In this edition of The Week in Spandex, we look at Deadpool, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Incredible Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Agent Carter, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Batman: Bad Blood and more….
The Merc with a Mouth helped count down to Christmas this week as the ’12 Days of Deadpool’ continued with a page from the screenplay containing Wade’s script notes [see here], his Year in Review [see here], a batch of Deadpool emojis for Android and iOS [see here], an IMAX poster and trailer [see here], an announcement video featuring Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Weasel (T.J. Miller) [see here], a couple of TV spots [see here and here] and a Wolverine/Deadpool mashup image courtesy of Hugh Jackman on Twitter [see here]. But of course, all that was just building to the main event, with the release of new red and green band trailers on Christmas Day. If you missed them yesterday, you can watch them here…
…In other Deadpool news, it was revealed this week that Colossus has been recast, with Serbian actor Stefan Kapicic (24, The Event) taking over the role from Andre Tricouteux (who himself succeeded Daniel Cudmore) to perform partial motion capture, as well as lending his voice to the steel-skinned mutant: “[Director] Tim Miller’s idea of Colossus was to be bigger and stronger than everyone else, so for the motion capture they needed an extremely tall man,” states Kapicic. “I’m 6-foot-4, but he wanted Colossus to be over 7 feet, so they used a stunt double to recreate his height, and he did very good job there. Tim also wanted Colossus to sound as close as possible to the comic book character’s background, so he had me to come in, since my voice was what he envisioned for Colossus, who has an authentic Russian accent. My character’s voice gives him the past history as Piotr Rasputin once you hear him speak. This made him the most authentic to the original idea of the comic book character…”
…Graphic designer Tom Schillinger has released a batch of artwork showing alternate designs for the X-Men: Days of Future Past logo. “Since this was a time travel genre, I was asked to do before and after concepts and they wanted one Big ‘X’ version to have in clean and dented. I did a few conceptual images based in this direction throughout the project.” You can check out his logo designs here…
…Moving on to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and directors Anthony and Joe Russo have been discussing the Phase Three-launching Captain America: Civil War ahead of its release this spring, discussing the relationship between Cap (Chris Evans) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and Cap and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) [read their comments here], while rumours persist that Don Cheadle’s War Machine has had a rebranding to War Hammer, which stems from Total Film’s preview of the movie, where the magazine states: “Old Shellhead’s greatest ally, War Hammer (Don Cheadle) looks to get into a spot of bother in Civil War – the film’s trailer shows his pulverised body being cradled by a distraught Tony. Could this be the end of the line..?”
…Anthony Russo also discussed the introduction of Spider-Man to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain America: Civil War, stating that: “This is a completely new version of Spider-Man that’s introduced in Civil War. It was very important to us that we go younger with the character because what we love about Spider-Man is that he’s still a high school student. That’s a part of his vulnerability and it’s what makes him special in the Marvel Universe; he’s very unique. We wanted to play to that aspect of the character. We also wanted to think about ‘Who is Spider-Man today?’ A lot of times when you get interpretations of Spider-Man, they’re very nostalgic to the origins of the character. Sometimes there’s an old-fashioned patina to the tone of who Spider-Man is. We wanted to think about who is Spider-Man today if he’s living in Queens, what’s the texture of his life like, what’s the texture of his relationship with his aunt who lives with him. How can we make the relationship and character very contemporary? That’s our goal with the character…”
…It looks like fans of the wall-crawler will have a little longer to wait for Sony’s upcoming animated Spider-Man movie, with the studio announcing this week that it has pushed the release date back to December 21st 2018…
…When the Russos finish up with Civil War, they’ll be turning their attention to the two-part Avengers: Infinity War, and Joe Russo has been speaking about the decision to shoot the movies entirely in IMAX – the first feature films to do so: “The scale is appropriate for superhero storytelling. There’s a lot of characters in those movies, a lot of characters who are tall characters. Big characters who are much taller than regular humans. When you have that beautiful IMAX top and bottom frame, it creates a much grander format for a movie like that to be viewed in. I just feel like the thing that distinguishes movies right now is that wide-screen format and the difference of why you go out of your house to go to the theater; it’s to have that experience that you can’t have at your house. For us, we wanted to really deliver on the promise of those movie. There are 20 movies behind them, so they’re the culmination of 20 films and it needs a big beautiful format to tell that story. You won’t be disappoint in the scale of those movies, or in the amount of characters that are in them [but] those movies are a couple years away. Let people speculate about who they want to see in those films, and why they want to see them. And we’ll see how the storytelling continues to develop in the movies that have still yet to come out. But you won’t be disappointed in the amount of characters…”
…Sticking with the Avengers for a moment and Marvel concept artist Phil Saunders has released a batch of his alternate designs for Ultron from this year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron; check them out here…
…Earlier this year it was revealed that Universal still holds the distribution rights to any Hulk solo movies, which is putting the block on a sequel to The Incredible Hulk. Well, Mark Ruffalo has now spoken more about the situation, stating that tension between Universal and Marvel means that the Green Goliath may be stuck in supporting roles for the foreseeable future: “I think they’ve been working on it. Marvel and Universal famously don’t get along very well, and so that’s working against us, definitely. But I know for a fact that everyone is holding out hope that one day we can do it. But the nature of the relationship right now, it’s a little prohibitive. And I hope that that changes, that changes with regimes, it changes over the course of time. But right now it doesn’t look particularly promising… Marvel and Universal are just not having a good time together right now…”
…Last week it was reported that Marvel and James Gunn want Kurt Russell for the role of Star-Lord’s father in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and now The Hateful Eight star has confirmed that he’s had early talks, although he’s yet to see the first movie: “I literally got a phone call two days ago about this. I’ve never seen Guardians of the Galaxy so I don’t know anything about it. Many times I’ve heard ‘That’s a really fun movie, a really good movie [with] great characters.’ So, I didn’t realize that [James Gunn] had written and directed it, but we talked to each other on the phone. And I just had to be honest and say, ‘Thank you for considering me, I have to read [the script], and I have to watch the [first] movie because I can’t bring anything for you [right now]. I’ve got nothing to offer here. So, I’m amazed to get asked about this because everybody knows more about it than I do… it’s a little weird. “But yeah, we’re talking about it… there’s just nothing to talk about at the moment…”
…Click below to continue on for Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Agent Carter, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Batman: Bad Blood and more…
