The news Monday morning that Disney was buying Marvel for $4 billion in cash and stock elicited the reaction that acquisitions of this kind and size usually elicit: shock, followed by the (reflexive) nodding that this "makes sense for both sides."

On one level, there's truth to the sentiment: A conglomerate of Disney's scale is always looking for new movie franchises, and in an era when it's harder to create them from scratch, it's logical that a company would want to pick up some that are ready to go.  Marvel, meanwhile, lives in a world in which it's increasingly hard to run a public company whose core business is film or television production without investors getting antsy (just ask Carl Icahn-beset Lionsgate). So it's subsuming its bottom line in a huge conglom, shielding itself from the effects of a flop (or of Wall Street's angst over a flop), and getting some serious P&A money in the process.

But for all the appeal, an acquisition like this is never as simple as just plugging the strengths of one company into the other. Here are several areas of change to watch for in the Darvel era.

– Bring on the ladies? As the New York Times and others point out, Disney is solid with girl audiences but needs help with boys. Properties like "Iron Man" and "Thor" do the trick, But there's another side to the coin: getting women to like superhero movies. (If Brad Pitt could get women to watch a violent Tarantino flick…) As much as Marvel likes criss-crossing characters between movies, don't expect Hannah Montana to show up as an Avenger. Stil, Disney is expert at attracting young women to titles they may not normally be interested in (see under, Johnny Depp making the ultimate young-boy fantasy, a pirate-adventure, popular with girls). For all the talk about Marvel continuing to run independently, don't be surprised if the studio accesses Disney's stable of talent to make some pics more girl-friendly.

It's still not likely, but 10 days into the release of "Inglourious Basterds," there's an outside chance the WWII pic could become Quentin Tarantino's biggest grosser ever.

The revenge-fantasy/ensemble drama/film-geek wet dream climbed to $74 million in domestic boxoffice this weekend, leapfrogging both editions of "Kill Bill" (which each earned between $65m and $70m domestically). Now the only target left is "Pulp Fiction," which earned $108 million on its way to Oscar glory.

There are still plenty of caveats to go around, of course. Scoring
$100+ million in 1994 means a lot more it does in the ticket-inflated
period of 2009. And even with a big international cast and some nice
momentum on the global front, "Basterds" is unlikely to catch the $213
million worldwide take of "Fiction."

But for a movie that was greeted with some skepticism when its development was first announced (only a year before it hit theaters), its numbers are no small achievement. In fact, after its strong hold in a quiet weekend (kudos to Weinstein schedulers, even if the dating meant the pic stepped on the company's own "Halloween II"), "Basterds" now ranks as one of the top boxoffice underdog stories of the year, trumping the first-quarter successes of low-mid budget pics like "Taken" and behind only the eye-popping $417m global take of "The Hangover."

Poor Ang Lee. The last four years have seen the versatile helmer do some of his best work of his career (which is saying something). And yet the American movie gods have sprinkled on the rain.

The karma started nearly four years ago  when an Oscar best picture win that was rightly his, for the socially conscious and richly character-driven "Brokeback Mountain," leaked away to the faux social consciousness and thinly-veiled caricatures of "Crash."

The director then goes and makes what is arguably the most ambitious film of his career — the culturally important, narratively compelling and beautifully photographed "Lust, Caution" — but finds the period Chinese-language pic released in the toughest market for foreign and specialty fare in a generation, resulting in a modest $4 million domestic take (though a huge overseas haul).

Lee then dramatically switches course to make the entertaining and likable "Taking Woodstock." And what do many critics do but… lambaste him for not being important enough. (Richard and Mary Corliss: "(Lee's) first wholly inessential film.")

Update: Toronto protest over Israel sidebar widens

A controversy is brewing at the Toronto International Film Festival — a tiff at TIFF, if you will — over the fest's decision to spotlight the city of Tel Aviv when the Canadian extravaganza unspools next month.

For an inaugural sidebar called City to City, Toronto decided to showcase pics from or about Tel Aviv, in a slate set to include some pretty good films, including Keren Yedaya's Cannes pic "Jaffa" and Eytan Fox's ensemble character drama "The Bubble."

But a small coterie — featuring primarily activists Naomi Klein, John Greyson and Richard Fung — are protesting and won't participate in this year's fest. The group is calling on the Israeli filmmakers whose work is being shown not to participate either, with the protesters saying the section does not offer enough political context about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. (Their objections were first reported today by the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, an abbreviated translation of which you can read here.)

Those pulling out aren't names whose absence would cause the fest to look or feel very different. Klein is well-known as an author and activist but not a filmmaker (actually, it's not clear what film role the Toronto native would play at the fest; "The Shock Doctrine," the doc based on her 2007 bestseller about global capitalism, isn't slated to play there, according to the fest's site). Greyson does have a documentary short (about violence surrounding a gay film fest in Sarajevo), but it's not a centerpiece of fest programming.

Just available on iTunes: the trailer for George Clooney's "The Men Who Stare at Goats," Grant Heslov's directorial debut that Overture picked up in the Cannes market this year (and which will now get a 2009 release after all).

We've never been sure about the tone of this war pic with a psychic as a main character. The trailer doesn't help. Is it a Coen Bros.-ish dark comedy? A road-trip movie that happens to be set in the Middle East? A broader, more slapsticky "Three Kings?" From the footage here, it's a little bit of everything. Which hopefully means it's at least a little funny. Or at least funnier than "Leatherheads."

There was no shortage of victory laps taken Monday by the main players behind "Inglourious Basterds," which exceeded expectations with a $37.6 million opening weekend. Quentin Tarantino managed to put a fresh coat of gloss on his cult status after seeing wobblier results for other recent releases (insert ironic "Death Proof" pun here). And Harvey Weinstein was also out front lauding Tarantino, preventing yet another round of nails from being driven into the Weinstein Co. coffin after a prerelease fusillade.

"Brad Pitt Pulls Them in at the Box Office," The New York Times declared in its post-mortem, but it's a curious headline choice given that the article spends more time on the Tarantino/Weinstein angles. Same goes for the Los Angeles Times wrap-up, which focuses on how strong turnout by women may have put "Basterds" over the top — but Pitt's appeal with that demographic isn't even noted. As for men, maybe they responded to Pitt hamming it up as the loony "NAAH-tzee killer" Aldo Raine.

By Steven Zeitchik

Finally, a Twitter effect that benefits a movie instead of hurts it.

That would ding the film as it played throughout the weekend — especially as the more generous Tarantino fans who rushed out to see the movie Friday gave way to more general audiences during the weekend.

Last year, one of the biggest hits of the fall took root with a simple studio date change. Warners moved "Harry Potter" from November to the summer, opening up a slot that Summit then pounced on for "Twilight." With interest in the book and R-Patz peaking — and a relatively quiet pre-Thanksgiving period for tween fare — that switch proved to be one of the savviest calendar moves of the year.

A similar game of musical chairs could have some far-reaching reverberations this year. This morning, Paramount moved "Shutter Island" off its October 2 date and into February. That took the movie out of awards contention (some who saw the trailer were doubtful of that kind of potential anyway, though we mostly liked it) and, critically for other studios, also opened up early October for another wide release.

Fox Searchlight responded by moving "Whip It," the Drew Barrymore-Ellen Page roller derby comedy, from October 9 to the "Shutter Island' date, which gives the film a somewhat wider berth. (It had been up against the buzzy camp-horror film "Zombieland," which overlapped somewhat with its audience, and now will go up against the Coen Bros. "A Serious Man," which doesn't overlap.)

Eight months after Catherine Hardwicke left the "Twilight" franchise, she will run with the wolves again.

The director is in final negotiations to helm "The Girl With the Red Riding Hood," the Warners reboot of classic fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood" that the studio is developing with Leonard DiCaprio's Appian Way.

She's also in early talks with Sony to take on its feature version of "21 Jump Street," the undercover cop tale that, like "Twilight," centers on high-schoolers with unusual abilities, though other directors are in the running on that project as well.

With the "Hood" deal basically in place, it's unclear if Hardwicke could also helm "Jump Street" — while both projects are at the development stage, they're considered priorities for their respective studios, which could create a scheduling issue if both go next year. On top of that, Hardwicke is also on tap to helm the modern-day adaptation of "Hamlet," the Emile Hirsch vehicle at Overture that could shoot later this year and/or early next year.

Still, hers is a high-class problem — an abundance of projects at a time when studios are cutting back and gigs are harder to come by.

"Hood" is expected to offer a Gothic update on the Grimm Bros. tale, of course about a young girl who encounters the villainous wolf on her way to her grandmother's house, with "Orphan" scribe David Leslie Johnson writing the new version. The presence of a wolf as a central character in the original fairy tale is sure to prompt comparisons to "Twilight," which centers not only on vampires but a sect of werewolves, particularly the character of Taylor Lautner's Jacob.

There's something mystical about the trailer for James Cameron's "Avatar" (viewable below), at least until it segues into the more house music-y second half, when Sam Worthington's blue-skinned being comes to life and embarks on his adventures. There are shots distinct from what was shown at Comic-Con, not enough to offer much more in the way of content hints, but enough to get a little more of these sense of the Fox marketing strategy.

It's interesting that the studio is actually holding back on the explanation that a trailer could have provided (no dialogue, for instance), preferring to let the mystery and the pic's scope (which we imagine may look just a little better when not viewed on a 12" computer monitor) speak for itself. At least until the first adopters start speaking for it this weekend, anyway.

The focus for this weekend has been all about the Weinsteins, their future and other unanswerable questions rehashed by the New York Times. But the little secret behind the opening of "Inglourious Basterds" on Friday is that it means plenty to its director, too.

When we interviewed QT in Cannes, he implied that he was helping out the Weinsteins at this crossroads of their careers, just as they helped him with "Pulp Fiction" back in the day. But Tarantino needs a big opening for himself.

Since "Kill Bill" hit a goldmine of $70 million in domestic boxoffice six years ago, the helmer has made less money with each successive picture, culminating in the underperformance of "Grindhouse" two years ago. Sure, that's only three pics ("Kill Bill, Vol. 2" came between them) but it's sobering when you consider his last bona fide hit before "Kill Bill" came back in '94 with "Pulp Fiction."

And the stakes are high for a director like Tarantino, who has until now spent most of his career in the relative cocoon of the Weinsteins. It's hard enough as it is for an auteur to get movies financed above a certain budget (and QT, with his penchant for effects, stars and big tableaus, is not making any $5 million indies). A string of underperformers doesn't help.

Just what to make of all the Brad Pitt rumors on Warners' "Sherlock Holmes"? First the Daily Mirror comes up with a startling revelation – that Brad Pitt is in London, per the request of Guy Ritchie, to shoot scenes as Holmes' nemesis/villain Moriarty for the pic.

That's quickly picked up by a host of blogs — and then just as quickly debunked by Warners, which releases a statement that Brad Pitt is not in fact in the Ritchie take.

All quieted down for a couple days, until today, when MTV.com ran a snippet of an interview with Ritchie saying that Moriarty is indeed in the film, in what is some kind of cameo or stunt role (think Sean Connery in the Kevin Costner "Robin Hood" — which is what we thought, and then saw MTV's Adam Rosenberg had thought the same).

"Some kind of an appearance is probably the best way to describe it," the helmer tells the site, then goes on to say that the actor playing him is not credited, as far as he believes.