Our weekly round up of the latest stories from the world of screen superheroes, including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Daredevil, Big Hero 6, The Fantastic Four, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Amazing Spider-Man, Venom, The Sinister Six, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Gotham, The Flash, Arrow, Constantine, Batman: Assault on Arkham, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, Powers, Heroes Reborn, SuperTed and more….
Wow, there’s been so much superhero news this week, you’d think it was Comic-Con already! We will of course start things off with Marvel Studios’ hotly-anticipated sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron, with Entertainment Weekly giving us our first look at the film thanks to a cover image featuring Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans) and the new bad guy Ultron (James Spader), which was followed up by a batch of official stills that included shots of Tony Stark, Cap, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Rhodey (Don Cheadle) and director Joss Whedon. Meanwhile, we also got a few unofficial set photos, while Scarlett Johansson spoke about returning as Black Widow, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige discussed the new Avengers Tower, and Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth offered up some plot details, including Tony Stark’s creation of Ultron and his Iron Legion, who will ultimately turn against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes…
…Sticking with Age of Ultron and Stan Lee has confirmed that he’s shot his customary cameo for the film, indicating that he’ll be in a scene with Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans. Stan was in the UK for the London Film & Comic-Con (where I was lucky enough to get a photo with the comic book legend!), and during his press conference he also took the opportunity to say that he’d like to see his Mallrats director Kevin Smith getting a crack at a Marvel movie…
…Before the first look Avengers photos arrived online, Flickering Myth co-editor Luke Owen managed to get a sneak peek at the sequel, with Kevin Feige heading over to the UK to show off footage from Age of Ultron during an IMAX preview and Q&A for Guardians of the Galaxy. You can read Luke’s report on the Avengers footage here, and be sure to check out his first impression of Guardians of the Galaxy here, as well as Kevin Feige’s Q&A on the latest Flickering Myth Podcast…
…As you’d expect with less than two weeks to go before its release, Marvel has really upped the promotion for Guardians of the Galaxy, delivering a marketing blitz for the comic superhero ensemble this week which included a selection of new images [see here], a clip featuring Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and Korath (Djimon Hounsou) [see here], a Star-Lord featurette [see here], numerous TV spots [see here, here, here and here], and character posters for Nova Prime Rael (Glenn Close), Rhomman Dey (John C. Reilly), Yondu (Michael Rooker), Ronan (Lee Pace), Korath (Djimon Hounsou), Nebula (Karen Gillan) and The Collector (Benicio Del Toro) [see here, here and here]. And that’s not all, as the official end credits have surfaced online, revealing the identity of the characters played by Nathan Fillion, Stan Lee, Rob Zombie and director James Gunn, as well as revealing a couple of surprise cameos from familiar faces from the Marvel comic book universe. If you’re not concerned about minor spoilers, then check out the details here…
…With the character of Thanos linking The Avengers to Guardians of the Galaxy, Kevin Feige was asked about the chances of the two superhero teams joining forces at some point in the future (i.e. The Avengers 3), to which he replied: “Part of the fun of the comics is that could happen. Any character could interact with any other character because they inhabit the same time period and the same universe. And certainly it is the inclusion of Thanos most specifically that is a declaration to audiences who are paying attention that this is connected to those other universes. Part of the fun is that it could happen someday. I don’t know when that would be. Or maybe I know and I’m not going to tell you!” Sounds like a yes to me…
…As well as promoting Guardians of the Galaxy and showcasing Avengers: Age of Ultron footage, Feige found time in his busy schedule to address Edgar Wright’s departure from Marvel’s first Phase Three movie Ant-Man, stating: “We sat round a table and we realised it was not working. A part of me wishes we could have figured that out in the eight years we were working on it. But better for us and for Edgar that we figure it out then, and not move it through production. We said let’s do this together and put out a statement. What do we say? ‘Creative differences’. I said: ‘That’s what they always say and no-one ever believes it.’ Edgar said: ‘But in this case it’s true …’ The Marvel movies are very collaborative, and I think they are more collaborative than what he had been used to,” continued Feige. “And I totally respect that. [But] the notion that Marvel was scared, the vision was too good, too far out for Marvel is not true. And I don’t want to talk too much about that because I think our movies speak to that. Go look at Iron Man 3; go look at The Winter Soldier; go see Guardians of the Galaxy later this month. It would have to be really out there to be too out there for us… The biggest disappointment for me is just the relationship, because I like Edgar very, very much and we were very close for many many years. But the perception that the big evil studio was too scared at the outside-the-box creative vision is just not the case…”
…In a separate interview, Feige went on to explain how Peyton Reed secured the job of replacing Wright as director of Ant-Man: “Peyton is someone that I’ve been a fan of for a long time. People may not remember, though probably your readers remember, that he was attached to Fantastic Four more than 10 years ago… He’s come in to meet on a lot of our movies over the years, in particular Guardians… It was not a slam-dunk that he would just step into it and do it. He wanted to be sure that he was wasn’t just inheriting something or following someone else’s lead. Or wasn’t inheriting something that the evil studio had watered down to be something bad. I kept saying, ‘You can either read what’s online, or come in and talk to us and look at all this stuff.’ He looked at everything, he talked with us, and he said ‘Number one, I agree with the direction you’re going in. And number two, I can add to it.’ And he has – the movie is in as good a shape as it’s ever been right now. It’s still very much in the spirit of what Edgar’s original pitch was and the entire template of the movie is what Edgar set out and originally came and pitched us maybe eight years ago now. But it’s on its way to being the absolute best version of what that movie could have been. Peyton is really, really wonderful, and will be proving that soon enough. As I said to the Comic-Con audience a few years ago, ‘You might not have heard of [Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors] Joe and Antony Russo, but you’re going to be big fans of them soon.’ And I’d say the same thing about Peyton Reed now…”
…It looks like Marvel is preparing the groundwork for a Phase Three announcement at Comic-Con, with the studio setting an additional FIVE new release dates, taking us through to May 2019. In addition to the already announced Ant-Man (July 2015), Captain America 3 (May 2016) and as yet unrevealed July 2016 and May 2017 films, Marvel Studios has announced releases for July 8th 2016, May 5th 2017, July 28th 2017, November 3rd 2017, July 6th 2018, November 2nd 2018 and May 3rd 2019 – the latter of which is presumably Avengers 3. So that means NINE films in Phase Three – we can only hope Marvel gives us the titles next Saturday during its Hall H panel, or we’re going to be tortured by rumours and “scoops” for the foreseeable future…
…Moving on to Marvel’s various small screen offerings, and it has been announced that the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will get underway on ABC on Tuesday, September 23rd at 9pm, meaning it will air directly after The CW’s The Flash once the Arrow spin-off gets underway on October 7th. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be joined on ABC this season by another Marvel series in Agent Carter, and showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas have been speaking about the show, expressing an interest in Neal McDonough reprising the role of Dum Dum Dugan alongside Hayley Atwell’s Peggy, and discussing how the period setting will provide them with room to be creative with their storytelling. Meanwhile, a rumoured list of supporting characters have surfaced, and you can read all the details and the comments from Butters and Fazekas here. Meanwhile, ahead of Friday’s Marvel Television Presents panel, we’ve got a SDCC poster for both shows, which you can see here…
…With cameras continuing to roll on Daredevil, Marvel has added another couple of names to the cast of its first Netflix miniseries, with True Blood star Deborah Ann Woll set to play Matt Murdock’s love-interest Karen Page, and Peter Shinkoda (Falling Skies) signing on as Hachiro, in what is being described as a major recurring role. The duo join the previously announced Charlie Cox (Stardust) as Matt Murdock, Vincent D’Onofrio (Full Metal Jacket) as the Kingpin, Elden Henson (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay) as Foggy Nelson and Rosario Dawson (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) in an as-yet-unrevealed role…
…The impending release of Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t quite mark the end of the 2014 superhero season, with November set to bring Disney’s first animated Marvel movie Big Hero 6. This week, a new trailer for the film arrived online [watch it here], as well as a batch of character images and the official announcement of the voice cast, which includes the voice talents of Ryan Potter (Supah Ninjas) as Hiro Hamada, Scott Adsit (30 Rock) as Baymax, T.J. Miller (Transformers: Age of Extinction) as Fred, Jamie Chung (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For) as Go Go Tomago, Genesis Rodriguez (The Last Stand) as Honey Lemon, Damon Wayans Jr. (The Other Guys) as Wasabi and Maya Rudolph (Saturday Night Live) as Aunt Cass…
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