A Week In Movies featuring: Ice Age Continental Drift, Darren Aronofsky's Noah, Dark Knight Rises, Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington!

The big movie worldwide this weekend is Ice Age: Continental Drift, the fourth instalment in the history-bending saga, which randomly takes a wacky pirate twist. Oddly, the film has been topping the UK box office for the past week, but this is because it opened two weeks early in Scotland and Ireland due to their school holidays.

In movie news, Hollywood studios are turning to the Bible for stories. This week we found out that Anthony Hopkins will play the oldest man in history, Methuselah, in Darren Aronofsky's Noah, which is now in pre-production. Russell Crowe stars as the boat-building patriarch, with Emma Watson and Saoirse Ronan on board with him.

And then Will Smith announced that he is producing and starring in the drama The Redemption of Cain, based on another tale from the book of Genesis: the feud between Cain and Abel, who were the sons of Adam and Eve.

But of course the real news in the UK is the arrival of Magic Mike, which has sent Britain into a male stripper frenzy. Channing Tatum and friends have been up to naked-man antics all over London this week, and he's also just announced that a sequel is already in the works thanks to strong US box office and five-star reviews from UK critics.

Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway kicked off the Dark Knight Rises publicity juggernaut, shimmying in a tasselled dress for the paparazzi, then signing autographs for fans waiting outside The David Letterman Show in New York. The hotly anticipated final chapter of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy opens next weekend.

The trailer building up the most anticipation this week is Hope Springs, which reunites Meryl Streep with The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel. She plays a woman who takes her husband (Tommy Lee Jones) on a week-long retreat to spice up their marriage, with Steve Carell playing their counsellor.

And finally, we got our first look at director Robert Zemeckis' return to live-action filmmaking with Flight, starring Denzel Washington as a pilot who miraculously lands a crashing plane only to find himself in trouble for having alcohol in his system. The trailer makes it look like a thrillingly entertaining drama.

Rich Cline