alex Garland and Pete Travis' excellent Dredd movie, which stands as easily one of the most faithful and engaging comic book adaptations of recent years. The publishers of 2000 AD themselves have thrown their weight behind the campaign, and whether or not it's successful, its very existence does show the appetite that's out there for such a strong and well-grounded take on the comic's long-running and beloved stable of characters.

While it would be fantastic to see another Dredd movie from the same group of people, however, it's also worth noting that there has been another recent movie adaptation based around the Mega City One judges. This isn't a big-budget cinematic release, however: rather, it's Judge Minty, a fan movie of remarkable quality and production values for its type, but a fan movie nevertheless.

Judge Minty was actually in development long before the Karl Urban movie, a labor of love by director Steven Sterlacchini – along with co-writer Michael Carroll and DP Stephen Green – that took nearly five years to produce and release. It's based on a one-off short story of the same name from a 1980 issue of 2000 AD – prog 147, to be precise – in which writer John Wagner and artist Mike McMahon introduced the concept of "The Long Walk", the harsh and yet strangely noble retirement option offered to outgoing judges.

The original story ended with Minty, an old and somewhat respected judge shown to have close ties with series star Joe Dredd, retiring and taking the walk out of the gates of Mega City One and into his mail-retirement life trying to bring justice to the wilderness of the Cursed Earth. It's here that – after a short preamble sequence that follows the original strip note for note and features a good, although not quite Urban-level, take on Dredd – the movie picks up, spending the rest of its running time telling the story of Minty's confrontation with the violent, lawless gangs who roam the wilderness. 

What's immediately striking about the movie is just how faithfully it's able to replicate the look of the comics on a relatively low budget. For all of the Urban movie's many strengths, the toned-down feel of the city, Judges' uniforms and even the Lawmaster bikes were somewhat at odds with the more over-the-top manner in which they're presented in the comics. Judge Minty goes a different way, from a highly impressive CGI opening pass over the city to outfits that put any convention-going cosplayer to shame. Okay, so Dredd was wise in opting for a uniform that was more out-and-out practical, but Minty shows that actually, the classic Carlos Ezquerra design can translate to live action without looking inherently silly.

The impressive visuals extend to the sequences in the Cursed Earth, too. It could be argued that a desolate, wind-swept landscape isn't the hardest location to visualise – the faithful quarry being a classic staple of British sci-fi in particular – but nevertheless there's a strong feel to the way the land outside Mega City One is presented here. If Garland and co ever get to make their Dredd sequel and opt to set it in the Cursed Earth, they'll no doubt be able to present it on a much grander scale – but they'll have their work cut out capturing the hopeless, gritty feel of the comics the way this movie does. 

Being a fan movie rather than a full-time professional production, it does want for tightness at times, in some of the action direction and performances. What does anchor it, however, is a strong performance by Edmund Dehn in the title role – sympathetic yet hard-as-nails, he's a compelling enough character that he makes it a shame that the movie only allows 20-odd minutes of time spent following him.

The movie was screened at various festivals and comics conventions before finally making its online debut in May this year – with the approval of 2000 AD publishers Rebellion, no less, despite its unofficial, unlicensed status. Dredd director Alex Garland has also expressed his admiration for it, comparing the more comics-faithful look to his own movie.

Available to view on the Judge Minty website, it's highly worth checking out whether you're a fan of Judge Dredd, or just of impressive UK-based independent productions in general.

And while we wait for news on whether Karl Urban will get to don the helmet again, Sterlacchini has already admitted that his next project – which will also hopefully take less than five years to gestate – may be based on another 2000 AD property instead. Is it too much to hope for that he might turn his attention to the so-far neglected-by-Hollywood Strontium Dog…?

Filmmaking's a tricky business, and creative decisions are often informed by pesky details like conflicting schedules, retirement plans and pay disputes. So when studio executives give the greenlight to a movie sequel, and an actor in a major role suddenly can't - or won't - appear, filmmakers often have to come up with some creative ideas to make sure their star's absence doesn't distract cinemagoers too much.

From recycling snippets of old stock footage to the strategic application of eye patches, here's a selection of the clever things directors, writers and producers have done to cover the absence of an actor in a sequel. And we start with an infamous case that prompted a fairly major change in the way an actor's likeness is handled in movies...

Crispin Glover - Back To The Future Part II

Solution: get another actor in and apply prosthetics

Let's begin with the inspiration for this article: Crispin Glover, and his disagreements with director Robert Zemeckis over his reappearance in Back To The Future Part II. When, for reasons explained in entertaining depth here, Zemeckis opted not to have Glover back as George McFly for the sequel, the actor Jeffrey Weissman was brought in to play the part instead.

Unfortunately, Weissman didn't look all that much like Glover, so numerous cunning steps were taken to disguise him: old man prosthetics, originally taken from Glover's face for the first movie, were appled to Weissman. For good measure, he was given sunglasses, filmed either slightly out of focus or upside-down, while snippets of footage were reused of Glover from the first movie in order to fill in the gaps.

This series of tricks was so successful, audiences often failed to notice that Glover had even been replaced - something that led Glover to successfully sue the filmmakers over their tactics, and hastened the introduction of Screen Actors Guild rules over the use of an actor's likeness without their permission.

This leads us onto...

Michael Biehn - Alien 3

Solution: smash the character's head in with a steel girder, then pay the actor a lot of money for a barely recognisable picture. 

Having been among the lucky handful of actors to survive the carnage in 1986's Aliens, actor Michael Biehn quite logically assumed that he'd appear in the sequel, and that he may even get a better pay check. Unfortunately, Biehn's character Hicks was killed off in Alien 3's numerous script rewrites.

Biehn took the news philosophically, until he was tipped off that a rubber cast of his likeness was seen lying around on the Alien 3 set, and that its makers were planning to use Hicks' body as a carrier for the titular creature. Biehn, furious at the idea that his likeness might about to be used in the movie without his involvement, got his management on the phone to Fox and demanded that it be removed.

"First, they started to say, 'We'll pay Michael a certain amount for this'," Biehn recalled in the documentary Wreckage And Rage. "And I said, 'I don't care how much money you have - I was really stupid back then - that alien is not coming out of my chest.'"

A few months later, Biehn was informed that the makers of Alien 3 wanted to use a photograph of him in the movie - something Biehn says earned him "almost as much" as he got for his performance in Aliens. Perhaps needled by the actor's refusal to have his character be an alien incubator, the makers of Alien 3 had Dwayne Hicks' head pulverised by a steel girder in the finished movie - which was illustrated with a pointed shot of the ugly aftermath. Subtle.

Geena Davis - The Fly II

Solution: hire a different actress, and use her voice to overdub scenes of the old actress in stock footage from the first movie. 

The success of David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly made a sequel an attractive proposition in the late 80s, and after various ideas were bandied about, in which Geena Davis would return as science journalist Veronica Quaife, effects artist-turned-director Chris Walas took the helm of the scklocky-yet-entertaining follow-up.

The final version of The Fly II's script, however, had little for Geena Davis to do, since her character dies in an unpleasant childbirth sequence straight after the opening credits. With Davis now declining to appear in the picture, Walas hired actress Saffron Henderson to play Veronica in that gory opening, and used her voice to overdub some snippets of unused footage from the first movie - this is briefly shown on a videotape in the movie, where we also get a brief, uncredited glimpse of Jeff Goldblum.

Roy Scheider - Jaws: The Revenge

Solution: just have his face on the wall in some shots, or occasionally cut in sepia-toned footage as a flashback.

By the time the hilariously inept Jaws: The Revenge had rolled around in 1987, Roy Scheider had long since departed his role as Chief Brody, having laughed off the thought of appearing in its predecessor, 1983's Jaws III ("Mephistopheles ... couldn't talk me into doing [it] ... They knew better than to even ask," he once said).

But where Jaws III was a largely stand-alone story set away from Amity Island (but starring Dennis Quaid as Chief Brody's son, Michael), Jaws: The Revenge was supposed to posit the idea that a shark had a vendetta against the entire Brody clan. Director Joseph Sargent's solution? Explain that Chief Brody had been frightened to death by a shark a few years earlier, and occasionally remind viewers of the character's existence by showing the odd framed photograph in the background of one or two shots.

Just to make the connection between this tawdry sequel and the classic original more clear, the final encounter is intercut with sepia shots of Roy Scheider growling, "Smile, you son of a..." from the original Jaws. Weirdly, this is accompanied by the backwash of the shark roaring like a lion.

Natalie Portman - The Avengers

Solution: have a character loudly explain her absence

By far the cheapest - and most common - means of getting round an actor's absence can be found in movies like The Avengers, where their non-appearance is pointedly discussed in a brief, throw-away exchange. If memory serves, someone in xXx 2: State Of The Union explained to us that Vin Diesel's character died in a speed boating incident between sequels, which was why Ice Cube was mysteriously introduced instead.

In The Avengers, a similar sort of thing happens. Natalie Portman, who played Jane Foster in Thor, was initially supposed to make an appearance in the hit team-up movie, but was too heavily pregnant to be involved.

To make up for this, Agent Phil Coulson shows up with a helpful line of dialogue to explain matters to anyone sitting in the audience and thinking, "Where the hell's Jane":

"As soon as Loki took the doctor, we moved Jane Foster. They've got an excellent observatory in Tromso. She was asked to consult there very suddenly yesterday. Handsome fee, private plane, very remote. She'll be safe."

In short, "She's up a mountain somewhere. Don't worry - we gave her cake and fizzy drinks."

Alan Cumming - X2

Solution: write the character out in a videogame

Alan Cumming made a great impression as Nightcrawler in X2, but with his makeup taking anywhere between four and nine hours to apply depending on the scene, he wasn't especially keen on returning to the role for X-Men III: The Last Stand. When it emerged that his part in the already hero-stuffed sequel was relatively minimal, both actor and studio decided to quietly leave Nightcrawler out of the story altogether.

Naturally, an omission like that required some sort of explanation, and the one the makers came up with was quite novel. In The X-Men: Official Game, released around the time of X-Men III's appearance in 2006, Nightcrawler explains to Xavier that being in the X-Men has all become a bit too intense for him, and so he quietly retires.

Hugh Quarshie - Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Solution: get another actor in to play essentially the same character, but change the name and add an eyepatch.

This, perhaps, is our favorite solution of the lot. Actor Hugh Quarshie played a small yet memorable role in The Phantom Menace as Queen Amidala's personal bodyguard, Captain Panaka. When Quarshie couldn't appear in the sequel, Attack Of The Clones, its makers did something rather unusual: they hired actor Jay Laga'aia to play another bodyguard, who dressed and behaved almost identically to Captain Panaka, except his name was different (he was called Gregar Typho) and he wore an eyepatch.

As TVTropes rightly put it, "...they're the same, both in appearance and personality, to the point that some viewers wondered why Captain Panaka was suddenly sporting an eyepatch."

Arnold Schwarzenegger - Terminator Salvation

Solution: get a younger body builder in, then stick a digital likeness over his face.

Here's another story that says a lot about the power of an actor's face in Hollywood. When Arnold Schwarzenegger quit acting to become the king of California, the Terminator franchise was left without its most famous cyborg. None of this stopped director McG from inserting a small yet noteworthy cameo for Schwarzenegger in his 2009 sequel, Terminator Salvation, and coming up with a high-tech solution: hire body builder Roland Kickinger and apply a digital mask using computer science.

In the finished movie, this provided the quite convincing illusion that Christian Bale and Sam Worthington were fighting another T-800 Terminator. Before Salvation was released, Schwarzenegger was shown the footage, and gave his approval for it to appear in the final cut. But what if he'd refused? McG had a sneaky back-up plan.

"You'll notice the door flies off," the director said in an interview with Blastr, "Connor goes down on his back, and he shoots the machine gun up the chest of the T-800. If we were unsuccessful in getting the likeness of Schwarzenegger, we were just going to have the machine gun having blown his face off."

Schwarzenegger, no doubt remembering the state of Michael Biehn's head after his refusal to cooperate with the makers of Alien 3, wisely gave the go-ahead.

This year's summer blockbuster season is all but at an end now, and we figured it was time for our traditional round-up of which films worked for their respective studios, and which didn't. We've covered the vast majority of blockbuster-audience-targeted major releases, and cut things off at the end of July on the US release schedule.

A couple of things strike us. Firstly, there were a lot of films released this summer. Secondly, there were some surprising, non-sequel breakout hits. And thirdly, those big franchises seem to be getting bigger. Let's take a look at the winners and losers of summer 2013... 

IRON MAN 3

The Marvel juggernaut shows no sign of stumbling, with Iron Man 3 being the massive hit of the year so far. With over $1.2bn banked worldwide, it's the fifth biggest movie ever, and second in Marvel-land only to The Avengers. It also seems to mark the end of the Iron Man series for the time being, but Shane Black's movie has left the run of movies on a high.

It seems bizarre to recall now just what a risk the original Iron Man movie was, and just how big a gamble casting Robert Downey Jr in the title was as well. It's ended up being one of the biggest franchises on the planet, he's become one of the biggest movie stars, and Iron Man 3 is also one of the very best blockbusters of the summer. Warm handshakes and manly hugs all round.

FAST & FURIOUS 6

The talk may well have been of comic book sequels and reboots for most of the summer, but Fast & Furious 6 again proved that Universal has one of the most potent movie franchises in the world right now. No wonder it's fast-tracked Fast & Furious 7 for next year.

This year's installment is the most lucrative in the franchise to date, and by some way. Taking over half a billion dollars outside of America, Fast & Furious 6's final total has come in just shy of $800m - that's over $150m more than Fast Five, and that in itself was a big hit.

Could Fast & Furious 7 push closer to $1bn? There's an outside chance. Whether it gets there or not, Fast & Furious 7 is a safe, big hit for 2014.

MAN OF STEEL

Warner Bros bet heavily on its expensive Superman reboot this summer, and it's got the rewards it was looking for. Helmed by Zack Snyder, Man Of Steel has taken nearly $650m worldwide (good business for an opening installment), dwarfing the take of Batman reboot, Batman Begins. Furthermore, it's unlocked the future of the DC universe on screen, as Man Of Steel 2 has given Warner Bros the platform for the long-mooted Batman/Superman crossover movie. That, in turn, reboots Batman, and Warner Bros will be hoping that it then has two franchise on the go, ahead of the planned Justice League movie, which is rumoured for 2017.

The only fly in the ointment is that Man Of Steel was a divisive reboot. Unlike Batman Begins, which seemed to win most people over, Man Of Steel's reviews were mixed, with the last act in particular coming in for heavy criticism. That said, even the harshest of critics seemed to admit that Henry Cavill was a fine Superman, and Warner Bros will now be keen to use Man Of Steel as a catalyst for many more DC movies.

WORLD WAR Z

World War Z prevailed over lots of things. It prevailed over the common belief that a movie star's pulling power wasn't what it was. It prevailed over the idea that you can't get a movie out of Max Brooks' source material (although it did take a lot of liberties to do so). And it prevailed over a cloud of internet doom mongering that had engulfed the project for well over a year.

But it's the box office not the comments sections that ultimately decide a movie's fate, and the former came up with a different conclusion than the latter. Taking nearly $200m in the US alone, with over $300m elsewhere, World War Z is a solid half a billion dollar hit, powered by a movie star and producer in Brad Pitt who worked his socks off to push the movie. The bottom line? World War Z 2 is moving into life, and based on the first movie, we'd imagine fewer people will be resistant to the idea this time around.

DESPICABLE ME 2

We're going to talk a lot about this movie as we go through this piece, as the success of Despicable Me 2, week after week, clearly damaged lots of the family movie competition around it. The movie went head to head with The Lone Ranger on the lucrative July 4th weekend in the US, as studio heads got a firm lesson in how minions beat westerns. With $750m in the bank (still less than the last two Ice Age movies, interestingly), Universal has, within two films, got one of the most lucrative animate movie franchises going. Other firms are advised to move their films out of the way of the upcoming The Minions Movie, which is due at the end of the year.

Despicable Me 2 is, incidentally, the biggest grossing blockbuster of the summer in the UK, and the second biggest in the US, behind Iron Man 3. Expect this franchise to run and run for a long time yet...

GROWN UPS 2

You'll hate us for saying it, almost as much as we hate ourselves. But if you go back over the past decade or so, the leading man to back if you run a movie studio has consistently been Adam Sandler. His films are relatively cheap to make - Grown Ups 2 was expensive, at $80m (that's on salaries, rather than anything else of note) - but with just one or two exceptions, they turn a profit. Even the much-maligned Jack & Jill brought in nearly $150m worldwide, and that was low by Sandler's standards.

Grown Ups 2 showed no sign at all of Sandler fighting against the creative trough he's found himself in, but it did prove he can still bring home the box office bacon. His first sequel (although it doesn't feel like it), Grown Ups 2 has taken $123m in the US to date, although like many Sandler comedies, it's not travelled outside of America too well. Still, Sandler's US audience alone will be enough to turn in a profit. And don't rule out Grown Ups 3. Shudder.

EPIC

Blue Sky Studios is going to find life tougher and tougher outside of its Ice Age movies, and Epic proved that to a point. Beautifully animated, but telling a fairly familiar story, the movie cost in the region of $100m to make, and took in $249m worldwide. It'll continue to generate good returns for Fox on home formats, but it's nowhere close to being another animated franchise in the same way as those aforementioned Ice Age films. 

MONSTERS UNIVERSITY

Many of us had Monsters University pegged as one of the massive blockbusters to beat in 2013. The thing is, commercially at least, someone beat it.

Whilst Pixar's prequel has done strong numbers, the firm may have had its eye on its second ever $1bn gross (following Toy Story 3). Yet Despicable Me 2 has clearly bitten a chunk out of Monsters University's audience. It's still been a big hit, but Monsters University's final box office total may fall just short of $700m. That's a good return, just not quite the one many were expecting.

To be fair, the reviews for Monsters University were more good than great. Interestingly, in the aftermath of the movie's release, Pixar confirmed that its priority would be on original films rather than sequels moving forward, and few of us are likely to argue with that.

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

Even though JJ Abrams' 2009 Star Trek reboot won sizeable acclaim and proved to be a hit, it might not be quite the box office juggernaut many believed it to be. In fact, when you factor in non-US takings as well, the first G.I. Joe movie took more money for Paramount.

Star Trek Into Darkness? It took slightly more money than the first movie, but still stopped at just over $450m (albeit in the midst of a very competitive run of films). Considering that it cost nearly $200m to make, that's not quite the return Paramount is likely to have yearned for, but it's a profitable movie - with long term legs - nonetheless. And it's certainly enough for Paramount to want more, with the next Star Trek big screen adventure likely to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the franchise in 2016.

THE WOLVERINE

Movie star power had an influence again with The Wolverine, where the magnetism of Hugh Jackman was front and center with pretty much everything about the movie. Coming off the back of the not well received X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Wolverine was a brighter beast than the last standalone adventure, but still one with problems. It certainly felt less an 'event' movie than something like Iron Man 3, and for all its qualities, The Wolverine is hardly likely to bother too many people's top ten lists at the end of the year.

Its gross to date of $300m worldwide reflects that: enough for a profit, enough to keep the standalone Wolverine franchise motoring, but still suggesting an injection of something somewhere along the line wouldn't hurt. As it stands, Fox has got another X-Men movie out of the door, but not a great one.

OBLIVION

Tom Cruise films don't, as a rule, do massive numbers in the US any more. The last time he had a non-sequel movie cross $100m at the American box office was back in 2005, with War Of The Worlds. But Oblivion, the first blockbuster of 2013, was a solid performer. It took in $286m worldwide, and if you can look past just how derivative the movie is, it's a movie that's beautiful to look at, and offers some solid big screen science fiction.

It's the gross outside of America that's responsible for around two thirds of Oblivion's business, and there's proof that - on non-US shores - Tom Cruise's pulling power is still better than you might think.

PACIFIC RIM

A movie that's just about made enough now to be listed in this category. Guillermo del Toro's return to blockbuster filmmaking won critics over, and we're big fans of it. But it's only just going to get over $100m in the US. It lost, depressingly, a head to head with Grown Ups 2. Fortunately, its box office takings elsewhere in the world have helped. The movie has taken nearly a quarter of a billon dollars outside of the US, and it should end up with in the region of $400m in takings. That'll double the production budget, and Warner Bros will be confident of a good performance on home formats. Still, the mooted sequel doesn't look too likely right now.

THE CONJURING

The big breakout hit of the summer? That'd be the one that wasn't a sequel, wasn't programmed at the usual time for its genre (horror), and the one that gathered up some of the best reviews of the year. James Wan - who has Insidious: Chapter 2 ready, and is now working on Fast & Furious 7 - has directed another tidy, effective chiller, one that's gone on to be one of the most profitable films of the summer.

Costing around $20m to make, The Conjuring has spooked up $120m in the US, and nearly $50m elsewhere. By the time its run is done, it'll have edged closer to $200m, and a sequel is on the way.

NOW YOU SEE ME

A sequel's on the way too to director Louis Letterier's magician crime caper Now You See Me. Notwithstanding a plot with more leaks than a sieve full of authentic leek and potato soup, the light, breezy tone of the movie found favor with audiences surrounded by louder, brasher fare. As such Now You See Me conjured up around quarter of a billion dollars in worldwide business, and Lionsgate has already confirms that it intends to pursue a sequel.

THE GREAT GATSBY

Superb programming by Warner Bros, this. When the studio moved The Great Gatsby away from its Christmas 2012 release - out of the glare of Les Miserables - it was assumed there was a problem with the movie. Was the studio running scared? Nope, it was finding Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby a better slot in the schedule. As a consequence of this, the movie outgrossed the likes of The Hangover Part III, The Wolverine, Epic and more at the US box office. Furthermore, the movie found success outside of the US too, and with a May release date, The Great Gatsby has grossed $330m. That's hugely impressive, and signs of an intelligent gamble paying off.

THE PURGE

It's not just Warner Bros that's been savvy with its programming. Universal took the small-budgeted The Purge, a grown up thriller with an intriguing premise, and put it out in the middle of a PG-13 infested blockbuster season. The result? A $34m opening weekend in the US, leading into a worldwide gross of just over $80m. That's not Iron Man 3 numbers, certainly, but it's a good, solid profitable movie for Universal.

THE HEAT

Looking for the hottest director of comedy movies in Hollywood right now? Then you need to be looking up Freak & Geeks creator Paul Feig, who followed up the smash hit Bridesmaids with another standalone comedy success, The Heat. Pairing Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, The Heat cost under $45m to make, and has broken $200m at the worldwide box office already. It's not as good as Bridesmaids in truth, but Feig again shows his deft hand for bringing strong comedy performances out of his cast.

In a summer where comedies have generally disappointed at the US box office, The Heat has proven to be the unlikely victor.

THIS IS THE END

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldeberg made their directorial debut with This Is The End, an economical movie to make that's enjoyed good success. Most of its money has come from America, but the $96m it's taken there tripled the movie's modest budget. It's not a movie that's travelled well - taking in just $15m outside of America - but it's still proven to be a profitable venture, and one that's demonstrated promise for Rogen and Goldberg behind the camera.

THE SMURFS 2

So confident was Sony that it'd have another hit around the half a billion dollar mark (the gross of the first Smurfs movie worldwide) that it announced The Smurfs 3 even before The Smurfs 2 was in cinemas. But off the back of rotten reviews, and Despicable Me 2's dominance of the family market, The Smurfs 2 has stumbled.

It's not stumbled massively, and it's mainly stumbled in America, where it's not crossed $50m at the time of writing. The movie's gross stands around $160m though, and that's less than a third of the first movie's. Furthermore, the movie cost over $100m to make. All of that isn't likely to stop Sony making The Smurfs 3, but it's surely made a few meetings happen. Maybe making better sequels should be on the agenda. Talking of which....

THE HANGOVER PART III

Comfortably the worst movie of the summer. The Hangover Part III was a complacent, unpleasant, unfunny and predominantly dull movie, kicking any life left out of a franchise that used to be quite funny. Bizarrely, audiences, to a degree, agreed. The movie still grossed $350m worldwide, but it was a long way off the numbers of The Hangover Part II. In the US, it took less than half of its predecessor's gross, and taking worldwide numbers into account, it came up over $200m less. That's over a quarter of the last movie's audience voting with their feet, and hopefully giving a proverbial bloody nose to the creative talent behind the movie.

Everything that's wrong with modern day Hollywood comedies is wrapped into The Hangover Part III. It's turned a profit, but may the franchise please, please, please die here.

THE INTERNSHIP

Hollywood's comedy machine learned a valuable lesson this year, and it's this: two hour product placement movies, without many jokes, are not a good idea. As such, The Internship - which reunited Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson - was savaged both for its uncritical promotion of Google, and also for being a pretty arduous, unfunny two hours. That said, it cost under $60m to make, has taken $75m worldwide at the box office, and its home release will move it into profit. The numbers may just discourage others from following a similar path in the future. Hopefully.

TURBO

DreamWorks Animation has been making changes in its marketing department, and off the back of Turbo's box office performance, that's not a surprise. Turbo is a fine movie, with more character and spark than Cars, yet without the fuel in the tank to take on Despicable Me 2. As such, its US take is around $75m. This comes off the back of the excellent Rise Of The Guardians also barely scraping past $100m in the US. The Croods, arguably the weakest of the firm's last three releases, is the one that went on to be a big hit (with a sequel on the way), but that was released in much clearer waters. Turbo, meanwhile, has the lowest US gross ever for a DreamWorks computer animated feature. It doesn't deserve that.

So where next? Next summer, the firm is loading up the How To Train Your Dragon sequel, which is a sure fire hit. Mr Peabody & Sherman is up next though, and this one's more of a gamble. It's barely noticed, but DreamWorks Animation has been far less reliant of late on sequels, and it'd be a pity if another strong, standalone animated feature underperformed. Off the back of Turbo,  DreamWorks Animation has the right films, but not necessarily the right position of them. Expect the staggered non-US release for the movie to pay dividends though.

AFTER EARTH

You may decide to take the headlines at face value and declare After Earth a flop, but M Night Shyamalan's latest, starring Will Smith, will earn a solid profit for Sony by the time all is done. Furthermore, while its disappointing total in the US - $60m - may lead you to believe that Will Smith's star power is on the wane, the impressive non-US take, which lifted the movie to a near-quarter of a billion gross - tells another story.

In truth, After Earth is a career high for neither Shyamalan or Smith, but then neither is it the outright disaster many painted it as. It's an interesting, problematic movie, from an immense direct who's clearly lost his way.

Still, while you shouldn't expect a sequel, nor should you assume that After Earth's accounts are covered in red ink.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN

A quiet disappointment for Sony. With Olympus Has Fallen having stolen most of its thunder, Roland Emmerich's White House under siege movie had its fans, but not a particularly sizeable audience. It was no cheap undertaking, either. Costing around $150m to make, before marketing and distribution, the movie grossed a disappointing $71m in the US, although its continuing its global rollout now (it makes it to the UK in September). Olympus Has Fallen made more, and was a more economical movie.

For Roland Emmerich, greater riches presumably await with 2015's Independence Day 2, though...

RED 2

Bruce Willis has come in for a lot of criticism this year, not helped by a really shitty Die Hard sequel back in February. RED 2 wasn't a great deal better, then there's been a series of PR oddities, and the news that he wasn't returning for The Expendables 3. Criticising Willis heavily does overlook the fact that he's constantly supported interesting directors over the past decade or two, but then when he sleepwalks through something like RED 2, it's hard to feel too much sympathy. And sleepwalk he does, as part of a decent ensemble, that doesn't recapture the sleeper success of the first movie. RED 2 hasn't broken $100m at cinemas worldwide yet, and barring some home release miracle, it'll mark the end of the franchise. It should do, anyway.

THE LONE RANGER

We've talked about this one extensivel, already, here. But there's little getting away from the fact that The Lone Ranger is the movie that every studio - apart from Disney - is glad it didn't make. Costing well over $200m just for the negative, the movie has been responsible for a nine figure write off on Disney's books this year, and it's called into question the power of the Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster machine.

A pity. The Lone Ranger has problems that you could fill a website by listing, but you can't accuse it of lacking ambition. It was heavily hurt by opening opposite Despicable Me 2, but it's also the architect of some of its own problems. Tonally troubling for a family movie, it was always a high risk movie. But the thud with which it landed suggests that the big budget, big screen western is a thing of the past for a while now.

R.I.P.D.

The word 'flop' is overused in movie reporting parlance, but it's hard to think of another one to use when chatting about R.I.P.D. Starring Ryan Reynolds and the mighty Jeff Bridges, the movie cost Universal around $130m, but it's only just scraped over $30m at the US box office. Its current worldwide total is $56m, and the UK release has now been put back a further month, to the end of September. It's a project that's going to leave a sizeable dent in Universal's accounts, although given the summer the studio has enjoyed, it can absorb it.