Presenting our weekly round-up of all the biggest news stories from the world of movie superheroes…
With the Pittsburgh leg of The Dark Knight Rises shoot coming to an end, it would appear that the spies have shifted their attention towards The Avengers and Man of Steel as plenty of juicy, spoilery information leaked from both productions over the past seven days, while The Wolverine seemed to slip further into development hell…
We’ll start things off with Marvel’s superhero team-up The Avengers, with some recent spy videos emerging featuring Tom Hiddleston as Loki, the Thor star having spent the week filming on the Cleveland set alongside Chris Evans’ Captain America, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and a CGI Iron Man (along with veteran character actor Philip Baker Hall). You can check out a pretty good description of a scene featuring Cap and Loki at ComicBookMovie, or head over to Youtube for a video showing the filming of a fight scene between the two. In another potentially interesting bit of Avengers news, SuperHeroHype posted a couple of shots depicting a strange craft / object, with speculation pointing towards alien spacecraft or some kind of Asgardian chariot. If I had to choose, I’d be inclined to go with the latter. Meanwhile BleedingCool got their hands on the image to your right, which depicts the full line-up of the Avengers in comic-book cover form.
Moving on to Man of Steel and after the conveniently obscured first official look at Henry Cavill’s Superman, we finally got confirmation that the movie will follow the DC Comics reboot in dropping the customary red trunks in favour of an all-blue suit. Personally I don’t think it looks too bad, despite the fact that there’s a hell of a lot of blue, but at least they haven’t gone for the new armoured look of the comic book. In other Man of Steel news, the unofficial Superman: Man of Steel Facebook page has done a great job of collecting the recent wave of set photos, which includes a few shots of Superman in his new garb along our first look at Antje Traue as General Zod’s right-hand-woman Faora, who sports a physical costume as opposed to Michael Shannon’s motion-capture suit. Hmm… perhaps they’re mo-capping a beard onto Shannon.
Christopher Nolan and the cast and crew of The Dark Knight Rises must be breathing a sigh of relief now that the production has moved on from Pittsburgh after all of the leaks over the past month, but there was still time for a few spy videos to capture the shooting of a scene between Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon and Marion Cotillard’s Marion Tate, along with some shots of Anne Hathaway riding the Batpod as Catwoman. The Dark Knight Rises is now moving on to Los Angeles and some details have already cropped up online about simulated flood scenes that are to be filmed between now and the 1st of September, so maybe more information will be forthcoming after all.
Last week brought word that The Wolverine would be filming in Vancouver from November, but now Deadline have revealed that Fox have pushed the shoot back until 2012 due to ‘weather related considerations’, with star Hugh Jackman now expected to complete work on Les Miserables before donning the adamantium claws for a sequel to 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It’s certainly been a difficult time for the film, with director James Mangold recently stepping in to replace Darren Aronofsky and the earthquake in Japan raising questions over possible locations for the shoot.
With this latest delay to hit The Wolverine, you have to wonder if the film will ever see the light of day, but at least X-Men fans will soon be able to get their hands on the DVD and Blu-ray release of X-Men: First Class, which features thirteen deleted scenes from this summer’s mutant prequel. InsideMovies debuted an extended scene featuring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender (in drag!) and Zoe Kravitz, and a few more will probably crop up online as we count down to the North American release on September 9th.
Rounding up the best of the rest…
…Andrew Garfield took part in an interview with Hero Complex, discussing his preparation for the role of Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man and thoughts on working with co-star Emma Stone…
…Warner Bros. are hoping to tempt fans burned by this summer’s Green Lantern by offering an extended version of the film that runs at an extra six minutes. Whether that’s going to lure people into a purchase or convince them to stay away remains open to debate…
…More promising perhaps is the upcoming Green Lantern: The Animated Series from DC animation guru Bruce Timm. See what Timm and co-creators Jim Krieg and Giancarlo Volpe had to say about the new CG show over at MTV Geek!…
…While we’re on the subject of Bruce Timm, fellow Batman: The Animated Series producer Paul Dini and long-time voice of the Dark Knight, Kevin Conroy, took part in a video interview with ComicBookResources, during which they discussed the upcoming Batman: Arkham City and the differences between working on animation and video games…
…Fright Night scribe Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has revealed to FEARnet that she’d like to take a crack at scripting a Wonder Woman feature. Could a partnership with Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn be on the horizon..?
…And finally, don’t forget to vote in our poll to find your favourite superhero movie of 2011 – it’s been virtually neck-and-neck between Captain America: The First Avenger and X-Men: First Class since the poll launched (or it was until this morning!) and with just five days to go, we need a victor!
Holy Franchise, Batman! – Coming 2012.
Originally published August 27, 2011. Updated November 29, 2022.
