Our weekly round up of all the latest stories from the world of screen superheroes, including Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Iron Man 3, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Fantastic Four, Batman vs. Superman, Justice League: Mortal, Arrow, Wonder Woman, Batman Beyond, The Dark Knight Returns, Justice League: War, Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., Ultimate Spider-Man and more…
With the New York Comic-Con taking place this weekend, we’ll kick off a slightly early Week in Spandex with 2013’s final superhero offering Thor: The Dark World. The Chris Hemsworth-headlined solo sequel is due to hit cinemas here in the UK in less than three weeks and Marvel Studios has continued to deliver a stream of promotional content from its second Phase Two feature, including a featurette centred around the fan favourite villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston) [see here], two new TV spots featuring some previously unseen footage [see here and here], some images giving us our first look at Chris O’Dowd’s (The IT Crowd, Bridesmaids) mystery character out on a dinner date (and presumably comic relief scene) with Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) [see here], a promotional image featuring Thor, Loki, Jane, Malekith the Accursed (Christopher Eccleston) and Kurse (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and – in a nice piece of synergy – a LEGO version of the Thor: The Dark World poster to promote the release of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes [see here]. Thor: The Dark World hits UK cinemas on October 30th and opens in North America on November 8th, with Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones) directing a cast that also includes Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Rene Russo (Frigga), Stellan Skarsgård (Erik Selvig), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Ray Stevenson, (Volstagg), Zachary Levi (Fandral) Jaimie Alexander (Lady Sif), Tadanobu Asano (Hogun) and Kat Dennings (Darcy Lewis)…
…In a few other tidbits from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead), Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) and Lee Pace (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) have all spoken about their roles as Yondu, Nebula and Ronan the Accuser in next year’s Guardians of the Galaxy; rumours are circulating that Marvel Studios will take the opportunity to officially confirm Elizabeth Olsen (Godzilla) as Scarlet Witch in Joss Whedon’s hotly-anticipated The Avengers: Age of Ultron this weekend at the New York Comic Con; and it seems that a potential Punisher easter egg has been unearthed in Iron Man 3, which you can check out here…
…Despite an absolutely abysmal second episode (in this writer’s opinion, at least), Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. managed to hold on to the majority of its viewers with this week’s much improved episode ‘The Asset’ beating NCIS head-to-head with 7.7 million viewers in the States and convincing ABC to place a back-nine order for a full first season of 22 episodes. You can read Anghus Houvouras’ review of ‘The Asset’ here, and if you’re looking for a sneak peek at some of the upcoming episodes, be sure to check out a promo for episode 4, as well as a batch of images from episode 5; meanwhile, it’s also been announced that another (slightly) familiar MCU face is set to make a guest appearance in episode 6, with Titus Welliver (Lost) set to reprise the role of Agent Blake from the Marvel One-Shot Item 47…
…With the film deep in post-production Paul Giamatti has continued his seemingly one-man promotional campaign for next year’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 by offering more details about his role as The Rhino in Sony’s superhero sequel during an interview with Collider: “I totally wanted to play a villain in a comic book movie. I’ve been waiting my whole life to be a villain in a comic book movie. When I was a kid, I didn’t even know I wanted to be an actor, but I knew that I wanted to be like The Wolfman, or some bad guy in something. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be those guys. For Halloween, that’s what I would do. I wanted to be The Mummy. So, it’s great. I get to do that. It’s awesome! I went completely over-the-top with it. We’ll see. I seemed to have carte blanche to just go and ham it. He’s an animal. I took it literally. In some ways, he’s literally a rhinoceros inside. He’s just a big, dumb animal. I’m not a big, huge guy, but I thought that I could be a big, stupid animal. That’s what he is, so that’s why I thought it would be fun. He’s just a brute. He’s a beast. I’d rather be the villain. To me, they’re always more colorful and bizarre. I’m wearing a weird thing in it, too. It’s really fun..!”
…Hans Zimmer will swap the worlds of The Dark Knight Trilogy and Man of Steel for Marvel next year as he takes over from James Horner to score The Amazing Spider-Man sequel, and the composer has spoken about his preparation during an interview with Collider: “I’m sort of grappling with a completely different way of doing it right now, and literally it’s just the laboratory doors are open right now. I have an idea but I haven’t played it to anybody yet, so I don’t even know if it’s going to work yet. Because you never know, music is this weird indefensible thing, it either resonates with you or it doesn’t. I’ll either get the tone right or I won’t, but it’s serious experimentation time at the moment. I’ve done a lot of action, I’ve done a lot of buildings falling down basically and things exploding, so I’m sort of trying to figure out, ‘Is there a slightly different way of doing it?’ And I’m not sure yet, but I’m certainly working on it… You have no idea how [well] the relationships work in this one. That is what [Marc Webb is] masterful about; truly, truly, truly wonderful. And the movie just sort of sparkles whenever—because it could be so easily a movie driven by action, and it really is driven by charm and love and sparkling dialogue. And the chemistry between the characters is fantastic…”
…While we’re on the subject of Marvel’s wall-crawler, there’s been a lot of speculation that British actress Felicity Jones could be set to portray Felicia Hardy, a.k.a. Black Cat, in the upcoming sequel, but had Sam Raimi had his way, the feline fatale would have already graced the big screen, with the Spider-Man director having planned to cast The Dark Knight Rises star Anne Hathaway in the ultimately aborted Spider-Man 4. However, that wasn’t the first time Raimi considered utilising the character, with Black Cat also present in an early draft of the screenplay for Spider-Man 2, and you can check out some concept art showing how the character would have appeared here, as well as some alternative designs for the Green Goblin in the original 2002 movie…
…Last week it was revealed that Fox has turned to Simon Kinberg (X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past) to “overhaul” the screenplay for director Josh Trank’s (Chronicle) reboot The Fantastic Four, and while the studio work on the script issues, it seems they’re also pushing full steam ahead with casting ahead of the film’s planned March 2015 release date. We’ve already heard that Trank’s Chronicle star Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station) is front runner for the role of Johnny Storm / Human Torch (and is apparently the only name under consideration), while Miles Teller (21 & Over) has been linked to Reed Richard / Mr. Fantastic; well, we can now add a few more names into the mix, with a shortlist emerging this week suggesting that Kit Harington (Game of Thrones) and Jack O’Connell (300: Rise of an Empire) are also testing for Reed Richards, while Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones), Kate Mara (American Horror Story) and Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) are in contention for Susan Storm / Invisible Woman…
…Shifting to Warner Bros.’ DC Universe now and this week has brought two “huge” non-stories from 2015’s Batman vs. Superman; first up was Latino-Review with a report suggesting that casting for an unspecified female role is now down to four unspecified female actresses (in fairness, they’re 100% on the money that Warner Bros. is considering casting a female actress as a female character, so credit where credit is due); meanwhile, Ben Affleck was spotted joking around with Larry David at the Emmys, chatting “with earnest abandon” about roles that the Curb Your Enthusiasm star could play in the DC superhero team-up, leading Radar Online to post a report claiming that Affleck wants David to join him in the cast of the Zack Snyder-helmed Man of Steel sequel…
…More from Hans Zimmer now, with the composer telling Collider that he’s met with Snyder about the possibility of him scoring Batman vs. Superman, although he’s still yet to make up his mind about whether to return to the world of the Dark Knight: It’s creating a bit of a problem in my head right now. Quite honestly, I’ve gotta sit down with Zack and have a chat with him about what he’s trying to do because what I don’t want to do is go back to that well. It’s a different Batman; Christian Bale and what I did with Chris [Nolan], that needs to have its autonomous life. I don’t want to go and now appropriate that and put that into the other Batman…”
…Back in 2007, Warner Bros. came close to pulling the trigger on a Justice League movie, with director George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) set to direct a cast that included Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger) as Batman, D.J. Cotrona (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) as Superman, Megan Gale (Stealth) as Wonder Woman, Hugh Keays-Byrne (Mad Max) as Martian Manhunter, Anton Yelchin (Star Trek Into Darkness) as Wally West / The Flash, Santiago Cabrera (Heroes) as Aquaman, Common (American Gangster) as John Stewart / Green Lantern, Adam Brody (The O.C.) as Barry Allen, Jay Baruchel (Fanboys) as Maxwell Lord and Teresa Palmer (I Am Number Four) as Talia al Ghul. As it happens, a combination of the WGA strike, budgetary concerns and changes to the Australian tax rebate scheme meant that the project fell apart, but now the script for the aborted Justice League: Mortal has landed online and you can get your hands on it here or head over to SuperheroMoviesNews for a review / summary…
…Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. got some superhero competition on the small screen this past week as Arrow returned to The CW, with the show pulling in a slightly lower than expected 2.7 million viewers for its season two premiere ‘City of Heroes’. This coming week’s episode ‘Identity’ will see the introduction of Bronze Tiger, played by Michael Jai White (The Dark Knight, Spawn); here’s a clip from the episode, along with the official description: “DC COMICS’ BRONZE TIGER AND CHINA WHITE WREAK HAVOC ON THE GLADES — Oliver (Stephen Amell) finds out the medicine that is being sent to Glades Memorial is being hijacked by thieves. Without an influx of supplies, the hospital will close. Roy (Colton Haynes) attempts to stop the thieves, but he fails and is arrested by Officer Lance (Paul Blackthorne). Oliver gets into a heated battle with China White (guest star Kelly Hu) and her new partner, Ben Turner, AKA the Bronze Tiger (guest star Michael Jai White), over the supplies. Meanwhile, Laurel (Katie Cassidy) makes plans to catch the Arrow, and Thea (Willa Holland) gives Roy an ultimatum…”
…Season two of Arrow looks set to be the catalyst for an expanding DC Television Universe and executive producers Andrew Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim have both discussed the introduction of The Flash and Black Canary, as well as the possibility of bringing together the Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey as part of The CW series; meanwhile, Warner Bros. Chief Executive Officer Kevin Tsujihara indicated that the recently announced Gotham and Constantine may not be the only DC-centric shows on the horizon, stating that the studio has “huge plans for a number of other DC properties on TV” and that “we need to get Wonder Woman on the big screen or TV.” So, with the Wonder Woman pilot Amazon on hiatus, might we see a cameo from Diana when Batman vs. Superman hits screens in July 2015..?
…Speaking of Wonder Woman, it seems that Warner Bros. is currently inviting pitches for the Amazon Princess, with Bridesmaids and The Heat director revealing that the studio recently knocked back his pitch for an action-comedy Wonder Woman movie, which “”would have involved a Wonder Woman who keeps hitting the glass ceiling of the superhero world [and] has to contend with male heroes like Batman and Superman who are perhaps not as forward-thinking regarding their female counterpart as they should be.” I can’t imagine too many fans of Diana being upset about that one…
…Fans of the DC Animated Universe will no doubt be excited to hear that Batman Beyond is set for a return courtesy of the legendary Bruce Timm and Darwyn Cooke, albeit in the form of a DC Nation short set to air on Cartoon Network next year to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Bob Kane’s Dark Knight Detective. Meanwhile, in other DC animated news, Warner Bros. has released video interviews with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns voice actors Peter Weller (Batman), Michael Emmerson (The Joker) and Mark Valley (Superman) to promote the release of a special deluxe edition of the two-part animated feature, as well as giving us our first look at Superman in next year’s Justice League: War. As for the first instalment in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line of 2014, the New York Comic Con played host to a Justice League: War panel on Friday featuring producer James Tucker, director Jay Oliva, voice director Andrea Romano, and actor Jason O’Mara (Batman) – head on over to The World’s Finest for a detailed rundown…
…And we’ll finish things off this week with a couple of animated Marvel bits and pieces, with ComicBookMovie reporting that Norman Osborn is set to don the Iron Patriot armor later this month in episode 22 of Ultimate Spider-Man season two, and Marvel announcing that a special Galactus episode of Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. is available exclusively as a bonus feature on the DVD release Marvel’s Avengers Assemble: Assembly Required – check out a clip of the Green Goliath squaring up to the Destroyer of Worlds over at Marvel’s official site.
Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen – Available now via Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.