Presenting our weekly round-up of all the biggest news stories from the world of movie superheroes…
The mystery surrounding Michael Shannon’s motion-captured exploits as General Zod deepened this past week when set photos emerged from Man of Steel depicting the Kryptonian villain in a black costume similar in design to Henry Cavill’s Superman suit. Shannon – who appears to be sporting a goatee in the latest images – spoke to Collider about how his casting in the Zack Snyder-directed reboot came about, while he also told The Playlist to expect a vastly different interpretation from that of Terence Stamp: ““I found his performance so powerful that I would be overwhelmed by it if I tried to incorporate it into what I’m doing. There’s no reason to try and replicate it cos it’s perfect the way it is. I’m just trying to go down a different road with it, the script’s a little bit different than the original script. It’s going to have a different look and feel to it, visually. I’m looking forward to really settling into it, and playing with it.” In a couple of other interesting bits and pieces from Man of Steel, io9 posted a sneak-peak of the Daily Planet set, with ComicBookMovie also getting their hands on a brief description of a scene featuring Amy Adam’s Lois Lane.
Moving on to The Dark Knight Rises, and Britain’s The Sun reported (no doubt falsely) that Tom Hardy has been wearing three inch lifts to help Bane match up in size to Christian Bale’s Batman, while a few new set videos arrived online showing the Batwing in flight (courtesy of wires), along with the filming of a scene between Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. On the subject of JGL, the actor had a few words for USA Today about working with director Christopher Nolan, although he remained tight-lipped about his role as ‘John Blake’, while Lost’s Nestor Carbonell also spoke to both MTV and Collider about returning as Mayor Garcia for Nolan’s third and final Batman movie.
It’s probably not been the best of weeks for The Avengers star Scarlett Johansson, with the actress having to contend with a very different kind of leak (erm, NSFW) than the typical superhero set photos, but Marvel Studios would have been celebrating with the news that their latest release, Captain America: The First Avenger, has managed to shrug off any anti-American sentiment to exceed its domestic gross in the international markets. Cap has now pulled in $352,691,924 overall, edging it ahead of X-Men: First Class and second only to fellow Avenger Thor in terms of global box office receipts for this year’s superhero releases. Meanwhile, in other Avengers-themed bits and pieces, Stan Lee discussed the filming of his cameo in next year’s big Marvel team-up and had plenty of praise for director Joss Whedon, while we also got teasers for the Marvel: One Shot short A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Thor’s Hammer and the animated series The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
Rounding up the best of the rest…
…After discussing all kinds of potential entries in the X-Men franchise with just about every website under the sun last week, producer Lauren Shuler Donner seems to have calmed down a little, telling PopcornBiz that: “I’m focusing on The Wolverine and possibly Deadpool. That’s enough for now. I don’t think we want to over-saturate the market. I think if we had six X-Men movies out there nobody would want to see them.” Guess she forgot about the sequel to First Class then…
…He’s probably in the minority with this one, but Fantastic Four star Ioan Gruffudd has spoken of his disappointment at not getting a third outing as Mr. Fantastic in an interview with AssignmentX: “I think [the reboot] is a rumor, but it feels true because we [Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans] haven’t heard anything. I guess it makes sense of the studio to reboot it, because I guess you have a lot of longevity out of that franchise that they own”…
…Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn continues to talk up his interest in bringing Wonder Woman to the screen, explaining the origins of his obsession in an interview with Collider. Meanwhile Refn’s number one choice for Princess Diana – Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks – has also chipped in with her thoughts on the potential project, confirming to Access Hollywood that “If [Refn] gets to direct Wonder Woman, then I would love to do it with him”…
…Rhys Ifans spoke to CinemaBlend about his experiences alongside Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone on The Amazing Spider-Man, confirming that “the majority of the time I’m me, I’m a human, not a Lizard”, although he did don a motion-capture suit to portray Dr. Connors’ alter-ego and “all the physicality you’ll see in the Lizard is my own”…
…And finally, while director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman have been non-committal with regards to a Kick-Ass follow-up, it seems that Chloe Moretz is keen to return as Hit Girl, with the youngster telling Movies.com that, “I’d like to do it in the next year or two because I think that’s a really good time age-wise. You can show Hit Girl in a different light which would be a lot of fun.”
Holy Franchise, Batman! – Coming 2012.
Originally published September 17, 2011. Updated November 29, 2022.
