The very smart thriller, Inception, appears as though it will hold off a strong challenge from Angelina Jolie’s new thriller, Salt. In Friday returns, Inception drew $13.2 million while Salt drew $12.7 million, with both films seemingly on a course to break the $35 million mark before the weekend’s out.

That would be a strong second-week showing by Inception and a decent, if not dazzling, debut by Salt. Despicable Me, the animated children’s film, is the only other film likely to break the $10 million weekend barrier, as fourth-place-at-the-moment children’s live-action flick, Ramona and Beezus, based on the Beverly Cleary children’s classic that was around when I was in grade school, was trailing a distant fourth place with only about $3.0 million on Friday, good enough to stay ahead of Nic Cage’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

So while Jolie’s SALT continues to set spirometer ablaze, mark me down for being more interested in Chris Nolan’s latest “film between Batman films” offering, Inception.

A tentative release date has been leaked for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, and it appears the franchise has decided to stay out of the way entirely of the other huge children’s-lit-to-film franchise, Harry Potter.

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn will be made as two separate movies, just as is the case with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. Deathly Hollows releases part one this coming November, while part two will release late next spring.

Breaking Dawn Part 1 will then follow in November 2011, well removed from any possible lingering Potter-effect on the box office, with Part 2 likely to follow in the Summer of 2012. The two-part finale of the Twilight Saga will be filmed in Baton Rouge and Vancouver with filming expected to start this fall and last for several months.

Hopefully those Twilight fans already lining up for the next installments will be well-supplied on the best fat burner, since they’ll be sitting there a LONG time this time…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Spider-Man movie franchise reboot being headed up by director Marc Webb. There’s a lot of ways he could bring a fresh take and a lot of ways to screw it up.

Casting is vitally important.

Too often in casting today, directors will choose actors in their 30s to portray high school kids because they still look young at the time of casting. Trouble is, that works for one film and by the time a sequel would be made, they’re looking their age.

So, while I hold no illusions that Marc Webb reads a snarky site like HollywoodIdiocy, here’s some of my dream-casting for the Spider-Man reboot, with actors close to being age-appropriate for the roles.

First and most importantly, Mary Jane Watson. She’s the emotional core of this series, so getting her right is vital. It’s hard to find a young actress who can pull off the demands placed on MJ’s role in the Spider-Universe as she ages into it, but I think I’ve found just the candidate.

Saoirse Ronan would make an ideal Mary Jane. First of all, she’s only sixteen, making her the perfect age to begin playing MJ for three or four films before the next reboot. Plus, she proved quite capable of carrying a major motion picture with her role in The Lovely Bones. Sure, she’s closer to blonde than red-head, but so was Kirsten Dunst when she was cast. It’s called a dye-job. Big whoop.

As for Peter Parker, you need someone who has that mixture of geekiness and leading man potential. You’d have to nerd him up a bit, but at 17, Taylor Lautner has already proven his ability to be part of a huge, money-making movie franchise with his role in the Twilight Saga. Put a pair of glasses an him and he’d make a decent Parker.

To round out the romantic triangle and give MJ someone to worry about when vying for Parker’s affections, I can think of no one better-suited to the role of Gwen Stacy than Dakota Fanning, whose acting talent is beyond reproach.

So there you have it for the key roles; Lautner, Ronan and Fanning. Cast these three, Marc Webb, and no one will be whining over the loss of Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Bryce Dallas Howard for very long at all.

Summit Entertainment’s two-movies-from-one-book finale of the Twilight saga, inspired by the Stephanie Meyer book series, Breaking Dawn, finally has a director: Bill Condon.

A quick credit report on Condon reveals he was the director behind Dreamgirls, Kinsey, Gods and Monsters, and even scripted the movie version of Chicago. So he’s directed a lot of well-received movies but has no genre direction credits to speak of.

Still, he’s a big name and that counts for something; in fact, he’s probably the most established and decorated director to take on the teen angst vampire series to day. And considering the decidedly adult content of Breaking Dawn, it might be just the sort of director-to-material match the series needed at this point. Time will tell how well his treatment of the material is received.

A couple of NBC Thursday Night comedy stars bested the Clash of the Titans at the box office this weekend in a photo-finish. In an effort to avoid such on embarrassment, Warner Brothers added 25 screens nationwide to Clash’s total, but was still out-distanced by the Steve Carell-Tina Fey rom-com.

Could this send some Warners execs on a desperate Seattle job search? Probably not, but it is a black eye for the mega-pic that, it was hoped, would show staying power similar to other 3D epics like Avatar and Alice In Wonderland.

So has the sheen gone off 3D with Clash’s huge second-week tumble from the top? Probably not, but it does prove you need more than 3D to sell a picture; you need a compelling story, great actors, and a solid director who’s not just wowed by the new 3D tech.

In the end, Date Night appears to have hauled in $27.1 million, while Clash trailed close behind with only $26.8 million; that’s a 56 percent drop, and the only other movie that plummeted faster this week was Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too? at 62.4 percent off its first week.

Behind Date Night and Clash, How To Train Your Dragon retained some momentum, bringing in $25.3 million in its third week, a drop of a mere 12 percent or so. Perry’s Married Too flick came in a distant fourth place with only $11 million, while The Last Song brought in $10 million to secure the fifth spot; the Miley Cyrus vehicle has over $42 million in box office to date, more than double its $20 million modest budget.

Nothing else drew more than $5.6 million. But the competition’s about to get a lot tougher. Next week brings us the Chris Rock-Martin Lawrence-Tracy Morgan comedy, Death At a Funeral, as well as the post-modern superhero flick, Kick-Ass, which is opening wide despite a hard R rating. Both films have excellent potential to do well.

Director Bryan Singer is rolling in rich projects right now; he’s been attached in the Hollywood rumor mill to the movies Jack the Giant Killer and a big-screen version of Battlestar Galactica, but his next project appears to be X-Men: First Class, a reboot of the Marvel mutant he launched and then abandoned to try his hand at a Superman movie.

The result, of course, was not a tuxedo-inspiring piece of cinema, but two subpar superhero flicks, as Superman Returns was disappointing, and the non-Singer X-3: The Last Stand was similarly uninspiring. Even last year’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, failed to live up to expectations.

At one time, Singer’s return to the X-franchise was doubtful, but given the weakness of films developed without his involvement, his return is now a welcomed bit of news among network execs. Word on the street is that producer Lauren Shuler-Donner has even promised to wait on moving ahead with X-Men 4 in hopes that Singer will helm that project as well.

Of course, with so many irons in the fire, can Singer really make good on all these projects? Probably not; something’s going to drop and hopefully it’s Jack the Giant Killer, a project that would be just fine in someone else’s hands.

With John Cusack anchoring the upcoming comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, count me as one who is hoping the 1980s throwback laffer is more John Hughes and less Farrelly Brothers in orientation. I’ve always considered the 1980s my decade – the decade in which I went from 14 to 24 – so I’m rooting for this movie to do well, big time.

However, if the film reflects the mores, mentality and vocabulary of 2010 more than 1985, it’s a recipe for disaster. In my mid-40s now, I don’t enjoy going to movies that are excessively foul-mouthed, which is certainly the current trend. I intend to go to the movie if I can; but I will walk out if it’s too bawdy.

The Final Destination, a 3D outing of the decade-old franchise, was implied to be the last installment in the series, but considering the thriller raked in $180 million in global box office, the inexpensive series of films may not have made the top franchises 2010 list, a follow-up was suddenly a possibility.

Now it’s a lock; at ShoWest, Warner Brothers president Alan Horn confirmed development is moving ahead on a new installment of the movie series. Will it be 3D again? Hard to imagine it wouldn’t.

Listen for the doorbell and you might hear the click-whir of Shutter Island, the period chiller by Martin Scorsese that stars Leo DiCaprio this weekend; that’s about the only film opening big enough to challenge Valentine’s Day, The Wolfman, Percy Jackson and Avatar for box office dominance going into the third weekend of February.

Everything else is either opening small or won’t be released until later on. After seeing The Wolfman today, and viewing the preview for Cop Out, I’m now kind of looking forward to the Bruce Willis-Tracy Morgan-Sean William Scott buddy cop flick coming out at the end of February, but after that, there’s nothing much of interest until the middle of March!

Word has hit the street that Sony has put the kibosh on Spider-Man 4, releasing director Sam Raimi, star Tobey Maguire and the rest of the existing Spidey cast from all future contractual obligations to the Spidey franchise. So instead of one more go-round with Maguire, Dunst and company under Raimi’s direction, Sony will back-peddle and allow a new director and cast to start over.

Considering the vast success of the first three Spider-Man films, it’s unlikely the new franchise will attempt to retell Spider-Man’s origin story, which took up much of the first film, but an early version of the prospective script, penned at this point by Jamie Vanderbilt, will toss Peter back to his high school years and cover territory missed between Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. However, any rumors that Parker’s biggest enemy in the new flick will be severe acne are patently untrue.

Sony is currently touting director Marc Webb, whose biggest achievement to date is (500) Days of Summer, a rom-com that was barely a box office blip a few months ago. However, the studio liked his ability to capture the angst of youth, which is a major player in the teenage Peter Parker’s life.

No word on whether some supporting actors, like J.K. Simmons, who played J. Jonah Jameson to a “T,” will reprise his role in the reboot, but he’s one bit player who I’d love to see return and would be hard to replace.

Of course, there are any number of young actors in Hollywood who could take on the roll, and they need to look about 15 years old at the time the Spidey reboot launches in 2012 – one year later than Spider-Man 4 was set to debut. That means kids who are no older than 16 or 17 right now, at most. One prominent name that springs to mind for the role of Peter Parker is current Glee cast member Kevin McHale, who plays wheelchair-bound Artie on Glee. However, McHale is already 22 right now and will only look older in two years. Plus he’s contractually bound to Glee.

I’m sure Webb or whoever eventually wins the reigns of the franchise will find apt replacements; the other big change to the franchise is that Sony wants the Spider-Man reboot to be done completely in Avatar-esque 3D… meaning your friendly neighborhood wallcrawler will be swinging right at you in a couple years’ time.

Well, the comic book war between Marvel and DC has just stretched over into Hollywood; following this past spring’s release of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie, Ryan Reynolds’ turn as Deadpool was entrancing enough to excite Fox execs about featuring Reynolds as the undead hitman in his own Deadpool movie. Yet, with the i’s still waiting to be dotted and t’s crossed, along came that manufactured home known as Warner Brothers to scoop up the hot hero actor.

It was announced this week that Reynolds beat out Justin Timberlake and Bradley Cooper, among others, to land the lead in Warner Brothers’ upcoming GREEN LANTERN, to be written/produced/directed by Greg Berlanti, Mark Guggenheim and Michael Green. Martin Campbell will handle the behind-the-camera duties and shooting starts in January in Australia.

Did Reynolds oust himself from the Deadpool movie with this move? Or is the Green Lantern role a step up? It’s an interesting move, to be sure, and one that ensures Reynolds will have a premiere hero role in his future.

Despite turning an underdog movie into a box office cause celeb, director Catherine Hardwicke will not return to direct New Moon, Summit Entertainment’s sequel to Twilight, also based on the Stephanie Meyer novel of the same name. In Hardwicke’s place is a more recognizable name, perhaps… but also perhaps not for good reasons.

Chris Weitz, the newly-dubbed director for New Moon, is best known for starting the craze known as American Pie. His other work includes About A Boy and Golden Compass. Given that Twilight made its mark without sex, violence or notable foul language, Weitz’ resume may not inspire much confidence.

Still, he has been given the blessing of author Meyers, which may be worth something; let’s just hope New Moon doesn’t turn into a romp about a bunch of vamps and humans peeping on others having sex and throwing wild parties hoping to get laid, since that’s pretty much what American Pie was all about. I think the guy down the street who sells horse supplies might have inspired more confidence in me; but only time will tell.