Studios have been given a welcome surprise this summer: a possible record boxoffice season that is projected to pass the $4 billion mark after this weekend, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The summer produced three $300 million films in a nonstop run of hits launched by the $102 million opening-frame performance of Iron Man over the first weekend in May. By month’s end, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was on a similar path, while July produced the season’s hugest hit: The Dark Knight, which soon rocketed past an amazing $300 million.

With the boxoffice season about to conclude on Labor Day, summer 2008 finds itself in a photo-finish race that could produce yet another record domestic gross.

Summer 2008 interesting facts:

-This summer featured six $200 million-plus domestic performers versus seven a year earlier.

--Three of the top 10 were sequels and a fourth — The Incredible Hulk — was a franchise do-over; six sequels figured among the top summer rankings last year.

--Four of the top 10 summer films featured superheroes, and five were based on comics or graphic novels; Spidey was 2007’s sole superhero.

X-Files: I Want to Believe and Californication star David Duchovny announced that he has entered a rehab facility for sex addiction according to People.

We know what you're thinking. "You guys don't post gossip news, right?" Well with Duchovny's latest role on Californication (if you ignore his recent X-Files flick, which we do) as a boozed, sex-addicted writer who hops from bed to bed of slutty (and really naked) ladies, the irony of this piece of "news" wasn't lost on us.

But seriously, we love Duchovny and wish him a speedy recovery so he can scoot back to work on his Showtime series.

He and Tea Leoni have been married since 1997 and have two kids.

The Hollywood Reporter is telling us that the story of John Lennon is headed for the big screen with Nowhere Boy, a biopic that will be directed by visual artist Sam Taylor-Wood.

Produced by U.K. shingle Ecosse Films, the script from Control screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh will focus on the Beatle's childhood and subsequent journey to icon status. Filming is set to take place on location in Lennon's hometown in Liverpool.

Greenhalgh's script details the story of Lennon as a lonely teenager as his aunt and the mother who gave him up fight for his love. His only escape is music, art, and his fateful friendship with Paul McCartney.

Casting for the major roles "is under way," the backers said of the project that is being co-developed with the U.K. Film Council.

Sales and finance house HanWay Films is handling worldwide sales and will be trying to get sellers to tune in at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.

"The women in John's early life truly shaped who he became," Taylor-Wood said, "and the strengths and weaknesses of their relationships are central to this film."

Ecosse and HanWay also worked together on Becoming Jane and Brideshead Revisited.

Hamlet 2 - (60% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) (Pick of the Week)

Check out the Movie Press review of it HERE.

Babylon A.D. - (07% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes)

Vin Diesel is promised a passport back into the sci-fi post-apocalyptic America that exiled him for terrorism.  The catch? He must take a woman from Eastern Europe to New York City. Directed by the French guy that brought us Gothika, Mathieu Kassovitz, it is based on the novel BABYLON BABIES by Maurice G. Dantec.

College - (Not Reviewed for Critics)

Drake Bell of Nickelodeon's DRAKE AND JOSH grows up with this raunchy comedy about a trio of high school seniors on a college visit. When they arrive on campus, the three teens are recruited by a party-loving frat. It also co-stars that American Idol reject kid that looked like Chicken Little.


Disaster Movie - (Not Reviewd for Critics)

(Real Synopsis I couldn't resist to print.)

'In Disaster Movie, the filmmaking team behind the hits Scary Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet The Spartans this time puts its unique, inimitable stamp on one of the biggest and most bloated movie genres of all time --the disaster film. '

Traitor - (51% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes)

Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Crash) and Guy Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential) star in Traitor, a taut international thriller set against a jigsaw puzzle of covert counter- espionage operations. Traitor is written and directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff (screenwriter of The Day After Tomorrow).

Fox has bumped back the release of its adventure pic Australia in the U.S., Canada and Australia by 12 days to Nov. 26.

The move to the day before Thanksgiving is the latest in a series of distributor efforts to adjust to Warner Bros.' decision to move Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from its holiday slot to July 17.

"Recent shifts in the release dates of other pictures created an opportunity for us," Fox domestic distribution president Bruce Snyder said.

On its new date -- which moves the Baz Luhrmann-helmed Australia from Friday, Nov. 14 -- the Hugh Jackman/Nicole Kidman starrer will go up against wide openers including Lionsgate's action sequel Transporter 3 and Warners' seasonal pic Four Christmases, starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. Both of those pics also will bow on Wednesday.

Australia is still set to bow in other international territories at Christmas, as originally scheduled.

Aaron Sorkin is set to make his social network explode on Facebook. Sorkin (A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War) is in negotiations to write an untitled film project about the founders of the popular social networking site that Scott Rudin will produce for Columbia.

Sorkin broke the news on Facebook when he opened up his own account.

"I understand there are a few other people using Facebook pages under my name -- which I find more flattering than creepy -- but this is me. I don't know how I can prove that but feel free to test me," he wrote before going on to talk about the movie project.

"I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she's been dead for 33 years.)"

Sorkin also asked the Facebook public for any stories relating to the site.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg while studying at Harvard along with pals Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. At first, membership was restricted to Harvard students, then expanded to all Ivy League schools before going on to open up for all universities and high schools in Canada and the U.S. The site now has more than 100 million users worldwide.

Despite offers in the billions of dollars, Zuckerberg has steadfastly remained independent.

"I feel about this introduction the way I felt about 'Sophie's Choice': It could have been funnier," Sorkin finished.

Jason Reitman has set his sights on a novel by Walter Kim. The hero of Walter Kirn's novel Up in the Air inhabits an entirely new state: Airworld, where the hometown paper is USA Today, the indigenous cuisine wilts under heat lamps, and the citizenry speaks a Byzantine dialect of upgrades, expense accounts, and market share. Airworld even has its own nontaxable, inflation-free currency in the shape of bonus miles, which Ryan Bingham calls "private property in its purest form." Officially, Bingham is a management consultant, specializing in the lugubrious field of career transition counseling (i.e., he fires people for a living). But what Kirn's airborne protagonist is really doing is pursuing his own private passion, his great white whale: accumulating one million miles in his frequent-flyer account. As Up in the Air opens, Bingham has set out on a final, epic traveling jag. He intends to visit eight cities in six days, thereby achieving his own vision of Nirvana somewhere over Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Reitman is in talks have George Clooney to play the loathsome Bingham. Check out the book HERE.

Will Ferrell and Danny McBride (Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express) star in the Brad Siberling (Lemony Snicket, Moonlight Mile) directed comedy out July 17th, 2009. A forest ranger (Ferrell) along with his two children inadvertently stumble into a mysterious land populated by dinosaurs and other creatures, including the mysterious and dangerous race of Sleestak.

Audrey Tautou's upcoming Coco Chanel flick may be old news, especially with the pinch-her-cheeks-cute actress acting as the new face of Chanel No. 5, but we can't help but get excited over the recent news of the film's production date.

Coco Avant Chanel will begin production Sept. 15 in Paris. Anne Fontaine will helm the pic, with Warner Bros. financing and producing. Tautou's attachment was announced during last year's Cannes Film Festival.

Coco Avant Chanel is set for a 12-week shoot and is scheduled for release next year.

The film will feature dresses from the Chanel collection, and (fashion alert!) Karl Lagerfeld, art director of the House of Chanel, will supervise the re-creation of costumes and accessories.

Borders today announced that it will serve as the exclusive retailer partner for the “Be a Duchess for a Day” giveaway — a sweepstakes sponsored by Paramount Vantage, the specialty film division of Paramount Pictures, and VisitBritain, the national tourist board for England, Scotland and Wales.  

The sweepstakes, which begins today and runs through Sept. 30, will coincide with the Sept. 19 release of The Duchess, a feature film starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes based on Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, a national bestseller by Amanda Foreman about the scandalous rise and perilous fall of 18th century socialite Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.

The grand prize winner will receive a trip for two to England, including four nights accommodation at a four-star property in East Midlands; a tour of Chatsworth House, the ancestral home of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; and a luxurious spa treatment. To enter the sweepstakes, U.S. and Canada (except Quebec) residents age 18 and older simply visit www.borders.com/duchess and complete the entry form. There’s no purchase necessary to enter. One grand prize winner will be randomly selected from all eligible entries.