Our weekly round-up of all the latest superhero news and talking points, including Deadpool, X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United, Big Hero 6, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League Dark, Constantine, Arrow, The Flash, Gotham, Batman ’66, Batman: Assault on Arkham and more…
With the dust settling on last weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con International [read a special Week in Spandex SDCC round-up here], the big news this week should have been the release of Marvel’s penultimate Phase Two offering Guardians of the Galaxy… if it wasn’t for the small matter of the Merc with the Mouth. Yes, this past week we finally got to see the CG test footage / proof of concept for the Deadpool movie, which had been produced by Tim Miller and Blur Studio a couple of years back, with Ryan Reynolds reprising the role of Wade Wilson (via motion capture and voice work) from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and managing in just two minutes to lay to rest the ghost of that god-awful interpretation. The footage initially leaked in poor, camcoder quality and sent the internet into a frenzy (it clocked up over 200,000 views on Flickering Myth alone!) before being released in crystal clear HD quality (which you can watch right here) and surely proving to 20th Century Fox that there’s a huge audience for a Deadpool movie done right. If you’re interested in our thoughts on the footage and a Deadpool movie, be sure to take a look at the latest Flickering Myth Reactio, and you can also see a BTS shot of Reynolds during the shoot here…
…According to Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld, the reaction to the leaked footage may have reignited Fox’s interest in a Deadpool movie, although he claims the studio is now looking at a PG-13 version of the original script: “So much mis-information from the mis-informed in regards to the Deadpool film. The version under review is a PG-13 version, not an R. The PG-13 rating now allows for truckloads of violence an edgy themes. An R rated version is not a consideration and hasn’t been for years. You can always pad a DVD release with R cuts… It can easily be made with a PG-13 rating. The brilliant screenplay has been equally brilliantly modified. R is not a blockade any longer. Wolverine impales people with his claws on film ALL the time, withdraws with NO BLOOD and with great favor and success. I somehow missed all the R rated blood dripping in the brilliant DP footage that leaked? Still a success yes? Also, please understand that I would LOVE nothing more than an R rated Deadpool, mainly for bloody violence, that’s just not a reality…”
…Sticking with Fox for a moment and writer-producer Simon Kinberg has took a moment to reiterate that X-Men: Days of Future Past has reset the timeline for X-Men: Apocalypse and future X-Men movies, although he also went one step further and suggested that we may even see characters being born earlier than they were in the previous continuity (which is kind of stretching it, in my opinion): “We sort of reset the clock on Days Of Future Past. And so a lot could have changed from that point in 1973 forward. Meaning, people could have been born earlier. The whole world changed after those events. So things that were represented in X1, X2 and X3 wouldn’t have happened in quite the same way…”
…And so we come to the final live-action superhero movie of 2014, Marvel’s cosmic ensemble Guardians of the Galaxy, which opened in the UK on Thursday and the States yesterday. The film pulled in a hefty $11.2 million domestically on Thursday night (beating the likes of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Future Past and Godzilla for the best Thursay opening of the year so far) and is tracking a whopping $90 million opening weekend on home soil, which would be a huge success for the cosmic superhero ensemble. And of course, Marvel has made sure we’re all aware of the release this week week as the marketing blitz reached a head with 25 new images [see here], along with featurettes for Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) [see here], Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) [see here], two clips featuring Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) [see here] and Star-Lord and Rocket [see here], a behind-the-scenes featurette [see here] and a selection of new posters [see here and here]. Meanwhile, director James Gunn has also opened up about how he got the job of bringing the Guardians to the screen, and his thoughts on the MCU [see here]. Be sure to let us know your thoughts on Guardians of the Galaxy, and if you haven’t already you can check out our reviews here, here and here, as well as the Flickering Myth Podcast review here and Flickering Myth Podcast of the London press conference here. Oh, and if you’ve seen the movie, or don’t mind spoilers, you can check out an image of the cameo from the post-credit scene here…
…During the Ant-Man panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, it was suggested that the script for the troubled Phase Three launcher remained unfinished despite a looming start date of August 18th for production, and now new director Peyton Reed (Down with Love) has confirmed that is the case, as well as praising Adam McKay (Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues) for his contribution to the screenplay: “We’re obviously deep into preparation and still making some script changes, but the script is terrific. Adam is an insane comics fan, and a Marvel fan. He’s bringing all of that to the movie…”
…At the San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Studios screened a video looking back over Phase One and Phase Two (with clips from all ten of Marvel’s movies to date in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Solider and Guardians of the Galaxy, as well as a quick shot of Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron); the featurette has now arrived online, and you can watch it here…
…With Marvel Studios currently sitting on seven unannounced release dates (okay, five if you remove Doctor Strange and The Avengers 3), there’s been a lot of speculation as to whether Marvel will finally pull the trigger on a female-led superhero movie, and Kevin Feige has offered up a few thoughts this week, stating that: “I very much believe in doing it. I very much believe that it’s unfair to say, ‘People don’t want to see movies with female heroes,’ then list five movies that were not very good, therefore, people didn’t go to the movies because they weren’t good movies, versus [because] they were female leads. And they don’t mention The Hunger Games, Frozen, Divergent. You can go back to Kill Bill or Aliens. These are all female-led movies. It can certainly be done. I hope we do it sooner rather than later. But we find ourselves in the very strange position of managing more franchises than most people have – which is a very, very good thing and we don’t take for granted, but is a challenging thing. You may notice from those release dates, we have three for 2017. And that’s because just the timing worked on what was sort of gearing up. But it does mean you have to put one franchise on hold for three or four years in order to introduce a new one…”
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Originally published August 2, 2014. Updated November 29, 2022.
