Our weekly round up of the latest stories from the world of screen superheroes, including The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Sinister Six, Venom, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America 3, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil, Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, Batman vs. Superman, Arrow, Batman: Strange Days, Son of Batman, Teen Titans Go! and more….
We’ve already seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier setting box office records, and now we’re just days away from the arrival of 2014’s second superhero offering The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is due to open here in the UK on Wednesday ahead of a North American release on May 2nd. The Marc Webb-directed sequel is currently tracking a $95 million opening weekend in the States, which would put it roughly on par with that of The Winter Soldier. Flickering Myth’s Matt Spencer-Skeen was lucky enough to catch a press screening of the film; here’s an excerpt from his ★★★★ review:
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has obvious flaws, with too much CGI dominating the action sequences as they did in the trailers and parts where too much story drags the rest of the film down… That said this definitely feels like a movie that is taking the franchise forward, giving us a greater understanding and empathy for our hero than many others in this genre care to allow. It’s not going to change superhero films, but it will change how we view the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.”
If you haven’t already, you can read Matt’s full review here…
…Ahead of its release, Webb and stars Garfield, Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy), Jamie Foxx (Electro) and Dane DeHaan (Harry Osborn) were among the guests of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 world premiere in Leicester Square on Thursday evening, and we’ve got highlights of all the red carpet action for you here. And of course, as we’ve come to learn over the past few months, a week can’t go by without a new trailer for the flick and this week has been no exception, offering up an alternate cut of the “final trailer” (a.k.a. the “final, final trailer… until the next one”) which you can see here, along with a couple of TV spots, a ‘Scoring Spidey’ featurette and two new Daily Bugle viral articles featuring Spidey villains Big Man and Carnage…
…With The Amazing Spider-Man 2 imminent, it seems that Sony is keen to press on with its plans to expand the universe with its upcoming spin-offs for Venom and The Sinister Six. We already know Alex Kurtzman is set to direct Venom, and it’s now been confirmed that Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) will double up as writer and director of The Sinister Six. Meanwhile, Spidey producer Matt Tolmach has revealed that the studio’s plans regarding the proposed 2018 release for The Amazing Spider-Man 4 have changed, and that we’ll now see both spin-offs before the web-slinger’s fourth solo outing: “Before we know what we do with Spider-Man 4, we’re going to do Sinister Six, Venom and The Amazing Spider-Man 3. There is going to be a lot of crossover in those movies. So we’re just not at Spider-Man 4, because we still have a whole other Spider-Man movie and two other movies. So we don’t know yet what [Spider-Man 4] is going to be…”
…Moving on from Sony now and Marvel Studios has had plenty to celebrate with the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with the Chris Evans-headlined solo sequel setting a domestic box-office record for April with a whopping $96.2 million haul. By close of play last weekend, The Winter Soldier had banked over $303 million globally, putting it ahead of the MCU’s lowest-earner The Incredible Hulk ($263.4 million), and the sequel should overtake Captain America: The First Avenger ($370.6 million) this weekend to challenge the $449.3 million take of 2011’s Thor…
…Buoyed on by the success of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Marvel Studios took the opportunity to officially confirm that Captain America 3 will hit cinemas on May 6th 2016, which as we know is the exact same date as Warner Bros.’ big DC release Batman vs. Superman. Presumably Warner Bros. felt the need to follow suit, with the studio’s president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman reaffirming – although not entirely convincingly – that the Man of Steel sequel would also arrive on that date: “It doesn’t make a lot of sense for two huge superhero films to open on the same date but there is a lot of time between now and May 6th 2016. However, at this time, we are not considering a change of date for Batman vs. Superman…”
…Shifting back to the MCU and Marvel Studios has also offered up the first clip from its second offering of the year Guardians of the Galaxy, which sees Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) making his escape from Korath the Pursuer (Djimon Hounsou), as well as four new images of Star-Lord and his Guardians comrades Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel)…
…It looks like we’ll be getting a World War II-era flashback next year with Avengers: Age of Ultron, with CBM posting a couple of images from yesterday’s shoot at London’s Rivoli Ballroom showing extras dressed in WWII military uniforms. Both Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter) were said to be on set, along with (somewhat curiously) Paul Bettany, who is reportedly set to become the Vision in the eagerly-anticipated sequel…
…On the small screen, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. stepped up its game this past week with the Captain America: The Winter Soldier tie-in episode ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’. You can read Anghus Houvouras’ (mostly) spoiler free review here, and if you’ve seen the episode (and The Winter Soldier), then check out a few comments about the episode’s twists and turns from star Brett Dalton (Agent Grant Ward) here. As the first season of the show draws towards its climax, it’s been confirmed that Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill) and Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury) will both be back for guest-starring roles, with Smulders set to appear on the April 29th episode and Jackson popping up in the season finale, which is set to air on May 13th. But before then, the Agents have to deal with the fall-out of ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ in this week’s episode ‘Providence’ – check out a promo and clip, along with a poster from the episode by Marvel artist Paulo Rivera here…
…And in one other piece of Marvel small screen news, Dexter star Michael C. Hall has addressed the rumours linking him to the role of Matt Murdock in the upcoming Netflix series Daredevil, which is due to kick off production in New York City in July: “I would definitely consider it… but I can’t tell you any inside information because I think they’re nothing but rumours…”
…Before we move on from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we’ve posted a few MCU-related special features here at Flickering Myth this week – be sure to check out Anghus Houvouras’ The Marvel Moviemaking Model: Can It Be Stopped? and Who Is Engineering The Age of Ultron, along with Anthony Stokes’ Why Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Doesn’t Deserve a Second Season…
…On the Marvel animation – or rather anime – front, we’ve got the first look at the new anime series Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers, which has been produced by Toei Animation and Walt Disney Japan. Click here to see the opening title sequence, as well as a clip from the first episode (in Japanese, with English subtitles)…
…Turning to 20th Century Fox now and the studio has been paving the way for the arrival of the final trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past on Tuesday (April 15th) with some fresh promotional material for the mutant superhero sequel, including a first featurette [see here], a batch of new images featuring Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Past Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Past Professor X (James McAvoy), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), Storm (Halle Berry), Future Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Future Professor X (Patrick Stewart) [see here], two new posters showcasing Colossus, Bling (Fan Bingbing), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) [see here], and a new viral site and video entitled ’25 Moments in the Struggle Between X-Men and Humans’ [see here]…
…With Days of Future Past a little over a month away from release, Bryan Singer’s attention is starting to shift towards 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse; the director has confirmed that James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult will all be back for the next sequel, as well as speaking a little about the plot: ““[X-Men: Days of Future Past] won’t necessarily create an alternate universe, but there may be some swapping things that I’m playing with. You won’t feel at the end of the movie that it set up Apocalypse. What it does is it sets up possibilities. But what we’ll discover in Apocalypse is that events in this movie made that happen. Apocalypse deals with ancient mutancy. What would humans have thought mutants were? What would mutants think humans were? You’re dealing with gods and things like that. And what if one survived and what if that found its way into our world? I’m excited because I want to start introducing familiar characters at different ages and also explore the ‘80s.”
…As for those familiar faces, Singer has once again name dropped Gambit and Nightcrawler as two characters he’d like to introduce, while producer Lauren Shuler Donner has highlighted Gambit and Deadpool as two potential spin-offs, with writer-producer Simon Kinberg also hinting that Jennifer Lawrence’s Raven Darkholme could get a solo movie: ““I love what Jen Lawrence has done with her, and I feel like because she is in such a crowded ensemble, there’s so much more opportunity if you were to follow her solo…”
…Over at Warner Bros., DC Comics go-to guy David S. Goyer has spoken about the studio’s ambitions to launch a cohesive movie universe, suggesting that it’s still early days with regards to plans, as well as playing down talk of direct competition with Marvel Studios: “I know that Warner Bros. would love to make their universe more cohesive. There have been a lot of general conversations about that, but it’s really, really early. I’m not sure. Marvel has had enormous success, but I’m not sure that everybody should try to emulate them either. It’s just been vague conversations so far.” If that’s the case, then the report that WB is set to announce a slate of DC movies “in the near future” certainly sounds a little premature…
…Sticking with WB’s one definite DC movie and former Wonder Woman Lynda Carter has spoken about how she’d like to see the Amazon Princess portrayed in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel sequel Batman vs. Superman. “I’m in [Gal Gadot’s] corner. I just hope they write well for her. I’m very hopeful she embodies the essence of Wonder Woman. It’s less about super powers and more about heart and intellect and a sense of right and wrong with a goodness in her. Often times, writers really want to take a male superhero and dress him up as a female – and that’s just not who she is… They make Wonder Woman a macho Superman type character – they make her mean – and that’s not who she is…”
…This week’s episode of Arrow ‘The Man Under the Hood’ is set to tie in with The CW’s upcoming pilot for The Flash, with executive producer Marc Guggenheim offering up a few details to Collider: “Danielle Panabaker, who plays Caitlin, and Carlos Valdes, who plays Cisco, two members of Star Labs that are part of the regular cast of The Flash, do make an important appearance in Episode 19 of Arrow. This was something that really came about because Barry was in a coma at the end of Episode 9 and that made it impossible for Barry to appear in Episode 19 or 20 of Arrow. He’s gotta stay in a coma until October of next year. But, the idea of bringing in those characters really appealed to us because it allowed us to honor our original intention that we had at the beginning of the year, to do something Flash-related in Episode 19 or 20, without having comatose Barry and paying Grant Gustin a lot of money to sit around with his eyes closed, unconscious for the whole episode. We wrote that episode and it’s really boring. But this episode is really cool and it allows us to further flesh out The Flash universe in Arrow. We get to see their dynamic. They actually shot their scenes for the Arrow episode, contemporaneous with shooting The Flash pilot. Both Episode 19 and The Flash were in production at the exact same time. That isn’t why we did it. That was an added producing / logistical complication. But, it’s just so much fun to see these characters. It’s like previewing Boba Fett in the Holiday Special. Hopefully, Episode 19 will be a little bit better than the Holiday Special, but you can see the analogy…”
…And finally, on the DC animation front, Cartoon Network celebrated 75 years of the Dark Knight this past week with a special DC Nation short from Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Bruce Timm entitled Batman: Strange Days [you can watch the entire short here – it’s wonderful!], while we’ve got a batch of new images from the upcoming DC Universe Animated Original Movie release Son of Batman [see here], and The World’s Finest has clips and images from this coming Wednesday’s instalment of Teen Titans Go!, entitled ‘Mas y Menos’.
Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen – Available now via Amazon.co.uk
