Dreamworks Animation has largely stuck to movies that are knockabout fun, but from the evidence of this trailer, there might be a bit more meat to Rise Of The Guardians – it’s certainly gonna look pretty. The film tells the story of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, and Jack Frost – legendary characters with previously unknown extraordinary abilities. When an evil spirit known as Pitch lays down the gauntlet to take over the world, the immortal Guardians must join forces to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of children everywhere. Rise Of The Guardians is due out in November.

If an actor hits it big, you can pretty much guarantee everything they has ever starred in will suddenly emerge. Detention premiered over a year ago at SXSW, but it’s only now that Josh Hutcherson has broken out with Journey 2 and The Hunger Games that it’s finally getting a release in the US, and a trailer has now arrived. Detention tells the story of the senior class at Grizzly Lake high school. The road to graduation is never an easy one, but it’s further complicated for these students by the arrival of a slasher movie killer who has seemingly come to life. The only ones who can stop the killer are a handful of students, but they’ll have to cut out of detention if they’re to stand a chance at saving the world. It’s due out Friday, April 13th in the US, but no UK date it currently set.

Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick may have moved on from Laika, the animation company he helped found and through which he made Coraline, but Laika is still in the business of creating intricate stop-motion movies, and it seems Paranorman will be no different. In ParaNorman, a small town comes under siege by zombies. Who can it call? Only misunderstood local boy Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is able to speak with the dead. In addition to the zombies, he’ll have to take on ghosts, witches and, worst of all, moronic grown-ups, to save his town from a centuries-old curse. But this young ghoul whisperer may find his paranormal activities pushed to their otherworldly limits. The film reaches the UK September 14th, 2012.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s next movie seems like it’ll be a lot of fun, and this trailer is the best look at the film yet. The Dictator, which bizarrely enough is partially based on a book by Saddam Hussein, sees Cohen as General Aladeen of Wadiya, and tells ‘The heroic story of a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed’. It’s due out May 18th, 2012, but you can watch the new trailer right here!

Genndy Tartakovsky has a massive reputation in animation circles thanks to Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars and The Powerpuff Girls, and he’s currently busy making his feature directorial debut, Hotel Transylvania, which is due to hit cinemas on October 12th. The film takes a whole bunch of the classic movie monsters – Dracula, Quasimodo, Frankenstein – on holiday. The last thing Simon Van Helsing, the youngest in a long line of monster hunters, wants to do is fall in love with Dracula’s daughter, Mavis. Upon discovering that they are natural enemies, the doomed couple attempt to bring peace between the warring monsters and humans.

Why do futures always have to be so dystopian? While we’ve only got 30 seconds of the new Total Recall so far, it certainly suggests this future won’t be issue free, although it could be pretty cool. This is just a teaser for a full trailer that’s expected in the next few days. The new take on Total Recall sees Colin Farrell as a factory worker (Farrell) who begins to suspect that he’s a spy, though he is unaware which side of the fight he’s on – Euromerica or New Shanghai, the nation states that are vying for supremacy. It seems it’ll be a very different film to the early 90s Paul Verhoeven movie and just a different again to the original Phillip K Dick story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. The film’s due out August 22nd.