At WonderCon 2012 in Anaheim, California on Saturday, director Paul W. S. Anderson (Death Race, The Three Musketeers) appeared in front of a Ballroom full of fans, along with his wife Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element, The Fourth Kind) to discuss the fifth installment of their popular Resident Evil series entitled Resident Evil: Retribution. 

IAR's Managing Editor Jami Philbrick had a chance to speak with director Paul W. S. Anderson before his panel on Saturday about Resident Evil: Retribution and the fan favorite franchise. Anderson discussed the upcoming new film, where it picks up in the aftermath of Resident Evil: Afterlife, flashbacks to Alice's life before the zombie apocalypse, which classic video game characters make their first film appearance in this installment, as well as which Resident Evil actors make their return to the franchise, and if this really will be the final Resident Evil film in the series. 

Guillermo del Toro is a believer in telling stories across multiple media, but even just within film, he stays exceptionally busy.  He tends to be developing any number of projects as producer and/or director at any given time.  Right now he's busy with a mega-monster movie for next summer, but there's one would-be movie in particular that suddenly looks like it could be his Pacific Rim follow-up.  The Beauty and the Beast retelling Beast now has Emma Watson nearly set to star and Andrew Davies on board to write the screenplay.

Just today you may have seen a poster featuring Kate Beckinsale wielding weaponry in black leather on the poster for third sequel Underworld Awakening, and now you can peek at unofficial images featuring Milla Jovovich in black leather, tights, and a barrel full of buckles on the set of Resident Evil: Retribution.  That would be the fourth sequel in the action-horror franchise that began back in 2002 with videogame adaptation Resident Evil.  So today you get two dark clothes-loving leading ladies rocking guns in two different series, one which pits vampires against werewolves and another which pits human survivors against postapocalyptic undead hoards.  So take a look at Jovovich back in character as the unkillable heroine Alice, sporting the emblem of the evil Umbrella corporation on her buckle-laden outfit.

This Monday, which coincidentally happens to be Halloween, Earth's human population is expected to actually hit seven billion living, breathing, eating people.  Rather than contemplate the seemingly inevitable Malthusian catastrophe that this staggering figure might just presage, let's all agree to focus on what's really important: weekend box office estimates.  The last weekend before an unfortunate Monday Halloween saw three new wide releases hitting theaters, and according to the estimated grosses, Dreamworks Animation's Shrek spin-off Puss in Boots handily and predictably earned the greatest amount of the three.  The science-fiction allegory In Time opened in third, while Johnny Depp's passion project The Rum Diary kept it low key in fifth place.  All in all, a pretty quiet weekend.

From 2004 to 2008, the Saw franchise was the unchallenged master of the weekend before Halloween.  With everyone's favorite ghoulish holiday providing the appropriately macabre mood, America spent those years thrilling to the sight of victims gored, squished, split and splattered in increasingly elaborate and grisly death traps.  In 2009, however, Saw's magnanimous reign was ended with the debut of the crazy-cheap independently-financed oddity Paranormal Activity, which kicked Saw VI to the box office curb.  This weekend, the Paranormal Activity franchise proved again that we love a novelty Halloween tradition, as the second sequel, Paranormal Activity 3, opened nationwide with an estimated $54.0 million, earning it the title of biggest October opening ever and biggest supernatural horror opening on the books.

The Three Musketeers, a 3D action-oriented take on Alexandre Dumas' enduring serialized novel, arrives in theaters tomorrow, but Summit Entertainment has released the first four and a half minutes of the film online, presumably in an attempt to woo audiences with the movie's action-packed, comic book-style opening scenes.  These scenes introduce the title characters, played by Matthew Macfadyen, Luke Evans, and Ray Stevenson, along with cohort Milla Jovovich in her usual role as an ass-kicker, in this case Milady de Winter.

While nobody's expecting Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil director Paul WS Anderson's take on Dumas' swashbucklers to be exactingly faithful to the original text, I'm pretty sure that the book also opened with a scuba-diving ninja armed with steampunk-style weaponry, Aramis basically being Batman, and Porthos hulking out, all in order to raid Leonardo Da Vinci's private vault.  That, my friends, was a bit of sarcasm.

Almost a decade ago, writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson made his second videogame adaptation (the first was Mortal Kombat) with Resident Evil.  Anderson wrote and produced two subsequent sequels, Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction before returning to the franchise for last year's Resident Evil: Afterlife, which featured objects flying at audiences in 3D for the first time in the series.  Since then, there's been no doubt that Milla Jovovich would reprise her lead role as Alice for another installment, but now there's confirmation that both Anderson and Jovovich will return to their signature franchise for Resident Evil: Retribution.

A new, second trailer for director Paul WS Anderson's The Three Musketeers declares, "This fall, the legend comes to life like never before," and it does seem to be true.  I've never seen and interpretation of Alexandre Dumas' classic serialized novel that included steampunk weaponry, CG explosions, slow motion bullet-dodging, and giant zeppelin war machines.  Given Anderson's background in video game movies and sci-fi, it's not terribly surprising that he brought along these trappings to his first adaptation of classic literature, but that certainly doesn't mean it all necessarily fits.

This fall, director Paul W.S. Anderson's The Three Musketeers will update the Alexandre Dumas story that has endured for nearly 170 years by gussying it up with 3D, huge somersaulting stunts, explosions, and no shortage of steampunk weaponry.  A new poster for the film debuted today, and it indicates that D'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis have a previously-unexplored predilection for stylish leather.  It also features a six-way facial hair competition that includes Orlando Bloom, Christoph Waltz, and Ray Stevenson.  Also swords.  Lots of swords.

When not releasing promotional images for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1, Summit Entertainment also likes to drop a picture or two from The Three Musketeers, the 3D update of Alexandre Dumas' 200 year-old novel.  Three new images show D'Artagnan and the Musketeers, played by Logan Lerman, Luke Evans, Matthew Macfadyen, and Ray Stevenson, along with Juno Temple as Queen Anne, Milla Jovovich as M'Lady De Winter, and Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu.  Dither no longer, you rapscallion, take a look the pictures, right here.