Disney hoped this wouldn't happen. Tron: Legacy, with all its trickery pokery, Bridgery clonery, has tripped up at the UK Box Office with an opening weekend of £1.97m.

That's £500,000 less than Dawn Treader's debut. And that was considered a concern for Walden Media/Fox, even more so now that it's dropped 50% down to £1.23m. So what went wrong?

That's bound to be the question at Mickey Inc., where conditions were just right for a box office takeover: it was Christmas, they had 3D, they were in last year's Avatar slot, they cut costs on the script. What happened?

The snow will obviously be blamed - it can stop light bikes as sure as it stops Heathrow airport, the education system and your mum's Fiat Punto. Avatar had the same problem when it opened (many multiplexes actually shut up shop for a night in December 2009), but even then James Cameron clawed together £8.5m from a weekend of snow-strewn frozen chaos.

Take away the 3D uplift and you're left with an amount that The Tourist's opening (£1.34m) tried to rival last week. The Best Comedy/Musical of the Year isn't laughing now, as it also split profits in two to take £700k in its second week. Depp and Jolie are strutting all over Burlesque, though, which debuted with £425k, leaving Cher stuck in 6th place and The Tourist up in 4th spot.

The surprise, for me, is Harry Potter's steady decline. The boy wizard is still in 3rd place but also played halves with takings dropping to £875k. The boy wizard's total is a solid £44.4m, but for a franchise depending on fans' repeat viewings, it's that kind of 5th week figure that highlights how quiet the blizzard battered weekend was. And how many screens Disney gobbled up for Tron: Legacy. It also shows the impact that 3D can make on the box office.

Even taking those factors into account, there's little disguising that Tron flopped.

See the full UK Box Office Top Ten. 

Director: Joe Kosinski
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen
Certificate: 12A

Ground-breaking is a word that gets thrown around like a frisbee these days. This sequel to Disney's 1982 effects-smashing Tron looks impressive enough to claim such a grand moniker, but it's duller than dunking a Digestive in a cup of lukewarm tea. Yes, it's shiny and yes, it's blue but the most accurate adjective here is soggy. If we're keeping with the biscuit analogies, that is.

Toy Story has topped Titanic to become the second highest grossing movie in UK Box Office history.

In a week where the Eli Roth-produced horror The Last Exorcism hit number one with £1.1m, Pixar's animated masterpiece stayed firm at number three in the charts, taking home £934k.

That figure was higher than new release The Switch (Jennifer Aniston's spermy rom-com) and Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs the World - a film which joins Toy Story 3 as one of the standouts of 2010. Unlike Woody and pals, though, that dropped 56% to take only £702k in its second week.

Now in its seventh week of release, Toy Story 3 continues to boast strong family appeal. It's now amassed a current total of £69,878,376. That just beats Titanic, which grossed £69.2m the UK.

Way ahead at the top of the all-time UK Box Office chart, of course, is Avatar. James Cameron's 3D sci-fi epic has taken a total of £93.4m.

With Avatar on re-release in the UK and Toy Story still in the top end of the weekly takings, expect both of those figures to keep climbing. Although don't expect too much from Avatar - it only got £274k this week. Which was less than Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And Marmaduke.

For up-to-date box office analysis, follow i-Flicks on Twitter. 

Following his happy reaction to Piranha 3D's box office performance and plans for a sequel, producer Mark Canton has found himself in bloody waters. Not due to killer fish or Kelly Brook, but thanks to Pandora's chief 3D spokesman, James Cameron.

The Avatar director, who previously slammed Clash of the Titans and Alice in Wonderland for their sloppy post-conversion work, turned his powers of the dark side onto Piranha 3D during his Avatar press tour.

He told Vanity Fair: "It's exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3D horror films from the '70s and '80s, like Friday The 13th 3D."

Outraged by Cameron's derogatory comments, Canton retorted by citing Piranha 3D's 82% Rotten Tomatoes rating and the fun experience audiences are having in the cinemas - including filmmakers such as JJ Abrams. 

"Mr. Cameron, who singles himself out to be a visionary of movie-making, seems to have a small vision regarding any motion pictures that are not his own," the producer wrote to journalists. "It is amazing that in the movie-making process - which is certainly a team sport - Cameron consistently celebrates himself as though he is a team of one."

Cameron, who started his career with a brief directorial stint on 1981's Piranha Part 2: The Spawning, reiterated his belief in the current "renaissance" of 3D cinema. Referring to both Disney's Tron and Martin Scorsese's 3D project, he dismissed Piranha 3D as "bottom of the barrel".

Canton concluded by describing Cameron's comments as "ridiculous, self-serving and insulting to those of us who are not caught up in serving his ego and his rhetoric."

Avatar (Special Edition) was re-released in UK cinemas in 3D last week and contains eight additional minutes of new footage.

There's nothing like watching killer fish tear humans to bits in 3D. Especially if those humans have boobs. Which is why Piranha 3D got such a good response from critics and will now have a sequel.

Piranha 3D 2 (6D?) will no doubt have the same complex combination of fish, blood and Kelly Brook - a formula which notched up $10m in its US opening weekend. It's not a bad figure for a movie which cost around $24m, especially in the comedy horror genre, which never reaps a massive amount in cinemas.

The figure puts it way below Snakes on a Plane's $25m opening and The Expendable's continued box office run, but above Jennifer Aniston's $8.4m for her rom-com The Switch.

Most importantly, Dimension Films are pleased with what they've seen: "After earning rave reviews from top critics, wild cheers from audiences around the country, and $10 million in its opening weekend box office, Dimension Films is pleased to announce that Piranha 3D: The Sequel is in the works."

The studio's statement also quoted Producer Mark Canton, who added that "it’s fantastic that so many critics are really getting the movie and recommending it." You may not believe that statement, but check out Rotten Tomatoes. Piranha 3D has 83%.

All in all, it's great news for Alexandre Aja, who also directed Switchblade Romance, Mirrors and that remake of The Hills Have Eyes. Maybe his career path can follow that of James Cameron, who started his road to Avatar with Piranha 2: The Spawning. If Aja's sequel sees Kelly Brook fighting off flying killer fish, we'll know where the idea came from.

With Avatar Special Edition edging ever closer, we've now got ourselves a second trailer to get our juices flowing. Including the original trailers, this is probably close to our 20th video preview of Pandora, but here's some news to really get you turned on: the Na'avi sex scene will be included.

Not in the trailer, you understand, but in the extended footage reintroduced into the movie - Avatar's re-release promises fans an extra eight minutes of "never-before-seen" material. A very tiny fragment of those minutes will see Jake and Neytiri getting their blue freak on.

"It's been restored, every last frame of it," Cameron told MTV recently. "Seriously. I would say, just so that we correctly manage people's expectations, it does not change our rating at all. I would call it more of an alien foreplay scene. It's not like they're ripping their clothes off and going at it."

Cameron originally commented: "Audiences repeatedly told me they wanted more of Pandora, and wished they could have stayed there longer. So we’re making that possible."

Now audiences can stay there longer and also see digital 3D foreplay. Will you be going back to cinemas to see Pandora on the big screen again? Check out the new trailer below and let us know your thoughts.

Avatar Special Edition is released on Friday 27th August. 

All hail James Cameron. Not for Avatar or any of that 3D malarkey, but because he's stepped in to produce Guillermo Del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness. After years of struggling against studios, Del Toro's adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's novel will finally make its way to our cinemas. Produced by Mr Cameron. And shot in 3D.

Old William of Bull startled many at Comic-Con when he announced he'd be adding Disney's Haunted Mansion to his super-massive pile of projects he's working on. But he's been dying to tell Lovecraft's tale of the discovery of ancient evil at the South Pole in the 1930s for over a decade. It doesn't help, of course, that he wants it to be R-rated. And strictly set in that period.

After discussions with Dreamworks and others, the former Hobbit director is now putting the project together at Universal. Writing with Matthew Robbins, the epic sci-fi adventure could be quite something to behold. Cameron's creative nous isn't something to sniff at, even if he is making us all watch it in 3D.

Expect R-rated, period, Antartica-based pre-production to begin very shortly, with a shoot sometime mid-2011. 

Avatar Special Edition is clawing its way back towards our cinema, scheduled to arrive in a few weeks time. So it's only natural that it has a trailer to precede its digital 3-D re-release on Friday 27th August.

Yes, Cameron's blockbusting, groundbreaking, blue-loving sci-fi epic is back to round off its box office record to an even neater number. Like infinity. Or something. As he put it: "Audiences repeatedly told me they wanted more of Pandora, and wished they could have stayed there longer. So we’re making that possible."

In addition to another chance to sample Pandora all over again, there's also that added lure of eight minutes of never-before-seen footage. So read on for the chance to see the trailer for Avatar all over again - and if you spot eight seconds of brand new footage, give yourself a big blue pat on the back.

Hansel and Gretel. In 3-D. It sounds like your traditional family animated fare. Then you see this press release and realise that it's in live action. And that it's being produced by Michael Bay.

Yes, the Transformers director is muscling in on the Brothers Grimm fairytale via his production company, The Institute. There's no script yet, but that's hardly important. Especially when it's already scheduled to start shooting in early 2011. The only person locked in place so far is Avatar's creature designer Joseph C Pepe, who will be creating monsters based on "German mythology" - clearly a well-established feature of the Hansel and Gretel story.

This is obviously not to be confused with Will Ferrell's announcement that he would be tackling the same source material as a horror comedy, titled Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Such a silly take on the tale wouldn't at all match Michael Bay's serious approach. After all, The Institute's motto is "Where Brand Science Meets Great Storytelling". And Michael Bay always manages at least 50% of that statement.

Guess who back. Back again. Cameron's back. And this time he's brought with him 8 minutes (count 'em, 8) of never-seen-before footage. Yes, Avatar (or "Avatar: Special Edition") now has an official re-release date: Friday 27th August.

How do you top a box office record? Release the film again and keep on counting. That's pretty much the principle behind James Cameron's extended version of his blockbusting, groundbreaking, blue-loving sci-fi epic. Naturally, it'll only be in 3-D. Because, largely thanks to Avatar, the number of digital 3-D screens in the UK has exploded. Cameron had this to say:

"Audiences repeatedly told me they wanted more of Pandora, and wished they could have stayed there longer. So we’re making that possible. Avatar: Special Edition will be exclusively in 3-D, and will have eight minutes of never before seen footage, including new creatures and action scenes. Whether you already love the movie, or you've never seen it, with this Special Edition, you'll be seeing it like never before."

Unless of course you saw it the first time. Still, eight minutes could be crucial to the plot - perhaps an alternate ending, or that long-mooted sex scene? Either way, Fox are all fired up for the second cinema event of the decade: "It's especially gratifying, because not only has Avatar become one of the most beloved films in history, but after its initial theatrical release, we have been inundated with requests to re-release the film in theaters in 3-D. Equally important, we’re thrilled that Jim Cameron is able to give audiences even more of what they loved."

Will you be in the queue on Friday 27th August? Will the snazzy poster below change your mind?