Marvel May Set Its Cosmic Sights On PLANET HULK!

Kevin Feige and the team at Marvel are getting AMBITIOUS.

They smartly started their cinematic universe by keeping their characters fairly grounded and practical, so that by the time an invading alien army showed up in The Avengers, it seemed refreshingly large scale and sort of novel.  But if El Mayimbe at Latino Review is right (and he usually is) then we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Despite his shaky, Edward Norton-fueled beginnings, The Hulk emerged as the breakout star of The Avengers.  People loved Mark Ruffalo's take on the character and the fact that Marvel had no plans to further develop the character suddenly seemed shortsighted, but now it sounds as if "The Other Guy" will play a pivotal role in Marvel's Phase Three plans.

El Mayimbe's reporting that somewhere near the end of the next Avengers movie, Hulk will be deemed too dangerous to remain on our planet, and so Earth's Mightiest Heroes will send Bruce Banner hurtling out into space, thus setting up his next stand alone movie.  The plan is to follow the Planet Hulk storyline, in which Hulk crashes on an alien world where he becomes a gladiator who rises through the ranks, Spartacus-style, and eventually becomes king.  But lest you think they plan on stranding the big green guy across the galaxy, the plan is for him to return home in Avengers 3 in order to wreak havoc on those who banished him in the first place, i.e. the World War Hulk story.

Like I said, AMBITIOUS.

Comic book movies to date (the successful ones anyway) have always stayed frustratingly small, with no more than a single city under serious threat.  Kudos to Marvel for not shying away from their big, batshit cosmic source material.  I'm certainly excited to see Marvel go balls to the wall with some of these stories, but I can't help but wonder if audiences will really get on board with some of Marvel's more crazy and/or silly characters and plots.  Next year's Guardians Of The Galaxy will be a good litmus test, as it features a walking tree and a blaster-wielding raccoon.

This story has been floating around for a few days now and I've yet to see any kind of response from Marvel, denial or otherwise.  My guess is that their Phase Three plans are not exactly set in stone yet and even if this is currently the plan for Hulk, everything could still change by the time the Avengers return to theaters in 2015.

I certainly hope not though.  Go for it, Marvel.

P.S. Does Planet Hulk sound totally awesome to you?  Good news!  You can watch Marvel's animated take on the story streaming on Netflix Instant right now.  It's pretty fun.

The Kick Ass Trailer Parade Crescendos With PACIFIC RIM!

Last night I was sitting in the theater waiting to see Warm Bodies (review forthcoming) when my Twitter feed lit up with news of the first trailer for Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro's epic battle royale where giant robots (Jaegers) defend the Earth against giant monsters (Kaiju).  Normally for a movie like that I would wait till I get home so I can watch it on a proper screen, but my excitement got the better of me and I just couldn't delay.  Even on my 3.5 inch iPhone display, the trailer looked incredible.

When I got home and watched it in full HD on my television...holy balls.

GdT is a master storyteller whose creature work is unparalleled, so I've been pretty much sold on this project from the word go.  But what we're seeing here...this is mind-blowing stuff.  For everyone disappointed by Michael Bay's Transformers, this is the movie for you.  Gone is the confusing mess of exposed gears and cables in favor of clean, elegant robot designs that are instantly iconic. We're only getting a glimpse of the creatures here, but the same aesthetic principal seems to apply: simple, memorable monsters whose profiles eschew the lackluster bio-realism of the Cloverfield or Super 8 monsters.  And while I'm certainly not a gamer, I appreciate small touches like using the voice of GLaDOS from Portal as the voice of the Jaeger computer.

Plus it's always nice to see Idris Elba get to use his native British accent.

After we saw The Avengers, my wife commented how happy she was that someone had finally given Joss Whedon a giant pile of money and the freedom to really just go NUTS on film.  It looks like Legendary Pictures has done the same for del Toro here and I really couldn't be happier.

Joss Whedon Returns For Avengers 2 And More!

HUZZAH!

At this point I think it's safe to say that Avengers is the biggest (and possibly most fun) movie of the year.  You can thank writer/director Joss Whedon for that.  While we all hoped and prayed that he'd be back again for the sequel sometime in 2015, Disney announced on an investor conference call that it's now officially a done deal.  Not only that, but Whedon will also be shepherding the still-in-development live action TV show that will be somehow set in the Marvel-verse.  That project is still in the extremely early stages - Marvel hasn't even really announced a general pitch, although rumors point towards some kind of police procedural.  While none of the established Marvel heroes would be regular cast members, I certainly wouldn't rule out the occasional cameo.

While we can hope that Whedon will stay heavily involved in the proposed hour-long (the man is responsible for some of the greatest TV in the past 20 years after all), what looks even more likely is that he'll have a strong hand in the remainder of the in-development movies that make up Marvel's Phase Two.  Whedon did some fiarly extensive re-writes on Captain America, something that was very evident in the finished product, (Tommy Lee Jones' Colonel Phillips feels like a wholesale Whedon creation.) so it makes sense that he'd want to shape the rest of Marvel's upcoming slate to properly set the stage for the next Avengers adventure.  Iron Man 3 is already heading into post-production and the most input he can probably have on Thor: The Dark World at this point is some quick dialogue punch-up, but I expect Whedon will be heavily involved in shaping the stories for Captain America: The Winter Soldier as well as the way-out-there Guardians Of The Galaxy.

A gun-toting raccoon spouting witty Whedon-banter?  Yes please.

COMIC CON: Get Ready For Marvel's PHASE TWO!

While I already covered some of the early highlights from this year's Comic Con, there's still plenty to talk about.  Let's kick things off with all things Marvel...

Obviously the folks at Marvel are in high spirits in light of the overwhelming success of The Avengers, but they're far from resting on their laurels.  As "Phase One" will hit DVD and Blu-Ray this September in the form of a giant boxed set (complete with glowing Tesseract!) Kevin Feige and friends laid out their blueprint for "Phase Two" on Saturday in Hall H.  Here's what it looks like, including logo branding and new titles!

First up, we've got the Shane Black directed Iron Man 3, hitting theaters May 3, 2013.

Marvel put on a helluva show with this one, including an exclusive footage presentation that more than impressed the audience.  Highlights included shots of Don Cheadle's Rhodey in his new red white & blue War Machine armor and the first glimpse of Ben Kingsley as the now-confirmed Mandarin.  (He does not appear to be playing the role as Asian.)  For a more detailed take on the footage, check out Drew McWeeny's excellent description over at HitFix.  They also had all seven previous versions of Iron Man's armor on display, as well as the newest model we'll see next spring:

Thor: The Dark World opens November 8, 2013.  

That subtitle doesn't give too many clues as to where the story is headed, but we might get a better clue as they finish up casting.  They've already had to replace Josh Dallas with Zachary Levi as Fandral (which is ironic as Levi was originally set to play the role in the first film, but was later replaced by Dallas, both times due to unexpected TV renewals.)  They've also lost their villain in the form of Mads Mikkelsen, whose commitments to the upcoming Bryan Fuller-helmed Hannibal Lecter television series forced him off the Marvel project.  We'll see who emerges to torture the thunder god in his next go-round.


Arriving on April 4, 2014 is Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

As opposed to the Thor sequel, this title speaks volumes.  It's clear the Russo brothers (!) will be drawing heavily from Ed Brubaker's infamous run on the comics in which Cap's sidekick Bucky is revealed to be very much alive, now a deadly Russian assassin with a mechanical arm who's spent the decades since WWII in and out of cryo-stasis. (I almost put a spoiler warning there, but ultimately decided the title indicates that Bucky's presence in the movie will probably be well advertised beforehand.)  We've also learned that Cap's 70's-era partner The Falcon will appear and that Marvel is in negotiations with Anthony Mackie.  The Falcon is one of Marvel's early black superheroes, a Harlem native who can fly with the help of a special suit.  He also has a psychic link with his pet Falcon and can generally see through the eyes of birds.  Mackie is a fantastic actor who should be far more successful than he is, so here's hoping he'll get a bit of the Marvel bump.  I wouldn't be surprised to see him appear in the next Avengers flick either.


Marvel's also opening up a new franchise, Guardians Of The Galaxy, on August 1, 2014.

This one is WAY out there compared to the Marvel movies we've seen so far.  This is a huge outer space epic, with a team of heroes named Star Lord, Groot, Frax, Gamorra and Rocket Racoon.  Yes, that last one is an actual racoon.  With automatic weapons.  Oh, and Groot is a walking tree.  Here's some concept art, to give you a sense of the characters.  

The Guardians will be teaming up to fight Thanos, who was briefly glimpsed during the credits of Avengers and will definitely be the villain the next time Earth's mightiest heroes assemble.  I actually love the idea of using this new franchise to flesh out the Avengers' newest foe, as we'll have essentially had three (or in Tony Stark's case four) movies with each of our heroes by the time we get to the next Avengers movie.  Since most folks aren't terribly familiar with Thanos, it'll be nice to have the team fighting an enemy with some serious backstory that the audience might even be more aware of than some of the characters. 

And finally, the much anticipated Ant-Man from Edgar Wright.

Wright recently shot some test footage to see how Ant-Man's growing and shrinking abilities could be utilized on-screen, but this project is still quite a ways off.  While Marvel formally announced the project with Wright attached (and showed the footage, which sounded beyond cool, even sans-ants) there is still no official release or production start date.  Wright is about to start shooting The World's End, the final entry in his infamous "Blood & Ice Cream" trilogy with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

All told, an ambitious and (hopefully) impressive slate for the next two years.  Color me stoked.

Fox Takes A Director, Leaves A Director: Fantastic Four and Daredevil News

In light of the phenomenal success of The Avengers, it's hardly a surprise that studios like Fox and Sony are hard at work to get their various Marvel properties up to snuff.  For those who are unaware, Marvel licensed out a handful of characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men to other studios years ago, before they gathered the capital to start their own independent production house.  The catch is that these studios must continue to develop their franchises or else the rights revert back to Marvel.  (That's primarily why we just got a reboot of Spider-Man that was half-cooked at best.)

Thusly, the floors of Comic Con will surely be abuzz today with the news that Fox has officially hired Chronicle director Josh Trank to take the reins on their Fantastic Four reboot.  Trank's name was bandied about almost immediately after his first feature turned out to be a surprise box office hit and I think he's actually a great choice.  Trank not only has a smart visual style, but he has a great understanding of how to build a film around strong characters, not just flashy effects and big set pieces.  Fantastic Four is considered by most to be comic book royalty and neither of the previous films ever really did the characters justice.  Most attribute that to serious missteps in casting, (other than Chris Evans, who has moved on to greater success as Captain America) so I'll be very curious to see who Trank can lure to the table this time around.

Meanwhile, Fox has lost a director for their Daredevil reboot in the form of Twilgiht: Eclipse helmer David Slade.  I wouldn't go so far as to say Daredevil fans have dodged a bullet, but I'm sure nobody is all that broken up about Slade's departure.  He's a perfectly adequate director, but he's not exactly a name that generates a whole lot of excitement.  No word yet on who might replace Slade, but I expect Fox to name a successor fairly soon.  They've got a script in place based on Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Born Again run (which means we'll be seeing the Kingpin once again) and a fall start date that's looming ever closer.  The interesting element is that they're actually running up against the aforementioned rights deadline with Marvel, so Fox literally can't afford to delay production any further.

While studios are obviously intent on maintaining control of their various Marvel properties, they also have to be looking at The Avengers $1.5 billion worldwide haul and trying to figure out a way to get a piece of that action without giving up sovereignty over their franchises.  At some point soon, I think we're going to see either Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man or perhaps Hugh Jackman's Wolverine make an Avengers cameo.  Otherwise they're basically leaving money on the table.

EDIT: That Deadline article also mentions that Attack The Block director Joe Cornish is attached to direct Rust as his next project.  It's based on a graphic novel about a farm boy who stumbles upon a kid with a jetpack fighting a giant robot in his fields.  If that doesn't sound AMAZING to you, go put Attack The Block at your Netflix queue IMMEDIATELY and then talk to me...

TRAILER OF THE DAY! Avengers Assembled In HD Glory!

Head over to Apple to check out the newly released Avengers trailer, which I have sadly not been able to figure out how to embed here.  (I'm a content guy, not a programmer, so my skills are somewhat limited.)

Go ahead.  I'll wait right here...
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Welcome back.

While the song choice leaves a lot to be desired (apparently the Avengers have traveled back in time to 1998!) and there's still no sign of Loki's evil cohorts, this is still a pretty great set up to what is easily THE event movie of next summer.

There's plenty of destruction on display, giving me hope that we'll finally be seeing superheroes engaged in a seriously large scale adventure against a truly global menace.  And I hope you like your heroes of the wise-crackin' persuasion, because there's plenty of Whedon-style verbal sparring amongst Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

I like the dynamic they seem to be setting up between Steve Rodgers and Tony Stark, and while I understand the inclination to lean on Downey Jr. in the promos, I just hope this doesn't turn into Iron Man & Friends.


That being said, the last bit with Stark and Banner kills me.

AVERT YOUR EYES: Photoshop Hates The Avengers

Or, more accurately, Entertainment Weekly's hack cover designers hate The Avengers:

GAAAAAAAHHHH!

Seriously, what's the over/under for how long this cover took to assemble?  25 minutes?

Never before has it been so clear that all of these heroes...are standing in different rooms!  Can someone explain to me how Scarlett Johansson ended up front and center?  Downey Jr. looks like he might fall out of the frame at any moment...AND WHAT THE HELL IS RUFFALO DOING WITH HIS FACE?  He looks like your creepy uncle who hangs around the local college bar trying to pick up girls half his age.

I will never understand Entertainment Weekly for as long as I live.  Only they can dedicate their cover to what is easily the biggest superhero movie of all time and make it look this boring.

D23 Updates: Pixar's Newest, Avengers and John Carter!

Disney is not screwing around.

This year's Comic Con featured the noticeable absence of both Marvel and their corporate sponsors from the Magic Kingdom.  The assumption at the time proved to be correct: Disney was saving the good stuff for D23, the three year old media event hosted in Anaheim featuring presentations on all the most exciting projects on Mickey's horizon.  The event has grown in leaps and bounds since 2009, and by essentially sitting out Comic Con, Disney was able to push the event's relevancy quotient up to 11.

This year saw presentations on a number of high profile projects, with most of the focus falling on Pixar and Marvel.  There were hopes that Marvel honcho Kevin Feige would announce some more titles from their post-Avengers slate, especially since they just staked a claim to release dates in May and July of 2014.  Despite speculation that one of those dates was intended for the Feige-favorite character of Dr. Strange, no such announcement came.  Instead the crowd was treated to a new Avengers reel.  According to eyewitness accounts, (sadly I couldn't make it to Anaheim) the footage featured a whole lot of Loki as the big bad, plenty of action, and the first look at Mark Ruffalo as both Bruce Banner and the Hulk.  Sadly the video is unlikely to make its way online, but you can read the play by play right here.  And if you're really in need of an Avengers fix, check out the below footage of some battle scenes currently filming in Cleveland.

Pixar was the other big voice at D23 and fortunately they were a little more forthcoming with details for their future awesomeness.  They showed off the first four minutes of the upcoming Wreck-It Ralph, which has John C. Reilly voicing the destructive villain of an old school stand-up arcade game trying to prove he's not such a bad guy after all.  The action takes place in the arcade, with game characters crossing over and interacting with each other after closing.  Jack McBrayer (30 Rock) plays his good guy nemesis Fix-It Felix, with Jane Lynch and Sarah Silverman playing characters from other fictional games.  Sounds like Toy Story with video game characters, but centered around a more existential, nature-of-good-and-evil conflict.

Andrew Stanton showed off some more footage from John Carter, Pixar's first attempt at live-action.  It sounds like they've got a real uphill battle with that one, both in selling audiences on an admittedly strange and pulpy sci-fi world and in convincing them that Taylor Kitsch is a movie star.  The initial trailer (seen here) was...alright.  Don't get me wrong, there's tremendous potential here; it could be a real prestige property if handled correctly, but it's going to look downright silly if it's not.  Stanton and Pixar have built up more than enough goodwill over the years that I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and I'd love to see the artists at Pixar start to bring their tremendous sense of vision to more live-action work.  Some have called the creature design "cartoony," which feels like the wrong direction to me, but I'll reserve judgement until I really get to see a Thark in action for myself.

Finally, we got info on two Pixar flicks that are still a few years out and they both sound phenomenal.  One is set in a world in which the dinosaurs were never killed off by a meteor strike, and instead now cohabit the planet with mankind.  The story is said to focus on a boy and his pet brachiosaurus.  Dinosaurs seems like such a natural fit for Pixar that I almost can't believe we haven't seen it yet, (you can probably blame Ice Age for that) and I expect Disney to make a killing on both the box office and the merchandising.  The second release is a little more sparse on details but is (literally) mind-blowingly exciting.  Directed by Pete Doctor (Up, Monsters Inc.) this movie will take us to "the world inside the human mind."  I don't even know what that means, but I'm already stoked beyond belief.

So lots of reasons to be excited for the future in the house that Walt built.  If they keep the current gameplan, I wouldn't be surprised to see D23 become even more of a powerhouse event in the next year or two.

Avengers Assembled In Watercolor

Now this is more like it.

Here we have our first look at the fully assembled Avengers, albeit in painted form.  Marvel actually released these images piecemeal over the course of Comic-Con weekend, naturally saving Hulk for last.  Aside from featuring Cobie Smulders from prominently than I would have expected (which is to say, she's present at all) I curious about the supporting characters featured in the backgrounds, characters like Odin and Pepper Potts.  I wonder if they'll factor into the story at all.  (Seeing as Loki is one of the main villains, I wouldn't be surprised if Odin made a one-eyed appearance as well.)

Not only is this our first glimpse of this iteration of the Hulk, but it's also our first preview at Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye as well as Captain America's new modern-day suit.  Hawkeye looks pretty spiffy, very simple and grounded to be sure.  (As opposed to this other costume, which I really can't believe would've translated well into reality.)  As far as Cap's suit...I'm reserving judgement until I can actually see it on a human and in motion.  While it certainly seems to be in line with the modern interpretations of suited heroes like Spiderman and Batman, there's something about that sort of rubs me the wrong way.  It almost feels too sleek and streamlined, certainly compared to his WWII suit with all it's extra straps and separate pads and pieces.  That said, while I love that uniform, it probably would look out of place in a modern context, i.e. when standing next to Iron Man.

Click the image above to to make it all big a pretty.  Now, when are we gonna get that Avengers teaser trailer online in HD?

Avengers (Don't Actually) Assemble Via Poster

It's possible that Marvel has some kind of important movie hitting theaters tonight at midnight or something, I'm not really sure.  Anyway, here's your teaser poster for The Avengers, hitting theaters May 4, 2012.

In all seriousness, while the above poster doesn't quite set the torch of creativity ablaze, I'm pretty stoked to see what Whedon pulls off.  He's got an amazing cast and I have to believe that Marvel will pretty much let him go for broke, as they've essentially been building up to this movie for going on half a decade now.  My screening of Captain America tonight better have the Avengers trailer, especially after I got boned out of the Dark Knight Rises trailer at Harry Potter last week.

Hit up Marvel to download the hi-res version.