…With a little over two months to go before Avengers: Age of Ultron graces our screens, a couple of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have been discussing the film this week, with Scarlett Johansson revealing that we’ll learn more about Black Widow’s past in the Joss Whedon-directed sequel, and Mark Ruffalo talking about the conflict between Bruce Banner and The Incredible Hulk, as well as the possibility of a Hulk solo sequel: “It’s a tough nut to crack. Traditionally you’re watching a guy who doesn’t want to do the very thing that you want him to do. It’s hard to take for two hours. I don’t know how many times you can use that same framing for it, but now he’s maturing and there’s a cool dynamic growing between Banner and The Hulk. And the CGI is so much better. The stuff we can do now, you can do a real performance. I’ve been working with Andy Serkis [at his Imaginarium studio] and he has it set up where you go in there and you just start working on a character. It is so exciting to me, because I can do whatever I can imagine, with a team of people of course…”
…Joss Whedon has also been talking about Age of Ultron this week, and specifically his decision to shift from the source material and have Tony Stark create the A.I. villain, rather than Hank Pym: “Of all the heat I’ve ever taken, not having Hank Pym was one of the bigger things. ut the fact of the matter was, Edgar [Wright] had him first and by virtue of what Edgar was doing, there was no way for me to use him in this. I also thought it was a bridge too far. Ultron needs to be the brainchild of the Avengers, and in the world of the Avengers and the MCU, Tony Stark is that guy.” You can read Whedon’s full comments here…
…Robert Downey Jr. is already eagerly looking forward to 2016’s Captain America: Civil War and his showdown against Chris Evans’ Sentinel of Liberty, and the star was asked this week if we’d see Tony Stark as the bad guy in the Cap threequel: “I wouldn’t put it that way. Ultimately it’s Steve’s story; it doesn’t say Iron Man 4: Civil War. I think that’s great too. I think Chris [Evans] has been hungry to bring even more of an underside and some shadow to that. I remember the comics – on the surface you got the sense that Cap was baseball and apple pie, but underneath there was all this churning stuff of being a man out of time. Now we know he’s made his peace with that. What’s the bigger issue? It can have a little something to do with the past, but it can be about someone becoming more modernised in their own conflict.” Downey also spoke in depth about Civil War, his character, and his time left in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and you can read the rest of his comments here…
…Civil War will of course introduce Spider-Man into the MCU, and Donald Glover has been talking about the speculation linking him as a potential successor to Andrew Garfield as the wall-crawler: “It would be cool for them to go with something different. To be real, I’d be honored to play it, but I just want to see the best choice. I’d love to see any young guy do something interesting—that goes for the director, Spider-Man, Mary Jane, etc. I just want interesting choices that make people question things. One of the reasons The Dark Knight worked is because people didn’t think it was going to work. I’m excited, though. It will be nice to see what Marvel does using him—especially in The Avengers universe…”
…One of the names brought up by fans for the role of Captain Marvel in Marvel’s 2018 solo movie is Katheryn Winnick (Vikings), and the actress was asked this week about whether she’d be keen to take on the role of Carol Danvers: “I would love to… I’m such a fan of comic books. I grew up reading them; they were my idols. Like, these characters came to life for me! I don’t think there’s one in particular, but I would love to play an action hero. If Marvel calls, yes, I will pick up the phone…”
…Moving to the small screen and Marvel’s Netflix series and this week has brought details of the titles, directors and BBFC certification for the first three episodes of Daredevil [see here] as well as a new teaser image that connects to fellow Marvel show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. [see here]. Meanwhile Eka Darville (The Originals), Erin Moriarty (The Kings of Summer) and Wil Traval (b) have all joined Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones), Mike Colter (Luke Cage) David Tennant (Zebediah Killgrave), Rachael Taylor (Hellcat) and Carrie Anne-Moss in the cast of Marvel’s second Netflix show A.K.A. Jessica Jones [see details on their characters here]…
…Over at ABC and Marvel’s Agent Carter draws to a close this coming week before Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns for the second half of season two the following Tuesday. We’ve got a review of Agent Carter’s penultimate episode ‘Snafu’ here and a promo and images from the finale ‘Valediction’ here, while this week has also brought news that Adrianne Palicki’s Mockingbird has been promoted to a series regular on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.…
…On Monday, the Marvel Twitter page promised a series of announcements concerning the Guardians of the Galaxy animated series, which turned out to be the unveiling of the voice cast for the upcoming Disney XD show. Sure enough, the main cast was revealed and will see Will Friedle (Batman Beyond) as Star-Lord, Vanessa Marshall (Star Wars Rebels) as Gamora, James Arnold Taylor (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) as Yondu and Cosmo and David Sobolov, Kevin Michael Richadson and Trevor Devall all reprising their roles from Ultimate Spider-Man’s ‘The Return of the Guardians of the Galaxy as Drax, Groot and Rocket Raccoon respectively [read our original reports here, here and here]…
…The Guardians of the Galaxy are also set to pop up for a guest appearance in this weekend’s episode of the animated series Avengers Assemble, and you can watch a clip here which sees the team issuing a warning to Thor and Black Widow…
…Over at Fox and this week has brought the news that Morena Baccarin (Gotham) has secured the female lead alongside Ryan Reynolds in Tim Miller’s 2016 X-Men spin-off Deadpool, while a casting call has surfaced which provides us with details of the supporting cast of characters (albeit with codenames). Meanwhile, anyone excited about the prospect of Daniel Cudmore returning as Colossus will be disappointed to hear from Cudmore himself that the role is being recast: “Thanks everyone for all the support for me to reprise the role of Colossus in Deadpool but unfortunately it won’t be happening for me. I’ve had a blast playing such an awesome character over the years. Deadpool will be kick-ass with Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds…”
…This week has also brought us some casting news on X-Men: Apocalypse, with Kodi Smit-McPhee (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) securing the role of a young Kurt Wagner, a.k.a. Nightcrawler. Evan Peters has briefly stated that he expects to be back for the 2016 sequel, while Bryan Singer has also shared a piece of concept art depicting Ship, the sentient A.I. responsible for transforming En Sabah Nur into the titular villain Apocalypse, and a BTS snap of himself looking over some Cerebro concept art…
…During promotional interviews for his latest film Kingsman: The Secret Service, Matthew Vaughn has revealed a few of his original plans for X-Man: Days of Future Past, which he was initially set to direct before vacating the chair for Kingsman. As well as detailing his Juggernaut scene (which was ultimately replaced by the Quicksilver scene) [read details here], Vaughn stated that he had plans to cast a younger Wolverine: “I had a whole different idea of how X-Men should go. I thought Days of Future Past should be the next one, so it was set in the 80s. I wrote the treatment, and then wrote Kingsman: The Secret Service so I was confused over which one I should direct. So I said to Fox, let’s do Kingsman and then do X-Men in the 70s, recast Wolverine, and then do Days of Future Past with the new Wolverine and Hugh [Jackman] and make it the biggest spectacle you’ve ever seen. We would recast the younger Wolverine, and have Hugh as the older one [in the future]. And so Fox, quite rightly so, said we’ve got a bottom line to look after here. And it’s Bryan’s franchise and he proved that by knocking it out of the park…”
…In one other piece of news from Fox, a brief TV spot has arrived online for the Josh Trank-directed reboot The Fantastic Four, which doesn’t offer up any new footage, but does have a piece of dialogue absent from the original trailer in “We are stronger together than we are apart”. Check it out here…
…With the first three episodes of Sony Television’s Powers set to land on PlayStation Network on March 10th, a new video featurette has been released which gives us an inside look at the upcoming adaptation of the Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming comic book series. Watch it here…
…And finally, as we await news on the next actor to portray the Spider-Man, Anthony Stokes has shared his opinion on the debate as to who was the best movie incarnation of the wall-crawler in his op-ed ‘Why Tobey Maguire is a better Spider-Man than Andrew Garfield’. It’s pretty clear which side of the fence he’s on, but you can read his his argument as to why here.
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.
