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The biggest surprise hit last year was Despicable Me. Made for only $70 million by tiny Illumination Entertainment, the film grossed $540 million at the global box office and ranked as the 7^th highest grossing film of 2010 in the U.S. (Though it failed to earn an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature.)

So there’s a lot of pressure on Illumination’s next feature, Hop, which hits theaters April 1. The mixed animation and live action film is about a man who accidentally hits the Easter Bunny (voiced by Russell Brand) with his car and then must help him recover from his injuries. Hop is from the director of Alvin and the Chipmunks which grossed $360 million at the global box office. Like Despicable Me, it’s being distributed by Universal.

To get the word out, Universal has partnered with Lima Sky, the company behind the insanely popular Doodle Jump app. Starting in February, Doodle Jump users will be able to download a free software update that lets them unlock an Easter egg level (fitting) where they can play as the Easter Bunny character from Hop.

Doodle Jump has approximately 8.5 million users, according to Lima Sky. And Doodle Jump is the kind of game where once you’ve played it enough, you want new boards and characters to shake things up. So they have a good chance of getting many of those users to download the upgrade.

While studios have put out their own apps around movie releases, this is the first time a studio has partnered with an existing game. It’s a good idea that will likely catch on as it targets an engaged group of users who might not otherwise hear about the movie so early on. Also Doodle Jump is popular with kids who are the main demographic for a movie like Hop.

Click Here For Full Gallery: Lady Gaga

Up-and-coming rock stars, watch Lady Gaga. She’ll show you how it’s done. The pop star proved once again that she’s the queen of social media today when she released the lyrics to her yet-to-be released single Born This Way on Twitter today.

Fan have to wait until February 13th to hear the song. But Gaga leaked the lyrics to her 8 million Twitter followers and 27 million Facebook fans this afternoon. Almost instantly #bornthiswaylyrics started trending and fans started tweeting snippets of the lyrics.

There’s no doubt the single is going to sell like crazy thanks to the insane devotion she inspires in her fans. Gaga has been able to work social media like no star that’s come before her. That helped her earn $62 million last year and debut in fourth place on our annual Celebrity 100 last summer.

And as my colleague Zack O’Malley Greenburg recently wrote, there’s a good chance those fans could propel her to $100 million next year thanks to touring, album sales and endorsements. (You can find the lyrics to Born This Way here.)

The Rite should top a snoozy box office this weekend.

Most people assume that Hollywood runs on big movies like Avatar, Toy Story 3 and Iron Man — movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make and can bring in as much as $1 billion (or $2.7 billion in the case of Avatar) at the box office alone.

But the truth is that those expensive movies also run the risk of flopping and when they do, it can do a lot of damage to a studio’s bottom line.

That’s why smart studio heads pepper their release schedule with what’s known as genre films. These films are usually straight up horror or action movies that don’t take too many twists and favor excitement over dialogue. They are great for filling seats between big release seasons like summer and fall.

They also usually don’t cost that much to make so it’s easier to get a return. A perfect example is 2009’s Taken. The film, which starred Liam Neeson as a former spy trying to rescue his kidnapped daughter, hit theaters January 30. It cost an estimated $25 million to make and grossed $227 million at the global box office.

Of course most genre films don’t perform that well but they regularly make back a multiple of their production budget which is a pretty good sign.

This weekend two genre films hit theaters: The Rite, a horror film starring Anthony Hopkins as an exorcism priest, and The Mechanic, the latest in a long line of action films starring Jason Statham.

These films don’t need to be particularly good to succeed. Movie fans just looking for something to watch will likely plunk down $20 million on The Rite and $13 million on The Mechanic, according to Exhibitor Relations.

The real winner this weekend should be The King’s Speech. Nominated for 12 Academy Awards, the film has already seen an Oscar bump at theaters. It has so far earned $109 million at the box office (on a $13 million production budget) and Exhibitor Relations expects it will bring in an additional $10 million this weekend.

The are both up for Oscars this year.

Yesterday The King’s Speech earned the most Oscar nods with 12 including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and both best supporting actor categories.

Today it looks like the film has gotten an instant box office bounce. Ticket sales Tuesday in the U.S. jumped 70% from the day before and 13% from the same day last week, according to Box Office Mojo. The film earned $1 million at the box office on Tuesday alone.

And on the Web site Fandango, ticket sales for the movie jumped 76% as The King’s Speech, a movie that opened nine weeks ago, became the biggest ticket seller on the web site.

That’s good news for The Weinstein Company which is in the middle of an impressive turnaround. The King’s Speech has already earned $110 million at the global box office. As I wrote last week, it could earn an additional $34 million if it wins Best Picture.

My pick for Katniss. Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The Hunger Games is arguably the most highly anticipated young adult franchise since Twilight. Fans now have only a little more than a year to wait for the first of three movies to hit theaters.

Lionsgate says it plans to release the first film, The Hunger Games, in March of 2012. That means they have just over a year to cast, film, edit and market the movie.

That’s a very ambitious  time frame. It’s not unusual for it to take 18 months for a film to hit theaters after it starts production, and that’s after the film has been cast.

The Hunger Games is a post-Apocalyptic story about a young girl, Katniss Everdeen, who takes part in a televised battle where children fight to the death until only one person is left. The trilogy, which follow Katniss’ path to becoming a hero of the rebel forces, has sold more than 6.5 million copies. continue »