• Celebrity death cult where were you? Soul Men, featuring the final performance from Bernie Mac, underperformed over the weekend, placing only sixth with $5.6 million. I guess you preferred his other final film, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, which achieved the best debut of 2008 for an animated film with $63.5 million. The other big opener was Role Models, which did better than expected with a second-placing $19.3 million. All thanks to Jane Lynch’s bagel dog trick, I’m hoping.
• Meanwhile, Quantum of Solace, which doesn’t open in the States until Friday, has already passed the $100 million mark overseas.
• Despite YouTube video being possibly the worst format in which to watch movies online, MGM is licensing some of its titles (no 007 movies, unfortunately) to the site for full-length streaming.
• Joe Johnston, who has a Best Visual Effects Oscar for work on Raiders of the Lost Ark, has been hired by Marvel to direct First Avenger: Captain America. And I’m probably the only one who’s now hoping the comic book adaptation is reminiscent of the Johnston-directed The Rocketeer.
• Terrible news: the Brokeback Mountain opera is no longer happening.

Opening today, Soul Men features the final performance from Bernie Mac, who died unexpectedly on August 9. The movie also includes a cameo from Isaac Hayes, who died one day later. Both men join a long list of people whose last films were released after their deaths, a list that includes Brad Renfro, whose final performance, in The Informers, can be seen in theaters come next May.

Unlike some names on that list, Bernie Mac, whose voice can also be heard in the new animated sequel Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, isn’t likely to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination as a tribute to his final work. But as one of the most underrated comic actors of the past few years, Mac likely gives a great performance as soul singer “Floyd Henderson,” enough to fall in with the crop of posthumously released roles we’ve showcased below:

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• The long overdue remake of Chan Wook-park’s Oldboy (which was based on a manga) has just fallen into surprisingly heavy hands. Steven Spielberg is now involved in some capacity and Will Smith will star as the vengeful kidnap victim. Will such populist dreammakers retain all that graphic violence? Will Universal (and mainstream audiences) be okay with such a disturbing reveal at the end? Is it really necessary to remake such an internationally crossed-over title in the first place?
• Universal apparently wants to continue in the musical business following its success with Mamma Mia! However, while an adaptation of In the Heights might be great, there’s no way it’ll do even a tenth of the business that Mamma has done across the globe.
• An adaptation of the recent LA Times‘ series on the 1940s LAPD organized crime task force could be pretty cool, but Warners may want to title it something other than Gangster Squad, which sounds a little too much like Monster Squad. Mickey Cohen’s got nards!
• Obviously Madagascar 2 will be #1 this weekend, but is Variety really correct to speculate that Soul Men might only be big with African American audiences? Never mind Bernie Mac’s pre-death crossover successes. But no mention of the celebrity death cult that was constantly referenced when The Dark Knight was opening?

We lost two great men last weekend, Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes. So, in a timely promotion of the upcoming film Soul Men, which costars Mac and features Hayes in a cameo, MTV has posted four new clips, including the one seen above of Hayes’ appearance (the clip won’t embed properly, so head to MTV to watch). Seeing the two late stars together (with Samuel L. Jackson) somehow doesn’t bring tears to my eyes, but I guess their deaths still haven’t hit me. Perhaps when Soul Men actually arrives in theaters November 14, or maybe when they’re included in the memoriam montage at the Oscars, I’ll appreciate this scene more.

While this clip is relatively short, the other three at MTV.com are pretty substantial, especially considering The Weinstein Co. (via Dimension) still haven’t released a trailer for the movie. My favorite is the first clip, which features an entire performance from Mac and Jackson at a country western bar. Of all the cool scenes that Samuel L. has been in, this one of him line dancing takes the cake. He may not be swearing or beating the crap out of anyone, but he’s the only person I’ve ever seen that doesn’t make the dance seem lame. It almost makes up for his other clip this week, in which he makes The Spirit look really lame.

As you surely are aware by now, over the weekend, both 50 year-old Bernie Mac and 65 year-old Isaac Hayes died. The former succumbed to pneumonia after several weeks of speculation over his health; the latter apparently collapsed whilst exercising at home. At first, the news––especially in regards to Mac––was greeted with shock. But by late Sunday, the two deaths had been conflated into a meme of jokes about how Samuel L. Jackson should, as one Tumblr put it, “head to his doctor tout de suite.”

Surely, some of the jokes were of the spontaneous, “Quick! Think of another middle-aged black man in the entertainment industry!” variety. But pretty much any of that was cut short when a number of bloggers received a press release from Daryl Toor, “CEO & Chief Awareness Officer” for AttentionPR. The subject of the email: Is Samuel Jackson Next? Death Comes in Threes.

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The Obama Movie: so inevitable, it’s as if it is already among us. You know that Will Smith will play Obama and that Oliver Stone will write and direct. John Williams and Quincy Jones will tag-team the musical score, a soulful, all-American gumbo that samples gospel, Aaron Copland and snap music. Kerry Washington will essay Michelle Obama.

No, Steven Spielberg will direct, with Chiwetel Ejiofor as Obama, same composers. Twelve Nobel, Pulitzer and Oscar winners write the screenplay. Special afro effects by Industrial Light and Magic. Spielberg intercuts between Barack cumming and Blackwater snipers pinned down in Mosul.

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