10:15 AM, Thursday, May 9th, 2013 - Posted by Brant Fowler
If you don't want to be SPOILED, stop reading this post now!
If you are still reading, then you don't mind a little SPOILER, so we shall continue. Robert Redford was recently interviewed about his career and happened to spoil a little of the 2014 Captain America sequel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, reports Ain't It Cool News.
Last chance to turn away as it's a big spoiler after the jump.
While talking about his career Redford said that he took the Captain America gig because it offered him a chance to break from his normal role and play a villain. Seeing as how he's playing the head of SHIELD that's most likely something that will be a big twist later in the movie.
Quint from AICN had a theory on that as well:
"That turn also sets up Avengers 2. When you have a team of brilliant scientists, monsters, soldiers and gods backed by an all powerful intelligence agency with an unlimited bank account there doesn't seem to be much that could pose a real threat, but if SHIELD becomes corrupt then the Avengers might just have a real challenge on their hands."
So there you have it, a major spoiler and plot twist for next year's Cap sequel... if it's not a swerve. Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and will once again star Chris Evans as the patriotic hero. The film hits theaters April 4, 2014.
Thanks to Ron Fortier for pointing us to the story. Add a reply 
| 9:00 AM, Thursday, May 9th, 2013 - Posted by John Wilson
Disney XD has a special one-hour preview of Marvel's Avengers Assemble, airing Sunday, May 26 at 11 a.m. ET. The show officially premieres Sunday, July 7 at 11 a.m. ET as part of the "Marvel Universe" block on the channel.
In the first part of the special preview, Captain America is apparently destroyed by Red Skull, so Iron Man re-unites the team to try and avenge his friend and stop Red Skull's army. In the second part, Red Skull steals Tony Stark's armor, and the Avengers must galvanize the team to stop him and M.O.D.O.K. from destroying New York City. Marvel's Avengers Assemble stars Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) as Iron Man, Fred Tatasciore (Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness) reprising his role as Hulk, Roger Craig Smith (Wreck-It Ralph) as Captain America, Travis Willingham (Shelf Life) as Thor, Troy Baker (Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man) as Hawkeye, Laura Bailey (The Super Hero Squad Show) as Black Widow and Bumper Robinson (The Game) as Falcon.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
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| 6:00 PM, Wednesday, May 8th, 2013 - Posted by Brant Fowler
 Are we going to see the death of Gwen Stacy sooner rather than later in the films? Certain newly released images from The Daily Mail seem to suggest so. Though it could be just a nod to the comics or a ploy to swerve fans.
In these photos from the filming of Amazing Spider-Man 2, Gwen Stacy (played by Emma Stone) is dressed in a short purple outfit, knee high boots and a mint green coat. A very similar outfit to the one she wore in the famous issue of Amazing Spider-Man, #121 titled "The Night Gwen Stacy Died."
Obviously, the story is different in the film. The comic featured the Green Goblin, but we know Electro is the main villain in the film (or so we're led to believe). But that's nothing unusual. Comic films always pull from the source material but tell their own story.
Many have voiced that perhaps this sequel will build towards Stacy's death in the third film as Mary Jane Watson is introduced in this one. But could they pull that trigger sooner than fans expect?
Only time will tell, but for now you can take a look at the photos to the right and below (click to enlarge) and ponder, discuss and speculate.
 
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| 2:00 PM, Wednesday, May 8th, 2013 - Posted by John Wilson
David Elliot and Paul Lovett, two of the credited screenwriters on the 2009 film G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, have filed a massive lawsuit against Paramount, MGM, Hasbro and producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura.
At issue is the sequel, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which came out in March and grossed nearly $120 million in domestic box office.
 According to a complaint filed in California federal court late last week and obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Elliot and Lovett had a contractual "first opportunity" to write the first sequel to the Joe Cobra movie if they were the sole writers. But they weren't. Stuart Beattie was also given a co-screenwriting credit.
Nevertheless, the two writers say that shortly after the premiere of the 2009 film, the defendant film companies asked them to present plotlines, themes, characters and more for a potential sequel "with the stated intent that the PDH Defendants would hire Plaintiffs to write the screenplay if they liked Plaintiffs' proposed Sequel."
Elliot and Lovett said that they did just that, and now after seeing their work allegedly taken without credit, they are seeking more than $23 million in damages for copyright infringement and breach of implied contract.
"These original inventions, which make Plaintiffs' Proposed Sequel a compelling piece of story-telling, have been stolen by the (defendants) in the hopes of infusing the Joe Retailiation Movie with the blockbuster power of Plaintiffs' Work."
The lawsuit says that when Elliot and Lovett saw the results of the 2009 movie, they were "shocked to see how completely the Joe Cobra Movie had departed from" their script.
As a result, when it came time to work on the sequel, the writers said they got more granular in their pitch, "presenting not just suggestions for possible storylines and character arcs but a comprehensive vision to completely reimagine the G.I. Joe franchise from the live-action films to the toy line."
Included in the enhanced pitch, says the complaint, were an "exhaustive array of documents, verbal presentations, original conceptual art, photo collages, video clips, mock movie posters with suggested subtitles, marketing images and mock marketing trailers."
The writers also say that more than 100 phone calls as well as emails detail the extent of their pitch over a two-month period.
On December 3, 2009, Elliot and Lovett say they were notified that the film companies had decided to engage a different writing team. Retaliation is credited to writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.
But the plaintiffs see their pitched ideas in the final film.
"Even the most cursory review of the Joe Retaliation Movie and the Plaintiffs' Work reveals that they are substantially similar in every material way," says the complaint. "While Plaintiffs make no claims to the elements of the Joe Retailiation Movie that are subject to Hasbro's pre-existing copyrights in the G.I. Joe characters, Plaintiffs take great issue with those elements of the Joe Retailiation Movie that are the expression of Plaintiffs' personal creativity and Plaintiffs' unique creation of Plaintiffs' Proposed Sequel that were not part of the Joe Cobra Movie and that were not scenes a faire of the genre."
The lawsuit goes into detail about how "nearly every aspect of the Joe Retailiation Movie, from the beginning to the end" incorporates their work and includes a side-by-side comparison of the similarities. The writers say it was their idea, among other things, to take the franchise "back to a simpler time, where the focus is less about high-tech wizardry and gadgetry and more about nostalgic, grounded characters."
The plaintiffs are represented by attorney Henry Gradstein. The lawsuit seeks at least $20 million in actual damages and at least $3 million in compensatory damages.
Paramount declined to comment on the suit.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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| 1:00 PM, Monday, May 6th, 2013 - Posted by John Wilson
Warner Bros has reportedly blocked plans for Kickstarter campaigns to revive Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series.
 SMGO.tv, which met the studio to discuss plans for funding the canceled DC Nation series, said that it has met with resistance.
"Hey all, I've been trying (all day) to come up with a slightly better way to say this, but I'm just going to give it to you straight," wrote an SMGO.tv representative on the company's Tumblr.
"Warner said no - they don't think we can reach our goals - do you believe that?"
Beware the Batman and Teen Titans Go! have replaced the two series on the Cartoon Network block.
The defunct Veronica Mars series recently funded a new film spinoff with Kickstarter's most successful campaign to date.
Source: Digital Spy Add a reply
| 7:00 PM, Sunday, May 5th, 2013 - Posted by John Wilson
The much discussed Ant Man movie, which is to be done by Edgar Wright has hit a bit of a snag.
 Apparently, the film, which features the only original Avenger not to feature in last years Avengers movie requires a bit of re-writing in order to bring it into line with the other planned movies at Marvel Studios.
The news was broke by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige during his recent interview for EW.
"Frankly, now we have to rewrite it to put it a little bit more into the [Marvel Cinematic Universe] because it was written before it existed," he said.
"We've talked about various names [to play the lead] over the past eight years but as you can imagine they keep changing as time goes by. But towards the end of this year, we'll buckle down and start casting and start refining the script, which is great and which is very Edgar.
"He has done a great job being incredibly true to the comics but is putting his own spin on it, so we'll be drawing on multiple mythologies for this one."
Ant-Man is due alongside Doctor Strange as one of Marvel's Phase Three Movies following the 2015 release of Avengers 2.
It is scheduled for release on November 6, 2015.
Source: SciFi Pulse Add a reply
| 4:00 PM, Saturday, May 4th, 2013 - Posted by John Wilson
 Coming off the news that Daredevil had reverted back to Marvel, it was revealed today that the screen rights to Ghost Rider have also returned to the studio.
Entertainment Weekly confirmed the news to ComicBookMovie.com via Twitter, with further details to follow soon.
However, as Kevin Feige noted earlier this week about Daredevil, this doesn't mean we can expect to see a Ghost Rider reboot any time soon. Said the Marvel exec, "Whenever a character comes back to us, it's usually because the other studios don't want to make the movies anymore -- and that usually means the [previous] movies may not have been particularly well received. They all have potential, but we're not going to say, 'We got it back -- make it!'"
That said, it's no doubt comforting for Marvel to have these characters back in the fold, just in case.
Source:IGN Add a reply
| 4:00 PM, Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 - Posted by John Wilson
 We've been hearing about Hellboy 3 for nearly five years, but director Guillermo del Toro keeps making other movies, and the final installment of the trilogy remains in development hell. But it won't be there much longer if original star Ron Perlman has anything to say about it.
Perlman is making a hard run at del Toro to return to the franchise that solidified his status as a geek icon, and if the upcoming sci-fi epic Pacific Rim turns out to be a monster hit, the director might finally have the clout to make it happen.
Hellboy himself sure hopes so, and he told IGN that Del Toro "owes it to the world" to make his epic final chapter a reality:
"[Del Toro and I] both walked away from Hellboy 2 agreeing that there would never be another one," he says. "But, with the passage of time, it became clear to me that he really always designed it as a trilogy. [Guillermo] has a very well-articulated idea of what the resolve would look like and it's amazingly theatrical and is epic in scope and would make for amazing cinema, with or without the first two movies ... I said [to Guillermo], 'You owe it to the world to finish this trilogy. I've been giving him Jewish guilt."
For the record, Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army combined for a box-office haul of $260 million. Not bad numbers, sure, but del Toro has been adamant that part three would require a much bigger budget to pull off. Considering the franchise has never broken through to the mainstream, that's a gamble the studio isn't willing to make.
Source: Blastr Add a reply
| 11:00 AM, Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 - Posted by John Wilson
Long before director Zack Snyder began making "Man of Steel," he'd heard a little piece of comic-book trivia that stuck with him: Superman's red-and-yellow S-shield is the second-most-recognized symbol in the world, surpassed only by the Christian cross.
"Whether that's completely true or not, I don't know, but you want it to be true. You feel like it could be true," Snyder said. "And it's intimidating to say, ';We're going to take on the "S" and we're going to make it live again.'"
Reviving the world's first comic-book superhero on the big screen - he turns 75 this year - is no small task, despite the ubiquity of that logo. The trick, says the director, was to treat the character seriously - and to have a script penned by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, major forces behind the massively successful "Dark Knight" film trilogy. The pair aimed to modernize the Last Son of Krypton and recruited Snyder (whose previous films include comic adaptations "300" and "Watchmen") to direct the film, which flies into theaters June 14.
 "In the comic-book universe, you have all these sort of minor celebrities that have been put up as the end-all, be-all," Snyder said, including past films that have featured Green Lantern, Ghost Rider and the Punisher among others. "And then you have the fallen king who's sadly relegated to the shadows. It's cool to resurrect him and say, ';Understand that this is the granddaddy of all superheroes.'"
The Clark Kent portrayed by Henry Cavill in Snyder's film lives in today's world, not an idyllic, sepia-tinged past nor a gleaming, glossy future.
"It's the most realistic movie I've made," Snyder said. "There's no tongue in anyone's cheek. I'm not apologizing for Superman in any way. I'm saying, ';Superman is a thing that must be taken seriously and embraced and understood.'"
The filmmakers approached "Man of Steel" as though no other Superman film had been made, referring solely to the comics as source material, said producer Charles Roven.
"We had the canon that we needed to pay homage to," Roven said. "We need to make sure that Superman comes from Krypton. We weren't going to change that - those kinds of touchstones. But everything else between those touchstones was fair game."
After the bleak and gritty Dark Knight films and the slick glibness of Tony Stark and his ilk, the filmmakers believe the time is ripe for a hero as earnest and sincere as Superman, the eternal advocate of "truth, justice and the American way." But unlike previous iterations of the Big Blue Boy Scout, Cavill's Superman isn't always sure what that means.
"He's not super-perfect, and he might not always make the right decision, especially as he's growing up and trying to find himself," said producer (and Snyder's wife) Debbie Snyder. "I think he's struggling to find out what is the right thing to do."
"We tried not to make him so predictably morally black and white," Zack Snyder added. "We gave him some shades of gray. His inherent goodness is still there, and if you really think about it, you still want him to be right and to make the right choices and to do the right thing. I think that we all hope for that in ourselves, and I think that's what always has made him a very interesting character. He's a Christlike figure. There's no two ways about it."
By couching Superman's intrinsic goodness in the face of the human struggle in a realistic, sometimes harsh world, the filmmakers illuminated a message that's already omnipresent on T-shirts, jewelry, backpacks and kids' pajamas: The glyph that Superman wears on his chest doesn't stand for Superman as many people believe; the S-shield is actually the Kryptonian symbol for hope itself.
"It very much is a story of hope," said Cavill, the British actor who starred in "Immortals" and Showtime's "The Tudors." "Hope is strength and victory against adversity, or at least the hope of victory against adversity, and that is what Superman represents."
Source: LA Times Add a reply
| 8:00 AM, Monday, April 29th, 2013 - Posted by John Wilson
Walt Disney Pictures announced this morning that Marvel Studios' Iron Man 3 began its rollout in 42 international territories representing 79% of the international marketplace. The film has taken in an estimated $195.3 million, surpassing the $185.1 million international opening weekend take of Marvel's The Avengers. The film opens in the U.S. the evening of May 2nd.
While the third installment hasn't opened in Russia, China or Germany yet, here are some international highlights:
- Biggest opening weekend ever in Argentina, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.
- Biggest opening day ever in Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia.
- Biggest Marvel opening weekend in: Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Hungary, Romania, New Zealand, Argentina, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines and Malaysia.
- #1 film in every market and is the biggest opening weekend of all time in Asia Pacific and Latin America.
 Here is how the film is performing in the key territories:
UK $21.5M
Korea $19.2M
Australia $18.4M
Mexico $16.1M
France $14.7M
Brazil $12.3M
Italy $11.2M
Taiwan $8.4M
Philippines $7.4M
Japan $5.4M
India $5.2M
Spain $5.0M
Hong Kong $4.9M
Malaysia $4.6M
Indonesia $4.5M
Other $36.5M
Total $195.3M
Some additional details by key territory:
Australia - Biggest Disney and Marvel opening of all time.
Brazil - 2nd biggest opening weekend of all time.
Mexico - 3rd biggest opening weekend of all time.
France - 2nd biggest Marvel opening behind (Spider-Man 3).
Italy - Biggest April opening in industry history.
UK - 2nd biggest Marvel opening of all time behind The Avengers.
India - 2nd biggest all time opening, 44% above The Avengers.
Japan - 3rd biggest Marvel opening day.
Source: Superhero Hype Add a reply
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