Our weekly round-up of the big news stories from the world of movie superheroes…
Despite unconfirmed reports that Warner Bros. has debuted new footage from The Dark Knight Rises at the Russian Movie Expo, it’s been another quiet week from the Batman camp, which may have something to do with the fact that director Christopher Nolan has been hard at work in the editing suite assembling his cut of the hugely anticipated threequel. However, according to Heat Vision, yesterday saw Nolan screening a rough cut of the film – which stars the likes of Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard – to Warner Bros. executives, and there’s also been rumours that the studio could show some new footage at WonderCon this weekend. Whether that proves true or not, with a rough cut now assembled, you can be sure that we’ll be seeing plenty more from The Dark Knight Rises over the coming weeks and months as the clock ticks down to its July 20th release date…
…For the time being however, Batman once again takes a back seat to The Avengers as the Marvel marketing machine rolls on, bringing forth a new Japanese trailer featuring plenty of new footage, including some Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) / Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) action (not that kind of action), our first look at Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and our best look yet at Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) alien army. Take a look at the trailer here, and head over to ComicBookMovie for some screencaps of the new footage. Meanwhile Marvel have also released a new behind-the-scenes image of Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and director Joss Whedon, while Whedon has also dropped a few Avengers updates during promotional interviews for The Cabin in the Woods, telling Collider that he’s trimmed his cut down from three hours to 2 hours and 15 minutes and revealing to Total Film (via CBM) that the film will no longer be told from the POV of Chris Evans’ Captain America: “In the final cut that’s probably not true… There was stuff with Cap I cut out. Although he has an ‘in’ with the audience in that this world is stranger to him, so he’s an identification figure…”
…As production gears up for Marvel Studios’ first post-Avengers offering, Iron Man 3, a few possible story details have emerged for the Shane Black-directed sequel. According to Latino Review, the storyline will take its inspiration from the ‘Extremis’ story arc by Warren Ellis that ran in The Invincible Iron Man Vol. 4 #1-6 and will feature the inclusion of nanobot technology designed to “make Tony Stark more than a man in a suit”, which is said to stem from “an idea planted in Tony Stark’s head by Captain America in The Avengers, because Avengers leads directly into Iron Man 3.” With a projected May start date, expect to hear more details on Iron Man 3 in the very near future…
…Jennifer Lawrence has been busy doing the promotional rounds for The Hunger Games this past week, but of course talk soon turned to the X-Men: First Class sequel, with HitFix putting the question to the actress about whether she’ll be joining the returning James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender for a second outing as Mystique. “I don’t know, I mean…if they write me in, then I’m in. But I don’t even know if there’ll be… I’ve only heard what everybody else has heard, just whispers. I haven’t heard the official word yet.” I guess she missed the news about Fox signing a deal with Matthew Vaughn back in January. Nevertheless, it looks like Lawrence could be the subject of a tug-of-war between Fox and Lionsgate, with The Hollywood Reporter suggesting that there could be scheduling conflicts with the upcoming First Class sequel and The Hunger Games follow-up Catching Fire, which – according to an insider – would see Fox coming out on top: “Fox will win [any conflict]… Their option trumps Lionsgate’s option…”
…Scans of a leaked call sheet for the Zack Snyder-directed Superman reboot Man of Steel made its way online this past week, only for Warner Bros.’ legal team to swiftly demand the removal of the offending images. Still, the Superman Homepage has collected together some of the casting information that was present, while ComicBookMovie have a brief summary of a bar scene featuring Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), along with some details on the sequence that sees Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and Lara (Ayelet Zurer) sending baby Clark to Earth…
…In other Superman-related news, the Superman Homepage also got their hands on three pieces of concept art for the ultimately-abandoned Superman: Flyby feature, which was set to be directed by McG (Charlie’s Angels) from a script by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek). Pick of the bunch is a scale model of Ty-Zor, who was intended to be the main Kryptonian villain…
…Sticking with failed Superman projects, special effects maestro Steve Johnson (The Abyss, Blade II, Spider-Man 2) discussed the controversial costume designs for Tim Burton’s Superman Lives during an interview with FearNet: “I’ve had it with these things on-line saying “this suit is probably why the movie didn’t get made” and blah blah blah. What people don’t understand is pretty straight forward… It was never meant to be the actual Superman suit. Superman dies, in Tim Burton’s version. He’s wrapped around by this alien presence which I would assume someone in the comics came up with. It’s a living life form on top of him that brings him back to life. So everybody looked at the suit and said ‘Jesus, Tim’s lost his mind! Steve’s doing too much blow!’ That wasn’t what happened! It was never meant to be the Superman suit. It was an alien wrapped around him. Let’s put that on the record for once. Colleen Atwood designed all the Superman suits. We had the real one; we had the black one from the ending. But the one people have seen wasn’t meant to be the Superman suit, it was an alien that was regenerating him and it was really that simple. I don’t know why all the fans were getting so angry about that. If they were real fans, they would know!” Well, that may be so, but it doesn’t change the fact that the design was utterly atrocious…
…And if that’s not enough to satisfy your Superman cravings, be sure to check out the trailer for Warner Premiere’s latest DC Universe Animated Original Movie, Superman vs. The Elite, which sees George Newbern reprising his role from previous animated offerings Justice League, Justice League: Unlimited and The Batman, not to mention the DC Showcase short Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam…
…Moving on from the Man of Steel and Sony are keeping things ticking over on The Amazing Spider-Man with the release of a new 3D lenticular poster for Marc Webb’s upcoming reboot. Meanwhile members of the cast and crew – including Webb, stars Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone and producers Matt Tolmach and Avi Arad – will be making an appearance at WonderCon today, where it’s expected that fans will get to feast their eyes on some new footage from the film…
…On the subject of Spider-Man, Marvel Animation have released a new trailer for their upcoming cartoon series Ultimate Spider-Man (which features the web-crawler donning an Iron Spider-type armoured suit) in addition to a promotional video for Disney XD’s upcoming Marvel Universe programming block. Set to debut on April 1st in North America, the block will play host to Ultimate Spider-Man and season two of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, along with a number of exclusive Marvel shorts…
…And finally, despite owning the rights to the entire roster of DC Comics superheroes, Warner Bros. have snapped up the movie rights to master hypnotist Mandrake the Magician – a character often described as the first comic book superhero. As reported by Heat Vision, the studio will develop the feature alongside Atlas Entertainment and plan to give the character a Sherlock Holmes-esque ‘21st century makeover’. Although a script had previously been developed for Atlas by David and Janet Peoples (12 Monkeys), Warner Bros. are now said to be looking for new writers to tackle the project, which will be produced by Charles Roven (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises).
Holy Franchise, Batman! – Now available for pre-order from Amazon.
Originally published March 17, 2012. Updated November 29, 2022.
