In this edition of The Week in Spandex, we look at Logan, Deadpool 2, Legion, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Doctor Strange, Avengers: Infinity War, The Defenders, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Batman, Justice League, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Gotham, Smallville and more…
We’ve had a couple of big trailers this week, and we’ll kick things off with Logan, as 20th Century Fox gave us our first look at Hugh Jackman’s final X-Men outing with the release of the first trailer for the March 2017 release, which is confirmed as taking place in the year 2024 in the post-X-Men: Days of Future Past timeline, according to director James Mangold. If for some reason you haven’t already seen the trailer – or you just want to revisit it – you can watch the red band version here, and be sure to check out the thoughts of the Flickering Myth writing team in our reaction here. Meanwhile, you may also want to take a look at the latest promo images, which featuring Jackman’s Old Man Logan [see here], Stephen Merchant’s Caliban [see here], and one of Donald Pierce’s Reavers [see here]…
…In other X-Verse news, a rumoured shortlist (well, maybe longlist is a more apt description) of actresses said to be testing for the role of Domino in Deadpool 2 has surfaced online, with the contenders said to include Lizzy Caplan (Masters of Sex), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (10 Cloverfield Lane), Sienna Miller (American Sniper), Sofia Boutella (Star Trek Beyond), Stephanie Sigman (Spectre), Sylvia Hoeks (Overspel), Mackenzie Davis (Halt and Catch Fire), Ruby Rose (Orange Is the New Black), Eve Hewson (The Knick), and Kelly Rohrbach (Baywatch). At this point we still don’t have official confirmation as to whether Domino will appear, but given her close ties to Cable, it’s certainly likely…
…Marvel and FX have released a couple of new promos for the upcoming X-Men series Legion, which also confirm that the show will premiere in February 2017; take a look at the latest promos here…
…Moving on to the Marvel Cinematic Universe now and this week brought us our first teaser trailer for May’s hotly-anticipated Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 [watch it here and check out the Flickering Myth Reaction here], along with a teaser poster featuring Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) alongside new team members Yondu (Michael Rooker) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) [check it out here]. Meanwhile, Vin Diesel also spoke about what we can expect from Baby Groot in the follow-up to the hit 2014 space opera: “He couldn’t be more naive as Baby Groot. I always think of the Groot that we saw on the first Guardians as a college-level Groot, so he’s not fully grown yet, but he’s a man. And once he sacrifices himself at the end of the movie, now he has to start all over, so to speak, but we’re gonna see this goofy, adorable, baby Groot thing running around the screen and just learning as he goes…”
…We’re just a few short days away from the UK release of Doctor Strange, and we’ll have our review of the movie and a selection of cast interviews coming to you early in the week; in the meantime, Marvel has released a new batch of images [see here], along with a host of clips and TV spots [see here and here], as well as composer Michael Giacchino’s main theme, titled ‘The Master of the Mystic End Credits’ [give it a listen here]…
…During the press tour for Doctor Strange, Marvel chief Kevin Feige was again asked about the chances of The Defenders appearing in Avengers: Infinity War, or whether we might see Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist on the big screen at some other point in the future: “I think it’s extremely impressive what Netflix has done and it will be the same answer I always give, which is, ‘It all depends on timing. It all depends on how to do it because I don’t think what anybody wants to do is have such important characters show up for one second. Black Panther and Spider-Man to me are the high bar in Civil War of how you can bring in new characters into something. Vision and Ultron, Wanda and Pietro in Ultron. And it takes a lot of screentime, and it takes a lot of work. Infinity War has a lot of people in it already. So it just depends on how we could figure it out…”
…So, we can presumably scratch The Defenders from the roster of Infinity War, but this week has brought us a couple of bits of casting news regarding supporting characters, with Cobie Smulders and Benedict Wong confirming that they will be reprising the roles of Maria Hill and Wong respectively…
…In other Marvel casting news, it’s also been announced that British actress Letitia Wright has signed on to the cast of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther movie, although her role is being kept under wraps…
…During a Reddit AMA this week, director Taika Waititi spoke briefly about Thor: Ragnarok, stating that it will be the most “out there” Marvel movie to date, and that it will have a very “Taika-esque” tone: “I think [Thor: Ragnarok] will be one of the most adventurous and most ‘out there’ of all the Marvel movies. It’s a crazy movie. You can expect a Taika-esque tone. They’ve been very accepting of my style…”
…We’re still some nine months out from the arrival of Spider-Man: Homecoming, but Tom Holland has revealed that talks are already underway with regards to a sequel, and which villain the wall-crawler will find himself going up against. The news comes hot on the heels of comments from Sony chairman Tom Rothman, who revealed a couple of weeks ago that the studio is still pressing ahead with its plans to launch a series of Spidey spinoffs…
…On the small screen side of the MCU, be sure to check out Danny Hale’s review of this past Tuesday’s fourth episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ‘Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire’ [read it here], while we also have a promo and a clip from this week’s fifth episode ‘Lockup’, which you can watch here and here…
…Click below to continue on for The Batman, Justice League, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Gotham, Smallville and more…
