A Week in Movies - Feat. Avengers, The Rockford Files, Prometheus, Battleship And More - 20th April 2012

It's Avengers week in the UK, as most of the cast members descended on London for a huge press junket followed by the European premiere. On hand to banter with the press and pose on the red carpet were Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Tom Hiddleston (Loki) and Clark Gregg (Coulson). The film opens in the UK on Friday 27th April, a week before it hits America.

In casting news, the big story was that Vince Vaughn will play private

The blogosphere went into meltdown when a viral short film linked to Ridley Scott's hotly anticipated Alien prequel Prometheus was posted on YouTube. It's a mock advert for the lifelike robot played by Michael Fassbender. And costar Guy Pearce says there are more videos like this on the way, giving back-stories to the other characters. He featured one about his robotics-engineer character that was leaked to the internet in February. Prometheus opens in the UK on 1st June.

At the box office, Battleship knocked Titanic out of the top spot, although Titanic's 3D re-release has already bumped it back up into second place (behind Avatar) in the all-time UK box office chart.

In America,The Hunger Games has managed four weeks at number one; its biggest challenge this weekend is from Zac Efron's The Lucky One. In UK cinemas this week, there are a whopping 18 new releases, which is surely some kind of record.

And finally, for many serious movie fans, the week's biggest news was the announcement of the Cannes Film Festival line-up, with new movies by Ken Loach, David Cronenberg, Lee Daniels, Wes Anderson and Walter Salles, plus critical favourites Kiarostami, Audiard, Resnais, Seidl and Haneke in competition for the big prizes.

It also bodes well for red carpet coverage from the Croisette 16-27 May, with the likes of Brad Pitt, Zac Efron, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Kylie Minogue, Shia Labeouf, Sam Riley, Reese Witherspoon and Marion Cotillard glamming up the red carpet.

Rich Cline