Our weekly round up of all the latest stories from the world of screen superheroes, including The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor: The Dark World, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Big Hero 6, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Lobo, Batman vs. Superman, Green Lantern, Arrow, Justice League: War, Beware the Batman and more….
So here we are in 2014, and Sony rung in the New Year with Spider-Man joining the Times Square celebrations in promotion of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, debuting a couple of new stills of Electro (Jamie Foxx), as well as exclusive NYE trailer from the upcoming superhero sequel, which you can check out here. And if course, it might have been the Holiday Season, but there was no rest for the folks at the Daily Bugle, with the Tumblr viral site dropping two new articles, the first of which deals with Spider-Man’s (Andrew Garfield) apprehension of the supervillain Shocker, and the second teasing yet another character from the Spidey mythos in Thomas Fireheart, a.k.a. Puma. Of course, it’s unlikely that any of these characters will show up in the sequel, but you’d have to imagine that Spider-Man will have his hands full anyway with Electro, Rhino (Paul Giamatti) and the Goblin (Dane DeHaan)…
…Before Spider-Man swings into cinemas Marvel Studios will kick off the 2014 superhero season with its latest Phase Two offering as Chris Evans reprises the role of Steve Rogers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This week has seen the arrival of a batch of new images from the Anthony and Joe Russo-directed sequel, which see Evans joined by Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford), The Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo); check them out here and here…
…And it wasn’t just Captain America getting the image treatment from Marvel this week, with the studio also releasing the first official still from August’s Guardians of the Galaxy and giving us our first proper look at the cosmic superhero team of Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) and Groot (Vin Diesel). Meanwhile, we also got the first synopsis for the film: “From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team — the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan (Lee Pace), a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits — Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand — with the galaxy’s fate in the balance…”
…Jumping ahead to next year and we already know that The Avengers: Age of Ultron will have a new cinematographer in Ben Davis (Kick-Ass, Guardians of the Galaxy), and now its been rumoured that Brian Tyler will take over from Alan Silvestri as composer on the Joss Whedon-helmed sequel. There’s nothing official at present, but Tyler is certainly becoming a favourite of Marvel Studios, having composed the score for Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, as well as the fanfare for the new Marvel Studios logo…
…Marvel Studios has announced that Thor: The Dark World will arrive on DVD and Blu-ray in North America on February 25th, with a UK date yet to be confirmed. Click here to check out the cover art, Blu-ray trailer and list of special features, which also includes the latest Marvel One-Shot ‘All Hail the King‘, which I’m guessing will be the Ben Kingsley / Trevor Slattery short, seeing as Trevor was the toast of Croydon with his turn in King Lear…
…Shifting to the small screen and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns from its midseason break this coming Tuesday as the series promises to reveal the secret behind Agent Coulson’s (Clark Gregg) resurrection in ‘The Magical Place’. Watch the first clip from the episode here,which sees Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) betraying Skye (Chloe Bennet) when the hacker is confronted by S.H.I.E.L.D. director Victoria Hand (Saffron Burrows), and head on over to Spoiler TV for a batch of promotional images from the following episode ‘Seeds’…
…If the British tabloid The Daily Mirror is to be believed, Marvel has given the go-ahead to the rumoured Agent Carter series, which will revolve around the post-World War II / early S.H.I.E.L.D. exploits of Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and company. While the source itself is probably not the most reliable, there’s certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that Agent Carter is on the cards at Marvel, and it wouldn’t come as a surprise if the series was added to the studio’s TV schedule, which also includes the Netflix miniseries for Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones and The Defenders…
…Looking beyond Disney’s live-action Marvel projects and its been revealed that Chris Williams (Bolt) has joined Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh) as co-director on the Mouse House’s first animated Marvel offering Big Hero 6. The Japan-set adventure is based upon the comic book series of the same name and is described as an “action comedy adventure following robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada, who must save the city of San Francisco from a criminal plot with the help of a robot, Baymax; and Gogo, Honey Lemon, sushi chef Wasabi and fanboy Fred.” Big Hero 6 is set to hit cinemas in North America in November…
…Moving on to that other Marvel rights holder, and 20th Century Fox has debuted a new behind-the-scenes image from May’s X-Men Days of Future Past featuring director Bryan Singer alongside the 70s versions of Professor Xavier (James McAvoy), Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult), Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), while Jackman has offered up a few details about the scope of the time-travelling sequel, as well as revealing that he thought X-Men: The Last Stand would have marked the final appearance of the original X-Men cast: “Bryan has such an incredible brain. This is certainly the biggest movie Fox has made outside of Avatar so there’s pressure from all angles. But he’s buzzing, and he’s confident. He’s gone deeper emotionally and it’s a great ensemble cast… I thought [X-Men: The Last Stand] was it. There was already talk about doing a younger version and I was certainly talking about Wolverine and trying to drum up interest in that. I thought the idea of another X-Men movie was done so this was a surprise. And a welcome one.”
…Despite the fact that Fox’s reboot of The Fantastic Four isn’t set to arrive in cinemas until next summer (at the earliest) and Fox has X-Men: Apocalypse, X-Force and a sequel to The Wolverine on its X-Men slate, a rumour has surfaced this week suggesting the studio has given the green light to an Avengers-style crossover based upon the 1987 limited series Fantastic Four vs. X-Men, which “will see the characters against each other because of secrets regarding the Fantastic Four’s origin.” Chances are this one is little more than speculation at the moment, but Fox has made no secret about its plans to craft a shared Marvel universe, so it’s odds on that the two properties will cross over at some point in the future…
…It’s been pretty quiet on the DC movie front this week, although Dwayne Johnson (Fast & Furious 6) did get the rumour mill churning on New Year’s Eve when he tweeted that “we just had a big meeting w/ Warner Bros CEO re: DC Comics 2014 we will partner up and create the cool bad assery.” This isn’t the first time Johnson has been mentioned in the same breath as DC Comics; a few years back, he was set to play Black Adam in Peter Segal’s (Grudge Match) Shazam movie, while more recently there was talk of him reuniting with Journey 2: The Mysterious Island director Brad Peyton to bring Lobo to the screen. So, there’s a chance that WB might be looking to push ahead with Lobo, although the only project the studio has set for production this year is Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel sequel Batman vs. Superman starring Henry Cavill (Superman), Ben Affleck (Batman) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), and it didn’t take long for a rumour / speculative guess to emerge suggesting The Rock could be set to play the John Stewart incarnation of Green Lantern. Well, I guess it’s a lot more believable than those ridiculous Denzel Washington rumours over the Christmas period…
…With Arrow on its midseason break until January 15th, The CW has continued to take the opportunity to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at the show’s stunts, releasing two new featurettes showing Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Sarah (Caity Lotz) going up against The Mayor (Cle Bennett) [see here] and the League of Assassins’ Al-Owal (Navid Negahban) [see here], while CBM has a collection of stills from the midseason premiere ‘Blast Radius’. Meanwhile, Stephen Amell has taken the opportunity to play down any potential rivalry between Arrow and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., offering a comment on comparisons between the two shows: “We are not in competition with other television shows. I realize Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is an easy comparison, but it’s also kind of lazy. We aren’t trying to be the best comic book show, we’re trying to be THE best hour of entertainment. Period. There still seems to be a distinction that assumes television is somehow inferior to cinema… I think that’s ridiculous. We embrace the rigors of an episodic schedule, use them to our advantage and churn out a kick ass product with a high degree of difficulty and virtually no margin for error. 966 minutes of programming every year. I couldn’t be prouder of what we do and that sense of accomplishment is based solely on the quality of our product, not the performance of anyone else’s…”
…On the DC animation front, Warner Bros. has released two new images from the upcoming direct-to-video movie Justice League: War featuring Green Lantern, Cyborg, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Darkseid, while any Beware the Batman fans hoping for the CG animated series’ return to DC Nation this month will be disappointed to learn that it’s once again absent from Cartoon Network’s schedule, fueling speculation that the show is set to go the way of Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series.
Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen – Available now via Amazon.co.uk
