…It’s fair to say that 20th Century Fox’s reboot of The Fantastic Four hasn’t had the best of reactions from fans of Marvel’s First Family, and Toby Kebbell (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) didn’t help matters much this week when he spoke about his role as the villain Doctor Doom: “He’s Victor Domashev, not Victor Von Doom in our story. And I’m sure I’ll be sent to jail for telling you that. The Doom in ours—I’m a programmer. Very anti-social programmer. And on blogging sites I’m ‘Doom'”. Sound good to you..?
…According to reports, Fox and Bryan Singer will be looking to capitalise on the star status of Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence with X-Men: Apocalypse, with a report emerging this week which suggests that the romance between Magneto and Mystique will be at the forefront of the 2016 mutant sequel…
…Turning to Warner Bros. now and is looks like we’ll be getting another take on the Wayne family murder in 2016 – complete with Mark of Zorro – in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, with Zack Snyder reportedly using IMAX cameras to shoot the sequence. You can check out some set photos of the filming here and here – and is that Watchmen star Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Thomas Wayne..?
…Coinciding with the release of his latest film Interstellar, Christopher Nolan has briefly shared his thoughts on the casting of Ben Affleck as The Dark Knight in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: “I’m only involved in that project in an advisory capacity as an executive producer, so I’m not involved in the day-to-day. When they told me that Ben was interested in doing it, I thought, ‘How thrilling!’ This is the guy who just won Best Picture as a director and as an actor, and I thought it would be a great thing that he’d be willing to do this. I think the guy is incredibly talented and I’m very excited to see what Zack and Ben do together…”
…It looks like the cast of Suicide Squad is coming together, with this week bringing news that Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) is in final talks to play Harley Quinn and Jai Courtney (Divergent) is being eyed for the role of Deadshot. Jesse Eisenberg will reportedly reprise the role of Lex Luthor from Batman v Superman and Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) has been tipped as The Joker, while it’s said that both Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises) and Will Smith (After Earth) remain in contention for the David Ayer-directed film…
…It’s been widely reported this week that Warner Bros. has entered negotiations with director Michelle MacLaren -whose credits include Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead – with regards to 2017’s Wonder Woman solo movie starring Gal Gadot…
…Shifting to the small screen and Harvey Dent will make his debut in Gotham on Monday, played by Nicholas D’Agosto (Masters of Sex). We have a couple of promos for the episode which you can see here, along with a batch of images for the following episode ‘Lovecraft’ here., and you can also check out our reviews of episode seven ‘Penguin’s Umbrella’ and episode eight ‘The Mask’ here and here. Meanwhile, Ben McKenzie has spoken about the possibility of more familiar faces from the DC universe popping up in the show: “The Grayson’s may appear this season. I’m not 100 percent sure yet, but I think so.” However, he then went on to pretty much rule out any potential crossovers or integration with the DC Cinematic Universe, stating that: “It’s a different strategy that DC has versus Marvel. Marvel’s all about integration, and I think DC is separating their TV landscape from their film landscape. I’m certainly not against it, but since we’re an origin story, I don’t know how it could work for us…”
…The CW has released some new promotional material for The Flash this week with a ‘Chosen’ trailer [see here] and a couple of new posters [see here and here], while we’ve also got a trailer and promo for Tuesday’s episode ‘The Flash Is Born’ [see here] along with a batch of promotional images from next week’s ‘Power Outage’ [see here]. This week has also given us our first look at Katie Cassidy’s Laurel Lance as the new Black Canary in Arrow, along with a trailer, promo and images for this coming Wednesday’s episode ‘Draw Back Your Bow’, which you can see here. And of course be sure to check out Jessie Robertson’s reviews of The Flash’s ‘Plastique’ here and Arrow’s ‘Guilty’ here…
…Stephen Amell’s Arrow and Grant Gustin’s Flash will be teaming up next month, and DC’s Geoff Johns has whet our appetites for the two-part crossover by releasing a logo, which you can see here…
…Ahead of his upcoming debut on Friday, we’ve had our first look at Emmett J. Scanlan (Guardians of the Galaxy) as Jim Corrigan, a.k.a. the future Spectre, in Constantine; check out some promotional stills and a TV spot for the fifth episode ‘Danse Vaudou’, and read Martin Carr’s review of episode three ‘The Devil’s Vinyl’ here…
…Warner Bros. is partnering up with LEGO for a new direct-to-video animated feature entitled LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League vs. Bizarro League, which is set to arrive on shelves on February 10th 2015. Check out the trailer, box art and exclusive ‘Batzarro’ minifig here…
…And finally, we’ve posted a few superhero related op-eds on Flickering Myth this week which might be of interest – check out Anthony Stokes’ Why People Need to Stop Complaining About The Fantastic Four (Revisited), Neil Calloway’s Not Another Superhero Movie, and Anghus Houvouras’ The Derivative Age: Welcome to the Mediocrity.
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.
