Giant Freakin Robot

Although Star Trek Into Darkness was just released in American theaters last Thursday, you can already pre-order the Blu-ray/DVD and a limited edition gift set of the Star Trek sequel film. Paramount Pictures has not released a street date for the Star Trek Into Darkness Blu-ray/DVD, but it’s most likely to hit stores and online retailers sometime in September or October of this year.

Paramount Pictures is giving Trek fans a few reasons to pick up Star Trek Into Darkness‘ limited edition gift set, which boasts a prop replica of the Starfleet Phaser pistol from the sequel film. Creative studio Quantum Mechanix Inc. will be producing the Phaser, which features a servo-powered spinner to instantly change intensity setting from “stun” to “kill.” Beware, there’s a HUGE SPOILER about Star Trek Into Darkness on QM’s website.

The Star Trek Into Darkness limited edition gift set retails for about $100, but it might be worth the price tag if you’re a big fan of the Star Trek sequel. The gift set comes with four format versions of the film itself: a 3D Blu-ray, a regular Blu-ray, a DVD, and a Digital Copy. As for the box art, it’s one of the movie posters from the film. It’s simple, but direct.

Microsoft debuted its next-gen console, the Xbox One, during an event earlier today. While there was plenty of time spent on the console’s features and stats, one announcement in particular will be of interest to some of our loyal GFR readers. Microsoft will be following in the footsteps of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon to produce original Xbox TV content, beginning with a live-action Halo series under the guidance of Steven Spielberg. You can watch the announcement above, which includes brief comments from Spielberg himself.

There’s no official release date for the Halo series, but the Xbox One is expected to hit stores sometime in the fall, almost certainly in time for the holiday shopping season. It would make sense to have the Halo series in the can and ready to premiere immediately, since that would allow Microsoft showcase their efforts to make the Xbox an all-in-one media hub.

The science fiction film After Earth is one of the biggest question marks of the summer movie season, because there really no telling whether this movie will be good or bad. It stars Will Smith and his son Jaden, it takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, and there seem to be some good visual effects in the film. On the other hand, it was co-written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. This new clip probably won’t sway you either way, but it’s still worth a look. Check the clip out above, featuring Jaden Smith’s Kitai Raige trapped in a bird’s nest.

The one-minute clip is pretty thrilling and perhaps, and is the second focusing on future Earth’s dangerous wildlife. Maybe this movie is nothing but 90 minutes of the Smiths tussling with human-hating critters. That would still make it better than The Happening.

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters! But they’re probably still waiting for a call on a rotary dial phone, since it feels like that long since rumors about Ghostbusters 3 started hitting the Internet. Dan Aykroyd believes in a bunch of weird shit, and the future existence of this long-awaited sequel is not the least of it.

He recently appeared on Larry King Live to promote other things, but Larry King — poor, beyond all realms of pop culture Larry King — posited the requisite question about the sequel, and Aykroyd gave his prepared speech, which covered the points below:

It’s based upon new research that’s being done in particle physics by the young people – the young men and women at Columbia University…Basically, there’s research being done that I can say that the world or the dimension that we live in – our four planes of existence: length, height, width and time – become threatened by some of the research that’s being done. And Ghostbusters – new Ghostbusters – have to come and solve the problem.

This is astounding…ly like everything we already know about the film. Not necessarily all the planes of existence involved, but at least we know now that new Ghostbusters are getting the job. Aykroyd also promised King a job, saying he can “comment on what’s happening in Manhattan up there at Morningside Heights. It’s going to be quite a spectacular scene once the stuff starts to break.” That sounds delightfully vague, but still gets a little bit of excitement brewing.