…As 20th Century Fox gears up to launch X-Men: Days of Future Past with the X-Men Xperience, the studio has given us a few new snippets of footage from the upcoming sequel with a couple of international trailers and TV spots [see here, here and here], while writer and producer Simon Kinberg has given us some insight into the film’s opening battle featuring Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), Warpath (Booboo Stewart), Blink (Fan Bingbing), Sunspot (Adan Canto) and Bishop (Omar Sy) battling futuristic Sentinels, which we saw a couple of weeks back [watch it here]: “That opening scene is introducing, really, this sort of refugee group of mutants that Kitty’s the leader of in the future. And so, in the movie, it’s before we even meet our X-Men, it’s before we meet Patrick, Ian, Hugh, and Halle. We sort of cold open in many ways on Kitty, Warpath, Blink, Colossus, Sunspot, Bishop, and we sort of wanted to show what a pack of these refugees living day to day knowing the Sentinels are out there, what their life would be like, and what an attack would look like, and also setting up Kitty’s power, of being able to send consciousness back in time to warn people so that they can move away before the attack comes… That’s the sort of critical engine of the movie, her sending a consciousness back to 1973 to warn that something bad is gonna happen that they’ve got to stop from happening…”
…With Kinberg picking up the promotional reigns from Bryan Singer, he’s also taken the opportunity to discuss Fox’s plans to expand its Marvel universe, as well as the possibility of X-Men heading to the small screen and his thoughts on a hard R-rated Deadpool movie [read what he had to say here]. Meanwhile, in a seperate interview, he’s also given us a bit of an idea as to the tone we can expect from Josh Trank’s (Chronicle) upcoming reboot of The Fantastic Four: “It’s a much more grounded, gritty, realistic movie than the last couple [of Fantastic Four] movies. If I had to say, the tone of it would be somewhere on the spectrum between Spider-Man and Chronicle. The other movies were even further on the spectrum of being goofy and fun than Spider-Man. Sam Raimi Spider-Man, not The Amazing Spider-Man. Josh Trank’s instincts are to be as realistic and grounded and real with this stuff as possible. In many ways I would say it’s definitely more of a drama than comedy. It’s still in the direction of Spider-Man. It’s not like The Dark Knight. And even Chronicle has a lot of fun in it. We’re treating this as the origin of the Fantastic Four so in future movies you’d have them on sort of splashier adventures to some extent but in this one we tried to ground the science as much as possible and make it feel like it could take place in our world before it cantilevers into other worlds…”
…Turning to DC now and it’s been revealed that another Justice League member will join Superman (Henry Cavill), Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) in the line-up of Zack Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman, with Broadway actor Ray Fisher signing on to play Victor Stone – a.k.a. Cyborg – in the Man of Steel sequel. It’s said that Cyborg will not be a major part of the film, but “will become a much more significant role as Warner and D.C. develop more films related to the Justice League universe.” Meanwhile, the old rumour about Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones) has once again reared its head, with reports claiming he’ll play Aquaman in the film. There may be some truth to it, but you have to wonder why Warner Bros. would keep his casting quiet when they’ve happily revealed the likes of Affleck, Gadot, Fisher and Jesse Eisenberg…
…On the small screen, Deathstroke delivered a blow to Oliver Queen on the small screen with Wednesday’s episode of Arrow, ‘Seeing Red’ [read Jessie Robertson’s review here], and as we build to the season two finale The CW has released two promos and a batch of images from this week’s episode ‘City of Blood’, which you can see here…
…With filming on Fox’s Gotham pilot having wrapped, things have fallen pretty quiet on the Batman prequel series, but Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the show as picked up a new writer and executive producer in John Stephens, whose previous credits include Gossip Girl, Gilmore Girls and The O.C.…
And finally, on the animated front we’ve got a new clip from the upcoming DC Universe Animated Original Movies release Son of Batman, which hits shelves on May 6th, as well as Darwyn Cooke’s 75th Anniversary short Batman Beyond, which you can watch in full here. And, if you’re keen to see a clip and images from this week’s episode of Teen Titans Go! and the latest DC Nation Short Shazam!, then head on over to The World’s Finest.
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.
Originally published April 26, 2014. Updated March 19, 2020.
