…Ahead of its unveiling at Comic-Con, Marvel has announced that its upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy animated series will premiere on Disney XD on September 26th, with a sneak peek airing on September 5th. Here’s a synopsis for the new show, and you can take a look at a poster and details of the first two episodes here: “The series follows the newly-formed team who finds a strange artifact keyed only to the DNA of Peter Quill. Upon opening it, Quill unleashes a treasure map leading to a powerful weapon known as the Cosmic Seed which is capable of giving birth to the next universe. It’s up to the Guardians to find, protect and ultimately destroy the Cosmic Seed in order to keep it out of the hands of those who would abuse its power, from galactic big boss Thanos, to the conniving brothers the Collector and the Grandmaster, to a resurrected Ronan, to the ultimate trickster, Loki, in order to save the universe…”
…There were rumours floating around the internet that Marvel Studios had decided to skip Comic-Con as it felt it couldn’t compete with Warner Bros.’ big DC panel this year, but regardless of whether there was any truth to that, Disney chief Bob Iger is confident that Marvel has what it takes to stand out from the competition: “We’re Marvel. We’ve done a great job of building the Marvel brand, which we think when it’s on a movie really makes a difference. We’re seeing signs of that. We like the Marvel slate that we have coming up. We think they’re unique in many ways and have no concerns [about competition] whatsoever…”
…It looks like Marvel and Sony have identified their Aunt May for the upcoming Spider-Man reboot (and Captain America: Civil War, by all accounts), with Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler) signing on for the role alongside Tom Holland’s Peter Parker…
…According to Cosmic Book News (a site that makes Latino-Review seem like The Hollywood Reporter), Marvel and 20th Century Fox are planning a superhero team-up of epic proportions, with the two studios apparently set to announce a huge Avengers vs. X-Men crossover at the San Diego Comic-Con… in 2016. So, only a year to wait before we get confirmation that this rumour is absolute horseshit…
…From one dubious rumour to another now and with everyone still speculating that Fox will bring its X-Men and Fantastic Four universes together at some point, This Is Infamous is claiming that the studio has tapped its go-to X-Men guy Bryan Singer to helm the 2017 sequel Fantastic Four 2, which will apparently pave the way for a crossover the following year. It’s plausible sure, but with Singer busy on X-Men: Apocalypse and the first Fantastic Four yet to even grace the screen, the whole report smacks of guesswork to me so I’d suggest taking it with a healthy pinch of salt…
…Speaking of Fantastic Four, director Josh Trank spoke briefly about the upcoming reboot this week, stating that: “Chronicle was all about the discovery and evolution of those powers. [Fantastic Four] is like, ‘What if it’s a couple years later and it sucks?’ The audience should expect an epic, massive, huge, multipower slugfest. This movie is big. A lot of stakes.” Meanwhile, Fox continued its marketing push by giving us some new footage courtesy of two TV spots [watch them here and here], as well as a new promotional image featuring Miles Teller’s Reed Richards and Kate Mara’s Susan Storm…
…Fox is yet to officially announce its plans for its big Hall H panel on Saturday, Ryan Reynolds has confirmed that Deadpool will be in attendance at SDCC, stating that: “I am ready to go. “I’m really excited about it actually. I’ve only been there once and it’s mayhem, but, you know, we’re coming in with a ton of goodwill and a truly great film so I’m really happy about that.” Meanwhile, the Merc with a Mouth took centre stage on EW’s special Comic-Con issue, with the cover offering up a new image of Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson fully suited up [see here], while we also got a promo image of Deadpool hitching a ride to San Diego [see here], as well as a batch of still featuring the supporting characters Weasel (T.J. Miller), Copycat (Morena Baccarin), Ajax (Ed Skrein), Angel Dust (Gina Carano) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) [see here]…
…After debuting a series of character motion posters, NBC has now released two new images from its upcoming Heroes event series Heroes Reborn featuring Joanne (Judith Shekoni) and Luke (Zachary Levi) and Noah Bennet (Jack Coleman) and Quentin Frady (Henry Zebrowski). You can see the new images here…
…And that’s it for this pre-Comic Con edition of The Week in Spandex. We’ll be back on Monday with a special round up of all the SDCC superhero news, and normal service will be resumed the following Saturday.
Gary Collinson is a writer and lecturer from the North East of England. He is the editor-in-chief of FlickeringMyth.com and the author of Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen.
