A British secret agent, an unlikely pair of friends and a kidnapped ex-CIA operative helped boost admissions for European Union films across Europe by 12% in 2012. Despite a drop in overall attendance, market share for Euro films jumped to 33.6%, the highest level of the 2000s so far. The European Audiovisual…

EXCLUSIVE: Signaling an intention by EuropaCorp to ramp up Stateside production, principals Luc Besson and CEO Christophe Lambert have set veteran production executive and producer Lisa Ellzey to join EuropaCorp as executive vice president of U.S. Motion Picture Production. Ellzey, a Golden Globe and Emmy-winning…

While the French film industry has recently been polarized at home – spurred on by a Le Monde editorial penned by Wild Bunch co-founder and sales chief Vincent Maraval – there was good news from abroad this morning. Foreign admissions hit a record high in 2012 with French films selling 140M tickets, an 88% uptick over…

The goal is to inspire the estimated 16M people expected to receive a tablet, smartphone, smart TV or other connected device this Christmas to make the action film starring Liam Neeson the first one they buy. Fox Home Entertainment is releasing Taken 2 in its Digital HD format today, four weeks before it’s out on DVD…

I’m reading a THR piece reporting that Liam Neeson‘s Taken 2 paycheck is $10 million, up from the $1 million he received for the original. They’ve shortchanged the strapping Irishman on both counts. He’ll make more than double that when the film is done in worldwide theaters. I’ve heard Neeson got paid $12 million…

SUNDAY AM,  3RD UPDATE: This was a slammin’ weekend at the domestic box office turning around 6 weeks of sluggish grosses – with total moviegoing up +41% from last year. Here’s one reason why: I’ve learned that 20th Century Fox’s Taken 2 (3,660 theaters) is the first film that has performed normally for weekend late…

Taken 2 reteams Liam Neeson and producer/co-writer Luc Besson from the first pic, which earned $145M domestically and $226.8M globally for Fox when it burst on the scene in 2009. This one sees the bad guys come after Neeson’s family (daughter Maggie Grace and wife Famke Janssen) after he killed one of the evildoers…

A fast-paced international trailer for the 20th Century Fox‘s followup to Liam Neeson’s action hit landed just over two weeks ago and today there’s this abbreviated “alternate” version. Directed by Olivier Megaton from Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen’s script, Taken 2 opens Stateside October…

Liam Neeson is back as Bryan Mills, the man with a special set of lethal skills in Taken 2, and a trailer has been released overseas that shows no shortage of action. The first film, which recast Neeson as an action superstar, had a smart script by Luc Besson and Robert Kamen, and Fox released it at a fortuitous time…

20th Century Fox has set A Good Day To Die Hard for a February 14, 2013 release, the highlight of several pictures the studio has just dated on its release calendar. Bruce Willis is set to reprise his role as John McClane in the John Moore-directed film, and casting is just getting underway for the role of his son…

Jay Baruchel has joined Robert Pattinson in the David Cronenberg-directed Cosmopolis. Pattinson plays a financial wiz kid who puts his life in danger by betting his entire fortune against the yen on a tumultous day in the adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel. Baruchel plays the shy guy who founded the company, and who…

UPDATE: Liam Neeson and Luc Besson have come to a meeting of the minds and they have worked out the scheduling snafu that made him iffy for Taken 2. Neeson’s reps at CAA are now closing the deal for Neeson to reprise what has become a signature role. Production is now being eyed for year end or beginning of 2012…