Attention, U.S. moviegoers.

Theater owners and Hollywood studios would like to thank you for keeping the movie industry afloat these past couple of years by raising the cost of movie tickets for 3-D and IMAX showings. The price hike hits Friday, March 26 across the nation and is described by The Wall Street Journal as the steepest increase in a decade.

Theaters owned by AMC Entertainment Inc., Regal Entertainment Group, and Cinemark Holdings Inc. are leading the charge to drain your wallet.

BTIG media analyst Richard Greenfield surveyed 10 markets across the country and reported to the LA Times yesterday:

On average, they are raising ticket prices for 3-D movies by 8% this weekend. The price of a movie in 3-D on large format Imax screens is going up even faster, rising an average 10% for adults and 12% for children. 2-D ticket prices, meanwhile, are going up 4% on average for adults and 3% for children. The average surcharge to see a movie in 3-D is now $4. For Imax 3-D, it has gone up to nearly $6.

Motivated by the success of James Cameron’s insanely overrated Avatar and Disney’s current chart-topper Alice in Wonderland, studios are more committed than ever to producing 3-D fare (Warner Bros. recently announced that all it’s tent-pole releases would be 3-D), the cost of which eventually hits your pocket via theater owners who typically charge in the $15-to-$16 range for 3-D screenings, citing that the added cost goes primarily towards upgrading theaters so they can play the 3-D films.

Of course, those prices don’t go back down once the theater has been equipped, nor will any money be spent on making sure that the assholes around you aren’t yapping on their mobile phones and that you don’t get a meat thermometer to the throat should you protest.

The supposed demand for 3-D is like a Jedi mind-trick. Studios roll out their movies and marketing campaigns to make people believe that they’re missing out on something special and … it works, or so it would seem based on a handful of flicks. But, hey, 3-D is cool if done with the right movie (like Big Momma’s House 3).

Avatar sucked because Cameron is a shitty writer, but the 3-D was pretty flawless. Still, the most irritating thing about the 3-D onslaught is the fact that the majority of the titles being released this year and next (i.e. Clash of the Titans, the Spiderman reboot) weren’t even shot in 3-D, but instead converted from 2-D in post (which always looks sloppy and has a dizzying effect). How’s that for sleight of hand?

Directors are being pressured into shooting in the format regardless if the flick truly benefits from 3-D and old films are being converted for re-release (i.e. 300). Even uber-director/producer Michael Bay found himself being pushed by Paramount/Dreamworks to utilize the technology in his upcoming Transformers 3. Bay won’t be shooting Optimus Prime in 3-D, but he is still weighing the whole conversion option … begrudgingly.

Bay explains:

I’m used to having the A-team working on my films, and I’m going to hand it over to the D-team, have it shipped to India and hope for the best? This conversion process is always going to be inferior to shooting in real 3D. Studios might be willing to sacrifice the look and use the gimmick to make $3 more a ticket, but I’m not. Avatar took four years. You can’t just shit out a 3D movie. I’m saying, the jury is still out.

Cameron has echoed Bay’s comments in recent interviews.

He says:

This is another example of Hollywood getting it wrong. Sony says, “We’re doing Spider-Man in 3D.” The director doesn’t say, “Hey, I want to make the movie in 3D.” The studio says, “You want to direct this movie? You’re doing it in 3D, motherf*cker!” That’s not how it should be.

Of course, Cameron has also announced plans to convert Titanic into 3-D for future theatrical re-release. James Cameron is an asshole.

For a list of authentic and converted (fake) 3-D films, check out RealorFake3D.com.

Paradox Entertainment, the company behind Marcus Nispel’s Conan the Barbarian reboot, is set to launch Buck Rogers 3-D. Paul W.S. Anderson will direct the project from a script by Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway.

"Don't freak out, Erin, but there's a robot with a dutchboy haircut onboard."

Anderson tells Variety:

Buck has already been such a huge influence on action-adventure franchises like ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones,’ so for me it is a thrilling opportunity to be allowed to return to the source, and relaunch such an epic character.

The plot for the new Rogers film is being kept under wraps for now. But, like its source material, the story will center on a modern day pilot who awakens to find himself in the future.

The “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” comic strip ran from 1929 through 1967. In 1979, NBC adapted Rogers into a prime-time television serial starring Gil Gerard, Erin Grey, and Erin Grey’s camel-toe in a painted-on jumpsuit. The series ran for two years, but Grey provided boys with masturbation fodder up until the emergence of Slave Leia in 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

I fondly remember fondling myself at 6-years old while watching the episode where a bunch of sex-starved midgets attempted to strip Grey’s Col. Wilma Deering’s clothes off with their telepathic powers. Despite the fact that my baby-penis could only ejaculate rainbows at the time, I still knew it was a hot scene:

(Correct me if I’m wrong, beloved readers, but isn’t that the black midget from Bad Santa?)

I don’t care if Anderson casts a monkey’s turd to play Buck, but I am totally beside myself in anticipation to see who will play the new Wilma Deering. I can picture Natalie Portman in the part, but Anderson’s genre-director standing would most likely turn her away. Megan Fox would be good. Or, maybe, Rachel Nichols and her huge breasts (she’s already starring in Paradox’s Conan the Barbarian). Feel free to drop some names.

Anderson’s horror/sci-fi creds include Resident Evil, Death Race, AVP: Alien Vs. Predator, Soldier, Event Horizon, and the upcoming Resident Evil: Afterlife 3-D.

Stripper-turned-Oscar-winning-screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno) is having her latest script Young Adult fast-tracked by Mandate Pictures. The thriller follows a divorced, thirty-something author of young adult fiction as she stalks an old high school flame who has moved on to start a family of his own.

She tells Vulture:

It has elements of humor, but it’s pretty serious and fucked up. You don’t get to see women be antiheroes that often, where it’s like somebody like Mickey Rourke, who gets a comeback in The Wrestler. It’s rarer that you’ll have a studio say, “Let’s have an actress come back and be ugly!

Mandate Pictures produced Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell last year. Cody, of course, is the writer of the criminally underrated high-school set frightener Jennifer’s Body.

I wonder if Cody wears a thong and listens to Motley Crue when writing. I do.

(Update: OK, so I caught a screening of Young Adult and it isn’t a thriller. It’s a hilarious dark comedy starring Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt. Go see it!)

Rogue Pictures has set an Oct. 29 release date for director Wes Craven’s supernatural-slasher My Soul to Take. The film marks Craven’s return to writing since 1994’s Freddy Krueger vehicle New Nightmare.

The synopsis reads:

In the sleepy town of Riverton, legend tells of a serial killer who swore he would return to murder the seven children born the night he died. Now, 16 years later, people are disappearing again. Has the psychopath been reincarnated as one of the seven teens, or did he survive the night he was left for dead? Only one of the kids knows the answer.

Adam “Bug” Heller was supposed to die on the bloody night his father went insane. Unaware of his dad’s terrifying crimes, he has been plagued by nightmares since he was a baby. But if Bug hopes to save his friends from the monster that’s returned, he must face an evil that won’t rest…until it finishes the job it began the day he was born.

Hmm. Sounds like someone is revisiting the A Nightmare on Elm Street well.

My Soul to Take stars Max Thieriot, Zena Grey, Emily Meade, Nick Lashaway, and Shareeka Epps.

Up next for Craven is Dimension Films’ Scream 4.

Black Swan and Book of Eli star Mila Kunis admits in the April issue of GQ magazine that she loves a good dick joke.

She says:

I love a good dick joke. Fart jokes. Poop jokes. They’re hilarious. They never get old. But especially not a dick joke.

Speaking of dick jokes … you may want to stick your hand down your pants to fully enjoy Kunis’ cowgirl-themed spread:

[Show as slideshow]

Bollywood actress Soha Ali Khan (pictured above) plays a grieving mother tormented by the loss of her child in director Abhijit Chowdhury’s supernatural thriller The Accident.  The film marks the first “I-Horror” collaboration between Indian studio Pritish Nandy Communications and Britain’s High Point Media Group.

What exactly is I-Horror?

High Point Media’s managing director Carey Fitzgerald explains:

As with the J-Horror phenomenon, which is distinctly rooted in Japanese culture that is also exportable, I-Horror will be the new by-word distinguishing genuinely scary films that, by their vibrant colours and character, unmistakably herald from India but also tap into a wider consciousness.

The studios are also moving ahead with two additional I-Horror titles: Sanjay Khanduri’s The Pilgrim Express and Kushan Nandy’s Of Brothers and Sisters.

A representative for Pritish Nandy says:

If any kind of cinema can cross over easily, horror is the best example as we have seen in recent times with Japanese, Korean, and Spanish films. I-Horror is India reaching out to a global audience.

I think I-Horror will make for a great genre. Imagine how much better you’ll feel if after watching some fucked up horror flick you could enjoy a Bollywood dance number performed by all the people you just saw get killed.

The Accident is due out later this year.

Also keep an “I” out for director Jennifer Lynch’s Hisss (starring Mallika Sherawat) a creature-feature shot in India and based on the Nagin half-woman/half-snake folktale.

You know a film is truly disturbing when it gets the entire online horror community to act like your mom. Director Srdjan Spasojevic’s A Serbian Film was screened at last week’s SXSW Festival and apparently pissed all over the fragile sensibilities of those in attendance.

Bloggers and critics have since continued to cry about the film’s grotesque over-the-top violence. Perhaps, the funniest- outcry comes from one Tex Maxipad over at Bloody-Disgusting, who not only gives A Serbian Film a poor grade due to its lack of “redeeming social, political, and artistic value,” but compares it to PETA propaganda and 9/11.

Since when does horror have to aspire to such lofty goals? Horror is popcorn thrills and dime-store psychology. Whether you’re afraid of ghosts, Dinocrocs & Supergators, or getting your limbs hacked off during sex, horror films play to our fears and our inherent nature to want to see people suffer through horrible ordeals from the safety of our homes.

A Serbian Film stars Srdjan Todorovic as a downtrodden ex-porn star trying to make ends meet for his family by taking on a role in a privately funded fetish video that involves acts both immoral and illegal (eye socket rape anyone?).

The film has yet to lock down distribution in the States.

Do you like scary movies?

Dimension Films is counting on your love of horror movies to revitalize their Scream franchise after a 10 year hiatus. Announced during last year’s American Film Market by original scribe Kevin Williamson, Scream 4 has now received an official release date of April 12, 2011.

Dimension Films head Bob Weinstein tells Variety:

Scream has been such an integral part of Dimension’s history, and I look forward to continuing the franchise.

Returning to the fold with Williamson are director Wes Craven and actors Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and—regrettably—David Arquette.

According to Williamson, Scream 4 may be the start of a new trilogy. The innovative series has earned over $500 million in worldwide coin.

Director/producer Michael Bay announced on his website today some surprising additions to the cast of Transformers 3.

From MichaelBay.com:

We just locked in Frances McDormand and John Malkovich. Both amazing actors I’ve always wanted to work with. We also just got Ken Jeong, he is the super funny actor stuck in the trunk from Hangover and the Doctor from Knocked Up.

(Translation: “He is the super funny actor stuck in the trunk from Hangover” = “The Asian guy stuck in the trunk from the Hangover.”)

Personally, I think Bay is going about his casting all wrong. Adding actors like Malkovich and McDormand to Transformers 3 is like putting Dubs on a Nissan Sentra—a waste of money and resource. Bring on Rachel Nichols, Gemma Atkinson, Olivia Wilde … or find the next Megan Fox. Boys like toys, dammit!

But, I digress.

Bay also revealed one of the new Autobots that will be joining Optimus Prime and the gang.

I also was at a Ferrari charity event this week raising money for a hospital being built by Ferrari in Haiti. I announced that night the newest Autobot to join Transformers: the Ferrari 458 Italia.

How cool will it be if the Ferrari is voiced by James Gandolfini and gets to smack around a Fiat for not having dinner ready?  Maybe it could even put a cap in some muli caddy’s tailpipe.

Peep the Ferrari 458 Italia:

Twilight Saga star Ashley Greene is feeling pretty immortal these days. The 23-year-old took time during last week’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas to take a big smelly shit on the horror genre, insisting that her appearance in Dark Castle Entertainment’s The Apparition—::cough:: Paranormal Activity::cough—has elevated the film to new heights of cinematic genius.

She tells Cinematical:

It’s a psychological thriller that centers around these two characters, Kelly and Ben, who are played by myself and Sebastian Stan. We play a couple who are haunted by a supernatural force and we have to figure out what this thing wants. I definitely learned a lot of things about myself while filming this.

I was terrified, and as far as just being vulnerable and sad and hurt, and strong… it’s not a horror film; we want it to be elevated and scary along the lines of Poltergeist, so I definitely didn’t want Kelly to be one of those scared, dumb girls in a horror movie. So we all worked together, it’s been a huge collaboration in making these characters really smart.

I spoke with the director and producers to see exactly how they wanted to go about the film. The fact that it’s as far away from that mainstream horror film as you can get kind of relaxed me, because I wanted to be a part of it but I didn’t want to be in a horror film, so it worked out.

I certainly think Twilight has given me a lot of opportunities and it’s put me in a position and enabled me to be able to say, no, I don’t want to do that film, and I’m not going to do that, and I am going to do this. I’m in a very good position.

I’m looking forward to seeing what positions Greene will be in after the last Twilight films have come and gone. I predict something like this. Anyway, you don’t need to be a member of Mensa to enjoy Greene’s boobies.

The Apparition is currently shooting in Los Angeles. The film costars Harry Potter’s Tom Felton and  Julianna Guill, aka the topless chick from the recent Friday the 13th remake.