BLU-RAY TUESDAY: 'Epic' Goes on Pint-Sized Blu-ray Adventure, 'Scary Movie V' Rehashes 'Paranormal' Parody

Caught in a summer where schooled monsters and an army of Minions laid claim to the animated box office, Blue Sky Entertainment's Epic takes the adventure home to Blu-ray. Epic leads this week's new releases which also include: Scary Movie V, Amour, Scooby Doo: Stage Fright, Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Second Season and Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Third Season.

Based on William Joyce's children's book, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, Epic follows a teenage girl (Amanda Seyfried) magically transported to the unseen world of little people living in her own backyard. Together with the help of Leafmen soldiers, a slug and a snail, she must protect a pod from evil forces in the forest. Epic is distributed on Blu-ray by 20th Century Fox in various formats including the standard Blu-ray, DVD, UltraViolet combo pack as well as a 3D edition. However, Target is releasing an exclusive 24-page Digibook.   

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: 'Purge' Terrorizes Charts at #1, Places 'Internship' on Lockdown

Google might be one of the largest players online, but audiences were turned off by The Internship, an Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn comedy where two become interns at the online juggernaut. Instead the top spot at the box office weekend this past weekend went to the micro-marketed thriller, The Purge. 

Last week's top pair, Fast & Furious 6 and Now You See Me continue to hold despite growing competition at the box office. Both films are still gunning for $250 million and $100 million runs respectively, which were predicted to be highly unlikely a month ago.

With the highly anticipated Superman reboot, Man of Steel being released this Friday and Monsters University the Friday after, the current slew of releases are racking up the numbers now before two potentially large week-to-week declines. 

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: 'Fast & Furious' Rides Again, 'Now You See Me' Outplays 'After Earth'

After a record-setting Memorial Day weekend, all of the key holdovers fell over 50 percent over the weekend. Despite a hefty 64 percent drop, Fast & Furious 6 rode to the top spot once again for the second weekend in a row.

The real upset of the weekend was Now You See Me outperforming its new release competition After Earth. With household names like Will Smith and M. Night Shyamalan attached to the sci-fi survival flick, After Earth was a shoe-in for the runner-up spot. After a string of panned releases including The Happening and The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan certainly has his detractors, many of whom seemed to have abandoned the director.

Other May holdovers, Star Trek Into Darkness and Epic continued to battle it out for the final two spots of this weekend's Top 5. Comedy sequel The Hangover Part III quickly plummeted down the chart in its second week, sending the Wolfpack out with a whimper. 
  

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: 'Fast & Furious 6' Fuels Record Memorial Day Weekend, 'Hangover' Ends Up Wasted

With tentpoles, Fast & Furious 6 and The Hangover Part III going head-to-head on the same weekend and two major blockbusters holding over, this Memorial Day weekend became the third largest weekend in box office history.

Vin Diesel action vehicle, Fast & Furious 6 topped the box office with ease with a franchise-record $98.5 million, while the third Wolfpack outing failed to live up to the hype despite switching gears after the 2011 rehash that simply swapped out Vegas for Bangkok disappointed fans of the 2009 breakout comedy.

Blue Sky's Epic attracted the family crowd, who weren't all that into fast rides or man-child antics. With no family films out in theaters since DreamWorks The Croods, Epic challenged last week's #1, Star Trek Into Darkness for the 3rd spot.

Spielberg's 'War Horse' Journeys Towards Epic Proportions

Steven Spielberg gives audiences not just one, but two movies over the holiday stretch.

If The Adventures of Tintin wasn’t enough Steven Spielberg over the long holiday season, there remains yet one more sprawling epic from the iconic director with the release of War Horse. 2011 isn’t this first instance that Spielberg has released two of his films in the same year. Back in 2005, Spielberg released his vision of War of the Worlds in the midst of summer and Munich, later in the year attracting attention from many critics. 

War Horse comes at the perfect time of the year, fitting the shape of an awards bait film with its epic scale and emotional tension. Though everything points to War Horse being a film that is here to only collect a potential pile of awards, there is so much more that Spielberg delivers in divulging a tale that simply comes down to one about a boy and his horse. And that’s exactly how War Horse begins. An Irish farm boy named Albert (Jeremy Irvine) begins a bond with a recently purchased horse, but when his father is behind on the rent, the horse is thrown into the midst of World War I and continuously changes owners.