Our weekly round-up of the big news stories from the world of movie superheroes…
Although we’ll be touch upon the likes of The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Wolverine and Daredevil in this edition of The Week in Spandex, the past week has been dominated by The Avengers, with Joss Whedon’s epic superhero ensemble now just five days away from release here in the UK (under the revamped title of Avengers Assemble). Here at Flickering Myth, Luke Owen has been counting down to the arrival of the the hugely-anticipated team-up with a very special ‘Road to The Avengers‘ feature, revisiting all of Marvel Studios’ offerings in the lead up to our spoiler-free five-star review, which was posted in the early hours of Friday morning:
“Marvel’s Avengers Assemble has everything. It has great characters, a wonderful story, awe-inspiring action sequences, superb acting and great dialogue. Not one minute of the runtime is wasted and every frame feels designed for a reason. If you’ve invested time into the previous Marvel movies, you owe it to yourself to see this film. And if you haven’t, you will still enjoy the hell out of it. This is the ‘summer blockbuster’ movie of the year without a shadow of a doubt.“
Check out Luke’s full review of The Avengers here.
For those of you unable to hold out until the release (especially those of you in North America, who face an agonising wait until May 4th), a couple of exciting new clips have also arrived online, the first of which sees Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) taking on Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the second Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) squaring up to Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Meanwhile Downey Jr., Hemsworth and Hiddleston were joined by co-stars Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) and Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill) in London this past Thursday for the European premiere, as well as assembling (sorry) for the official UK press conference. Take a look at our press conference report right here and be sure to head on over to HeyUGuys for an excellent video interview with producer Kevin Feige from the UK premiere, which covers everything from Loki’s alien army to Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man (long story short: it’s close), along with details on the rights to the characters Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (another long story short: Fox can use them for X-Men and Marvel can use them for The Avengers).
The ever-busy Kevin Feige has also spoken about the post-Avengers sequel Iron Man 3 from director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), telling ABC News: “It’s going to be very different, very unique and I think not ascribe to any specific formula that they think they may have pegged us on… It’s all in the story. It’s where you take Tony Stark on his journey in an unexpected way and have him come out of the Avengers a slightly changed individual, which people will see when they see the movie.” Filming is expected to commence on Iron Man 3 in the coming weeks, with Robert Downey Jr. joined by returning cast members Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle and Scarlett Johansson, with Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast) rumoured to be lined up as the villain (who may or may not be the Mandarin) and Guy Pearce (Prometheus) in final negotiations for the role of geneticist Aldrich Killian, co-creator of the Extremis virus that will serve as the basis for the sequel’s storyline.
As if any more excuses were needed to see The Avengers, Warner Bros. has confirmed that the third trailer for Christopher Nolan’s final Batman feature The Dark Knight Rises will accompany Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in North American cinemas. Seeing how The Avengers is tracking record openings, it’s obviously a smart move from WB and will hopefully kick-start what has so far been a fairly reserved publicity campaign (it’s also a clever way for Marvel to bring in any DC fanboys who may have otherwise given The Avengers the cold shoulder).
In the meantime, Batman fans can also check out the first teaser trailer for the Caped Crusader’s upcoming CG-animated series Beware the Batman, which made its way online earlier in the week. The new show is produced by Glen Murakami (Batman Beyond) as is set to premiere on the DC Nation programming block later this year. Meanwhile, Batman Forever star Val Kilmer has also been discussing his time under the cape and cowl at Chicago’s 2012 C2E2, as well as his thoughts on the development of the Batman movie franchise as a whole. Take a look here…
News Shorts…
…Sony has released the ‘final’ theatrical posters for The Amazing Spider-Man, along with a Japanese trailer that featured some new snippets of footage from July’s reboot [see them both here]. The posters arrived without much fanfare, and it has to be said the buzz around Andrew Garfield’s web-crawling debut is struggling to match that of this year’s other two big superhero blockbusters. Once The Avengers hits cinemas, it’s going to be a straight-up marketing face-off between The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises and at this moment in time, I don’t really fancy Spidey’s chances of coming out on top…
…Although fiming on The Wolverine was expected to take place in Vancouver this year, it’s been announced that Hugh Jackman will instead be returning to his native Australia for his sixth outing as Logan (if you include his brief cameo in last year’s X-Men: First Class), thanks to a $13.2m cash incentive from the Australian government. Originally, the film was set to shoot in Japan under director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), but suffered several delays due to the 2011 tsunami and Aronofsky’s subsequent departure, with James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma) then stepping in to take over the reins on the X-Men spin-off…
…While The Wolverine finally seems to be moving forward at Fox, the same can’t be said for another of the studio’s proposed superhero projects, with director David Slade (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) taking to Twitter to announce that progress on the Daredevil reboot is “going slow, & details are too boring to print”. It’s rumoured that Fox have to go into production on a new Daredevil movie this year to avoid the rights reverting back to Marvel Studios, and with Slade currently busy working on the pilot episode of the Hannibal TV series, it’s starting to look like the studio could lose their grip on the Man Without Fear before too long…
…If Daredevil does fall apart, it won’t be the first time that Marvel’s blind superhero has suffered a false start. Over on his personal blog, writer J.M. DeMatteis (Justuce League, Batman: The Brave and the Bold) has posted the first act of a pre-Ben Affleck script he wrote for director Carlo Carlei (Romeo and Juliet) in the late-90, as well as some thoughts on how the project came about – and ultimately fell apart…
…Apart from occasional offerings such as 1997’s Steel and last year’s Green Lantern, we haven’t really seen Warner Bros. exploiting their stable of DC characters beyond Batman and Superman, but that might be about to change as Deadline has revealed that the studio has revived their long-in-development Lobo adaptation. Writer-director Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) has been hired to bring the alien bounty hunter to the screen alongside producers Joel Silver (The Matrix) and Akiva Goldsman (Batman Forever), with Warners dragging the project out of development hell two years after original director Guy Ritchie vacated the helm in favour of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows…
…And finally, DisneyXD has released a clip from the fifth episode of Ultimate Spider-Man, which is set to feature the first appearance from Iron Man (voiced by Adrian Pasdar; Heroes), along with the introduction of the ‘Iron Spider’ suit. Meanwhile, Pasdar has also told IGN that he’ll also be lending his voice to Tony Stark for the currently-in-production Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., as well as revealing that Eliza Dushku (Batman: Year One) has been cast in the new series as Jennifer Walters, a.k.a. She-Hulk.
Holy Franchise, Batman! – Now available for pre-order from Amazon.