MY MOVIE WEEKwith Mike Shaw

» With just two months until its worldwide release, The Avengers has changed its title for the UK market. The film is now named Avengers Assemble! and obviously people are more upset than they really should be over something as ultimately unimportant as a film’s title being slightly changed.

The reason is apparently so that people don’t get mixed up between this film and the 1960s TV show and the terrible 1998 film it spawned.

Presumably the studio has done market research to prove there’s confusion out there about it, and for a certain generation The Avengers means John Steed and Emma Peel rather than Iron Man, Thor and Hulk.

It is quite silly though. For the handful that do get confused, one look at the poster, featuring a giant green monster and a man in a metal suit shooting lasers out of his hands will tell them that Steed is unlikely to make an appearance. However, as silly as the title change is, it’s nothing compared to the losers who are now sulking and saying that they are going to boycott the film until the title is changed. It doesn’t matter, nerds, it’s still the same film.

Avengers Assemble! is out on Thursday, April 26.

» A film adaptation of Markus Zusak’s hugely successful 2005 novel The Book Thief will be in cinemas in the next couple of years. Set in Germany during the Second World War, The Book Thief is narrated by the Grim Reaper, who takes an interest in a young girl called Liesel Meminger.

Liesel is sent to live with foster parents to distance her from her Communist parents, whose political allegiances will make them targets of the Nazis.

The novel follows Liesel, through her relationships and through the books she reads. She eventually writes the story of her own life, as the war gets closer and closer to home.

Zusak started out as a children’s writer, and The Book Thief is one of those novels that straddles the age gap, given two covers and kept on both the adult and kids’ shelves in bookshops.

Fox 2000 has given the directing gig to Brian Percival who is best known for his TV work including The Old Curiosity Shop for the BBC, as well as the one-off The Ruby In The Smoke. Most recently he’s been directing episodes of Downton Abbey for ITV, including the Christmas special that pulled in more viewers even than Doctor Who.

Given the immediate, enormous, bestselling popularity of The Book Thief, it’s surprising that it’s taken seven years to reach the screen, so it can only be a matter of time until Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind is given the big screen treatment.

» Sacha Gervasi’s film, Alfred Hitchcock And The Making Of Psycho, chronicles Hitchcock’s struggle to get the horror classic made at a time when the horror genre was frowned upon and he was ridiculed for even trying the idea.

Gervasi has now locked down stars to play two of the most iconic elements for the film-within-the-film: Scarlett Johansson will be Janet Leigh and James D’Arcy is playing Anthony Perkins. Anthony Hopkins is already onboard to play Hitchcock with Helen Mirren now confirmed as his wife, Alma Reville. According to Variety (which must always be referred to as an “industry bible”), the film could end up as a My Week With Marilyn-style awards baiter, which is jumping the gun somewhat considering the movie hasn’t even started filming yet.

» If I’ve learnt anything over the last few years, it’s that you people love to hear about films featuring terrified, kidnapped people.

Human Centipede director Tom Six always threatened a trilogy, and it turns out he’s as good as his word. Human Centipede: Final Sequence is now officially being made.

In case you missed all the fuss last summer, Final Sequence has been made possible in no small part by the attention given to the second film in the trilogy, Human Centipede: Full Sequence. Some sources – particularly the filmmakers – are still claiming that it was banned by the BBFC and while that’s not quite the case (it was denied a certificate, which isn’t quite the same thing) the result was more media attention than if The Artist was remade by Quentin Tarantino. Full Sequence was eventually granted an 18 certificate in October, after 32 cuts were made.

Tom Six is still wallowing in the controversy and has declared that Final Sequence will “upset a lot of people” and “make Full Sequence look like a Disney film”.

Shooting starts in May for a release in 2013, and producer Ilona Six promises “100% political incorrectness”. I’ll keep you posted, you filthy sausages.