So, Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief wasn’t exactly the Harry Potter killer that Fox wanted it to be (but Percy Jackson vs Harry Potter could be a ridiculously cool movie). Still, they are moving forward with a sequel subtitled The Sea of Monsters – based on the second book by Rick Riordan in the series. According to the LA Times, virtually none of the creative personnel is back, but director Chris Columbus will magically turn into a producer, Karen Rosenfelt will magically stay on as producer, and writer partners Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski will write the screenplay (using no magic at all). Essentially, even though The Lightning Thief made $226 million worldwide, the film cost something near $100 million and made only $88 million domestically. The numbers weren’t clear indicators that the studio wanted to take on a sequel. Something has changed their mind, though. This might shoot as early as this Summer, but there’s no word on what part of the cast will return. It’s possible that this final decision was partially hinging on whether Logan Lerman got the Spider-Man gig, and now that he’s free for the Summer, he can come out and throw lightning bolts at monsters in the sea. That’s speculation, but if you’ve read this far, you’ll realize that the brunt of this story is “Average Young Adult Adventure Gets Seemingly Unwarranted Sequel,” and that doesn’t fly well on its own.

June was a rough month for This Week in Blu-ray. Only a few of you actively missed it, judging by the emails, but I’m sure that even more of you felt a hole in your very souls due to the lack of weekly Blu-ray buying advice. By my count I am four weeks behind as of today, four weeks that each had worthy releases — some of which you may have purchased already. So in an effort to be brief, I’ve selected the most prominent releases and mixed them in with the Blu-rays hitting shelves this week. It’s my way of smashing four weeks of release together and wiping away the blood. In the end, it should give you a good road map for what you should have been doing all along.

Well, the best opening weekend for director Kevin Smith still wasn’t enough as Cop Out was nosed out by Shutter Island for its second straight winning weekend at the box office.

As expected, Shutter Island was the winner at the box office this weekend. What was not so expected was the margin of victory: it raked in $40 million dollars and represents the best weekend opening ever for both Leonardo DiCaprio and director Martin Scorsese.

This week looks fairly calm on the movie front. We have only one new release, Shutter Island, doing battle against the usual holdovers such as Valentine’s Day, Percy Jackson, Avatar and the rest of them.

While he prepares to take on an even more popular book with the upcoming 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (for producer Sam Raimi), writer Craig Titley took a moment to talk to us about his background in mythology, his love for Christopher Columbus’ Amblin Entertainment days, and how Percy Jackson calls back to that very era.

Well, it’s fair to say theater owners fell in love on Valentine’s Day with all the money they were reaping in.

If there’s any doubt after the first hour of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief that this movie is not for you, the Las Vegas casino montage set to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” should clear things up fairly quickly. By “you” I of course mean anyone actually reading this review. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

After being inundated with a slew of ads for Clash of the Titans and Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, it’s completely obvious that Greek mythology is poised to be the latest trend for Hollywood. But unlike vampires or pirates, there hasn’t been a recent proven Greek mythology hit to alleviate the fears of today’s risk adverse Hollywood. So why the recent Hollywood leap of faith?

Well, it is certainly odd to go into a weekend without Avatar as either the defending weekend champion or even as a favorite to win the box office — but that is exactly the situation we are facing this weekend at The Reject Report.

Hey everyone, we survived the January doldrums! And it wasn’t too bad either, cinematically speaking… Daybreakers and Youth In Revolt were both great fun anyway. So what types of films does February have in store for us? Pretty much a bit of everything actually…

Previously thought to be (a) way off the radar, then (b) not worthy of being on the radar in the first place, the Chris Columbus directed film Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief is now somehow creeping onto not only my radar, but also my watch-list.