This year’s crop of Super Bowl advertising for 2012's upcoming blockbusters followed the seemingly standard pattern of recent years: more and more are either getting teased in increasingly tiny chunks days before the match itself and some, like the G.I. Joe: Retaliation promo, are online in full before a single touchdown has been scored. But even with the early sneak peeks, a few actually debuted on the day itself, so we thought we’d slap them together into one big list and take a look to see how effective they were.

First up, The Avengers. It's had plenty of exposure, and, yes, we’ve seen a lot of this material already, but this nifty spot assembles what it has to work with efficiently and will get your blood up. It’s obviously a bonus when you’ve got a charismatic ensemble led by Robert Downey Jr, but director Joss Whedon also has plenty of set-piece eye-candy to help up the wow factor. Got to love that shot of the team together in New York, presenting The Hulk as just one of the guys, and that final line.
UK release: April 27. 

• Empire's Avengers issue now on sale.

Universal’s big blockbuster hope, Battleship. Most of the footage in this one has already appeared in various trailers. There is a little more of Taylor Kitsch vs. a suited alien type here, however, which adds a bit of flare, but on the whole there was not much to convince anyone either way. We’re seemingly in for another Transformers-style burst of bombast and if that floats (or sinks?) your boat, have at it.
UK release: April 11

The John Carter marketing team have had a tougher job selling a big movie with lots of moving parts, based on a pulp series of books the mainstream isn’t quite so familiar with. But this new promo gives a bit more story and lets the wow factor do the talking. It’s certainly a step in the right direction. Here’s hoping the film itself can complete the job.
UK release: March 9
 

Act Of Valor hasn’t had the same exposure or push behind it as the blockbusters above, mostly because it isn’t backed by one of the huge studios. But it does have real-life Navy SEALs mixed in with a fictional story, so while we figure it's probably a little bit more aimed at audiences across the Pond (and it's tough not to start hearing the Team America music during some sections), action fans here should be happy.
UK release: March 23

The latest release from Despicable Me creators Illumination Entertainment (backed by Universal) lands in Horton Hears A Who! territory with Dr Seuss’ The Lorax. The latest promo leans a lot on jokes we’ve seen in at least two trailers (that final bit of gender confusion especially), but there are a few new little chunks here and there.
UK release: July 27

Finally, one that has nothing to do with a movie itself, but does feature a cinematic icon… Clint Eastwood shills for Chrysler. “It’s halftime in America…” indeed. Clint for President! 

It's been a couple of months since we've seen a trailer for The Hunger Games, but the team behind the film has been keeping the barrage of pic, poster and other related releases up to fill time during the gap. Now, to mark 50 days until the movie itself hits, the second full trailer has arrived, and it's chock-full of new footage. Take a look below.

In case there is anybody still left wondering what the film (adapted from Suzanne Collins' books) is about, Jennifer Lawrence stars as Katniss Everdeen, a young woman living in an apocalyptic, ruined future America. With the majority of its citizens living in poverty in rural Districts, she has to hunt to supplement her sister and mother's meagre rations. Then her sister is chosen for the Hunger Games, an annual contest that keeps the fractured country under the iron fist of the technologically advanced Capitol.

The Games pits youngsters from each of the Districts against each other in a battle to the death, so Katniss volunteers to take her sister's place and fight alongside Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). She'll have to outwit and outfight highly trained Tributes who have been preparing for the games her entire lives. And, as Katniss says in the new trailer, "24 go in, but only one comes out..."

This new promo is a chance to see several of the main cast: Elizabeth Banks, Donald Sutherland, Stanley Tucci, Liam Hemsworth and Lenny Kravitz all feature here.

We get the chance to see the whole thing on March 23.

This is one of those stories where we update on a rumour that seemed so tenuous that we didn't bother to report it in the first place. But if you saw reports last weekend that Harrison Ford was in talks to return as Deckard, you can now safely ignore them. Production company Alcon Entertainment has flat-out told Deadline that, whatever Ridley Scott's new Blade Runner turns out to be, Harrison Ford almost certainly won't be in it.

Scott had already said this pretty categorically several months ago, and given Ford's well-known antipathy for the film (he didn't come to love it like the rest of the world), the possibility of the actor's involvement always seemed remote at best. But Alcon's Andrew Kosove reiterates that with a fairly strident "It is absolutely patently false that there has been any discussion about Harrison Ford being in Blade Runner." 

"What we are trying to do with Ridley now is go through the painstaking process of trying to break the back of the story, figure out the direction we’re going to take the movie and find a writer to work on it," he explains. "The casting of the movie could not be further from our minds at this moment. It's like asking if we're going to make the sky red or blue. There has been no discussion about it."

Kosove was also keen to stress that, as most have surmised, Scott is not planning anything like a conventional sequel to his 1982 classic. "What Ridley's doing in Prometheus is a good template for what we’re trying to do," Kosove says. "He created something that has some association to the original Alien, but lives on its own as a standalone movie."

So what about that "almost certainly"? "In advance of knowing what we’re going to do, I suppose you could say yes, [Ford] could [return]," Kosove admits. "But I think it is quite unlikely.”

Empire was one of the hosts at last night's international Amazing Spider-Man event, where fresh footage was revealed alongside a brand-new trailer. And now, here it is online, and it's really rather good. More wisecracks, more flashbacks, and some jaw-dropping action sequences make up its two and a half minutes, and with any luck it should silence the critics who thought the previous Spidey trailer felt a little too much like a computer game.

As well as all that, much more detail of The Lizard can also be seen, as well as Peter's police adversary (and in-law), George Stacy (Denis Leary).

There's also a lovely moment where you can see the mechanical web shooters being assembled, and an enightening snippet of Peter coming up with the formula that creates The Lizard in the first place.

So, what are you waiting for? There's a trailer to be watched!

Let us know what you think of it in the comment box below, and don't forget, The Amazing Spider-Man is out on July 4.

While Robert Rodriguez’ Grindhouse-spawned, blood-splattered exploit-o-thon Machete didn’t quite deliver on the satisfaction front, it did well enough given its low budget to activate plans for the promised sequel, Machete Kills. Now Rodriguez has announced that it’ll start shooting in April.

“The fan response to the Machete character has been fanatical since his first appearance,” Rodriguez said in a statement scooped up by Deadline’s eager news cone. “Machete is truly a super hero and Machete Kills will be bigger and more ambitious than the first time.”

This time around, the script is by Kyle Ward, with some development polishing by Rodriguez, and brother Marcel Rodriguez. The plot will find Machete (Danny Trejo) recruited by the US government to track down a crazed cartel leader in Mexico who is hatching plans with an eccentric billionaire arms dealer to create global anarchy via a space-based weapon. So, just an ordinary day at the office for the knife-wielding former Federale, then…

Trejo is apparently in talks to return, though given his close working relationship with Rodriguez and the fact that Machete is his signature character, we doubt there’ll be much negotiating before a deal is signed. And anyone who survived the first film is likely to get invited back.

There’s no word yet on whether Rodriguez will tackle this one alone, or whether he’ll recruit a co-director as he did with Ethan Maniquis on the original.

Throw your mind back to late 2010, when we reported on Eli Roth collaborating with filmmakers to produce two very different horrors. Well, one of them – earthquake thriller Aftershock – is now shooting in Chile and it’s been revealed that Roth is starring in the movie.

Aftershock was birthed by Chilean director Nicolas Lopez, based on his experience during the 2010 earthquake that hit his country. He wrote the script with Roth and Guillermo Amoedo, cranking out a script that sees inmates escaping from an insane asylum on an island during the tremors. While character info is being kept under wraps for now, Roth has revealed that he’s taking the lead and that Selena Gomez is making a cameo.

“I’ve been a huge fan of Nicolas Lopez since his remarkable debut Promedio Rojoand have watched him grow into one of the best young filmmakers out there,” Roth said in a statement picked up by Deadline. “He has the incredible combination of commercial sensibility with an artistic eye, and what he has done here in Chile with their film industry is revolutionary. This collaboration marks the beginning of what we call Chilewood, making genre films for the global market using all the resources Chile has to offer. We are making a smart elevated disaster genre movie with superb production value, something really big. The film’s going to be very scary, very intense, and very real.”

Distributors are now pitching to take the film on, and it’ll also be tagged with the Hostel man's Eli Roth Presents label.

Last August, Disney used its D23 convention event to unveil an early look at its big animated hope for the year (at least one not produced by Pixar), Wreck-It Ralph. And now, courtesy of French site CineHeroes, we’re getting our first look at imagery from the movie, which you can check out in the gallery below.

The hero of the story is Ralph (voiced by John C Reilly) who is actually the villain of his video game. But he’s sick of just being the guy who ruins buildings, only for perfect, player-controlled hero Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer) to come along and clean up, winning friendship and plaudits along the way.

Ralph decides that there must be more to life, and that he wants a shot at being a hero, so when a modern, first-person shooter game is installed in his arcade, Ralph jumps at the chance to win some respect. But he wrecks everything in the new game, run by tough Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch) and unleashes a dangerous new enemy that threatens every pixel around him. He’ll have to work with a troublemaking character from a kid-friendly racing game (Sarah Silverman) to try to put things right before the while arcade shuts down…

{Wreck-It Ralph Pictures}

From what we saw, Wreck-It Ralph could be a gaming reference-littered delight, a knowing, loving tweak on 8-bit nostalgia and more modern, bloodthirsty shooters.

The film arrives on December 26.

You haven't known fear until you've seen James Watkins' The Woman In Black, which is out in cinemas on Friday. Or, alternatively, until you've seen Empire's exclusive The Woman In Black videblogisode, featuring the film's star, Daniel Radcliffe, as you've never seen him before!*

We sent our intrepid videblogisode duo, Chris Hewitt and Sam Toy, to the movie's set last year, where they spoke at length to Radcliffe, Watkins and co-star Ciaran Hinds about the adaptation of Susan Hill's chilling ghost story.

And that's not all - we also bagged astonishing on-set footage of Radcliffe getting spooked out by the world's creepiest sets, while he even found the time to... No, you'll just have to watch the whole thing to see.

Enjoy - if you dare! (Laugh sinisterly, repeat to fade)

*Empire bears no responsibility if you've seen Daniel Radcliffe like this before.