Welcome to your weekend Popsters! This week’s Pop Bitez is a bit of a hit and run but, I promise, we’ll be up and running again at full speed soon enough. Here are your poptastic headlines for this week! Enjoy!

The Lion and the Mouse!

The 3D re-release of  The Lion King beat out new films to top the box office in its first two weekends, raking in nearly $80 million in US theaters.

The House the Mouse built has heard you all loud and clear and, as a result, Disney announced this week more 3-D re-releases are on their way! In the next two years we can expect theatrical 3-D re-releases for four of its most popular animated titles.

The first will be in January with Beauty and the Beast, Finding Nemo will follow in 3-D in September 2012. Monsters Inc. premieres in 3-D in January 2013, six months ahead of the prequel, Monsters University and The Little Mermaid is set to debut in September 2013.

The Lion King conversion to 3-D cost Disney less than $10 million and became a surprise hit for the studio, beating out new releases to become the No. 1 movie two weeks in a row. The re-release has made The Lion King the third-highest-grossing animated movie of all time domestically, with a haul of more than $408 million.

Out of the four the one I think I’m most looking forward to seeing in the new 3-D format is Finding Nemo, Can’t wait!

Holy Broadway!

Who would you say is the biggest star on Broadway these days? If you guessed Bernadette Peters, Daniel Radcliff or Spiderman, you’re way off. The biggest star on the Great White Way in the 2011-2012 season, by a wide margin, is GOD! Can I get a Hallelujah?! An Amen?! A ticket under a hundred bucks?! 

With the big box office success of the Tony Award©  winning The Book of Mormon and the well reviewed audience favorite Sister Act, the Good Lord was already a pretty popular entity on the New York boards but, with the Broadway Revival of Godspell beginning previews next week and the recent announcement that the critically acclaimed production of Jesus Christ Superstar from Ontario, Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival, will be opening around Easter of next year, no one is bigger than the big man on Broadway today!

For what is largely considered a mostly secular industry, these are strange days indeed. Is it possible some of Broadway’s biggest producers are buying into the whole “2012 end of days” thing? Not very likely. No, the simple truth is, God and son are a pretty good box office draw when you give ’em a good beat and some fun tunes to work with.

Here’s a brief clip from the Stratford Festival’s Jesus Christ Superstar, opening 3/22/2012 at the Neil Simon Theater and a press preview of Broadway’s Godspell revival, opening later this month at Circle in the Square.

The Pop Bitez PopCast: The Beatles Covers

In honor of John Lennon’s birthday this weekend and also the b-day of one of my best friends earlier this week, the new Pop Bitez PopCast is all about the Beatles this time around. It’s a fun mix of Beatles covers that I really think you’re going to enjoy, there’s actually a good chance I’ve got a few in there you’ve never heard before, Check it out now!

As I said earlier, this week’s column is short and sweet Popsters, I’m actually considering a major overhaul of the site again and I’ve been preoccupied with the design lately. I can’t say for certain when you’ll actually see it but trust that it will be very soon! Until then, have a poptastic weekend! Cheers!- Scott