Remember back on Thursday when I said I didn’t see too many more $50-million plus opening hitting our theaters before the end of the Summer? You can scratch that, because The Karate Kid has already proven me wrong.

Shrek’s reign at the top of the charts is sure to come to an end this weekend, and two new films are battling it out to see which can take the crown. Will it be Jackie Chan’s mastery of karate or Quintin ‘Rampage’ Jackson’s skills at driving a big ass van that wins the weekend?

Princes from Persia and Cougars from the City couldn’t take Shrek down, so no one was expecting talking dogs, annoying killers, genetic mutations, or even British rock stars to get the job done, either.

This is what happens when movie marketing goes wrong. This week, McDonald’s will recall about 12 million Shrek drinking glasses because federal regulators found they contain the toxic metal cadmium, which poses some potentially serious health risks.

This weekend at the box office, Shrek faces a four-on-one onslaught of newcomers, each backed by a different genre, and each bringing their own demographic. In the end, they all agree DREN is pretty damn cute.

Two, big, new movies. One, giant ogre still holding down the fort at the top. Neither Sex and the City 2 nor Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time could take the lead from Shrek Forever After.

The two, big movies this weekend underperformed, one much more than the other, while Iron Man 2 stays right on schedule. Also, a new, limited release surprised everyone with a nearly $5000 per screen average.

‘Shrek Forever After’ offers conclusive proof that the franchise has run out of steam.

This is it, folks. The weekend we’ve all been waiting for. The answers are finally going to be revealed to the world. Is Donkey really the smoke monster? Who will Fiona choose between Shrek and Puss in Boots? Will Lord Farquaad make a surprise appearance at the last minute and take out everyone with sticks of dynamite lifted from the Black Rock? All of this and more will finally be answered in the final installment, Shrek Forever After.

In April, Film School Rejects will once again send our crack staff of NY-based critics (we call them “the cool ones”) over to the neighborhood known as Tribeca to cover the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. There, they will be delighted with a wonderful slate of uniquely artful and uniquely New Yorky films. And Shrek Forever After.

Yesterday saw a flurry of trailer debuts, including the first Iron Man 2 trailer and the newish Clash of the Titans trailer (which I will be posting with comments shortly). Today, we get the first trailer for Shrek Forever After. That makes one point for yesterday, zero points for today.

We decided not to make the headline: Writer Steps into Puss’ Boots or some variation thereof because every other outlet is doing that.

500 Million + 700 Million = A new filmmaking partner for Spielberg and Dreamworks.

A small, CGI-animated bird from Dreamworks recently dropped a present into Cinema Blend’s inbox with potential news on Shrek Goes Fourth.

Sequels are an inevitability for two reasons… greed and a dearth of creativity. It’s a challenge to find a necessary sequel amongst all the crap, or even one that carries the original story to new and exciting places.