Our weekly round up of all the latest stories from the world of screen superheroes, including The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: The Dark World, Ant-Man, Agent Carter, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Fantastic Four, Hulk, Kick-Ass 3, Spawn, Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, Arrow, Beware the Batman, Teen Titans Go!, Justice League: War and more...
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After Warner Bros. grabbed the headlines by announcing Ben Affleck as the next Dark Knight in Batman vs. Superman, Marvel Studios fired back this week with some casting news for its own 2015 sequel, The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Mere hours after a big "scoop" about Paul Bettany's JARVIS evolving into Ultron emerged online, Marvel debunked the speculation by announcing that James Spader (Stargate, Boston Legal) has signed on to portray the homicidal artificial intelligence in the Joss Whedon-directed sequel. Spader becomes the first new addition to join the cast of Age of Ultron, where he'll appear alongside Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (The Incredible Hulk), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) and Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), while Godzilla co-stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass 2) and Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene) are expected to become the latest members of Earth's Mightiest Heroes in the roles of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch...
...With so much to fit in The Avengers: Age of Ultron, is there a chance that Whedon could thin out the line-up by killing off an Avenger or two? Well, according to the director, it's certainly a possibility: ""I'm always joking about that. Um... maybe. But I’d have to have a really good reason, a really great sequence for [Marvel execs] to go, ‘We’ll cut off a potential franchise, that’s fine!’ They know as any good studio does, that without some stakes, some real danger, how involved can we get? We don’t just rule it out across the board, but neither is the mission statement ‘Who can we kill?’ We try to build the story organically and go, ‘How hard can we make it on these people?’ You go to the movies to see people you love suffer-that’s why you go to the movies..."
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...James Spader wasn't the only Marvel casting announcement this week, with Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, Silver Linings Playbook) finally confirmed by the studio as joining the line-up of Guardians of the Galaxy in the role of Rocket Raccoon. Meanwhile Chris Pratt (Star-Lord) and Vin Diesel (Groot) have both been talking about their respective roles, while Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has offered up a few more details on the cosmic superhero ensemble, dismissing any comparisons between Guardians and Star Wars, as well as promising a prominent role for Thanos: "We’re not making this to make Marvel’s Star Wars. We’re doing this to explore the other side of the existing Marvel Universe. The fact that Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is a human from our time, that he carries a personal cassette recorder with him, already it’s very different. It’s not a long, time ago in a galaxy far, far away, it’s now in a galaxy far, far away... We’ve already said that Thanos plays a part in it and is a character in it. That in and of itself should tell you it’s connected to the other worlds. Ronan The Accuser (Lee Pace) is very much the main bad guy. And Thanos is lurking above it all. You will learn more about Thanos in Guardians, for sure. Certainly you’ll get more than the one turn-around-and-smirk. You’ll get much more than that..."
...Next up for the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a return to Asgard for Alan Taylor's (Game of Thrones) Thor: The Dark World, and Marvel has released the first extended TV spot for the solo sequel this week, along with a pair of character posters featuring Chris Hemsworth's God of Thunder and Tom Hiddleston's God of Mischief. Thor: The Dark World opens in the UK on October 30th and in North America on November 8th, with a cast that also includes returning Thor stars Natalie Portman (Jane Foster), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Rene Russo (Frigga), Stellan Skarsgård (Erik Selvig), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Ray Stevenson, (Volstagg) Jaimie Alexander (Lady Sif), Tadanobu Asano (Hogun) and Kat Dennings (Darcy Lewis) alongside MCU newcomers Zachary Levi (Chuck) as Fandral, Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) as Malekith the Accursed, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) as Algrim the Strong / Kurse...
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...Looking ahead to Marvel's Phase Three and during a promotional interview with Collider for the U.S. release of The World's End, Edgar Wright has confirmed that he's gearing up to go into production on his long-awaited Ant-Man adaptation ahead of its release in November 2015: "I’m starting doing pre-production on Ant-Man in like October, and then shooting next year. And I’m basically like once this press tour is done, I’ve got to take a month off. I never took a holiday after Scott Pilgrim, so I’ve now gone two films in a row without actually a proper vacation. So in October, I’m going to start a script which has existed in some form since 2007, so it’s great to kind of come back into something, which is in good shape, so that’s exciting..."
...In a couple of other MCU-related bits and pieces, be sure to check out a Joss Whedon-centric TV spot for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., along with a featurette for Agent Carter which includes interviews with Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter) and director Louis D'Esposito as well as footage from the upcoming Marvel One-Shot, which will be included as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray release of Iron Man 3...
...Moving on to Fox's Marvel properties now and despite the fact that Bryan Singer plans to bring virtually every character from the X-Men universe together for next year's X-Men: Days of Future Past, one familiar face who'll be absent is that of Stan Lee, with the Marvel legend revealing at Fan Expo Canada that he'd chosen to attend last weekend's Toronto convention rather than travelling to Montreal to shoot his traditional cameo appearance, as well as explaining his absence in The Wolverine by stating that the Australia shoot was "too far for him to swim". Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman's latest outing as Logan has pushed its global box-office take beyond the $350 million mark, with the James Mangold-directed solo sequel looking to edge past the $353.6 million haul of X-Men: First Class this coming week...
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...Earlier this month it was suggested that Miles Teller (21 & Over) had emerged as front-runner for the role of Mister Fantastic in director Josh Trank's reboot of The Fantastic Four, but The Spectacular Now star has played down the reports during an interview with MTV, although he admitted he would be open to the idea of portraying Marvel's stretchy super-genius Reed Richards should the opportunity present itself: "Dude, I don't know. I have no idea. I think at some point you just have to play a superhero. That's the world we're living in right now. I mean, they're getting snatched up left and right. I would love to be in Fantastic Four. That would be something I would be very proud to be a part of and happy to do. As far as this whole rumor thing, I don't know. I'm at an age right now where you can start a superhero because I can play him for the next ten years..."
...Chances are that the majority of people who've seen Ang Lee's Hulk were left feeling pretty disappointed by the Green Goliath's first big screen outing, but that's not the case for leading man Eric Bana, who has told The Huffington Post he's proud of his work in the 2003 Universal Pictures release: "I'm proud of what it tried to do. I apologize to all those people who were so angry about it...I'm fascinated by the people who hated that movie and feel compelled to watch it again, which always blows my mind. But, yeah, it is what it is and I certainly don't regret doing it... I think I'm so lucky [a sequel] didn't happen....One of the things I was most fearful of at the time is it being a huge success... I would have had a completely different career, right? It would have bene less eclectic. And make no mistake, if I had done three Hulks, it would have wiped out -- and it always takes a long time to do those movies -- so it would take six of my movies off the table..."
![Kick-Ass 3]( "Kick-Ass 3")
...Universal hasn't had the best of luck with its latest superhero effort Kick-Ass 2, with the sequel to Matthew Vaughn's 2010 cult hit pulling in just $40.6 million at the box office to date; however, with a budget of just $28 million that's enough to push the film into the black, and comic book co-creator Mark Millar has urged the studio to push ahead with the final chapter of the trilogy before stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass) and Chloe Grace Moretz (Hit-Girl) become too old for their roles: "I don't think we can wait that long because the youth of the characters is really important. Hit-Girl's going to be a mum in the next one if we don't hurry up. I reckon if we do [Kick-Ass 3], we should try and do it in the next couple of years – it depends on schedules though because these guys are all really busy. But we need to move fast with it..."
...During Fan Expo Canada, comic book creator Todd McFarlane offered another update on his long-in-development Spawn reboot, this time stating that he hopes to complete the screenplay by the end of the year in order to shoot in 2014: "The reality is I’ve got a lot of pressure. They want me to deliver the script by the end of the year, which would basically mean we’d be shooting next year. So that’s the goal right now. The thing that keeps slowing it down is that the negotiation I’ve done is I write, produce, direct, but I’ve got to push a lot of my other endeavors off to the side so I can just get tunnel vision on it. Everybody at my company is now going, ‘We’ve got to find Todd the time to finish all this. I think it’s a quick shoot. It’s not going to be a giant budget with a lot of special effects, it’s going to be more of a horror movie and a thriller movie, not a superhero one. I’ve got so many people phoning now that I’ve got to get it done. I’ve made some promises to people this year.” McFarlane then went on to respond to a question about potential casting, with Jamie Foxx (Ray, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) having previously expressed his interest in taking on the lead role: "We’ve had some big names, like who you’re mentioning, come to the office and go we want to be in it. Sometimes they give me their pitch, and I give them my pitch, and I go we can get in it, here’s how it goes. And so those types of actors, Academy Award guys, they’re going, ‘As soon as that script’s done, we’re going.’ So once we get this thing done, we’ll get it off the ground with some big names..."
![Man of Steel]( "Man of Steel")
...As he gears up to bring DC's two biggest characters together on screen, director Zack Snyder has taken a moment to look back at Man of Steel and offer an explanation for the enormous level of death and destruction seen in the climactic final battle of this year's Superman reboot: "I wanted the movie to have a mythological feeling. In ancient mythology, mass deaths are used to symbolize disasters. In other countries like Greece and Japan, myths were recounted through the generations, partly to answer unanswerable questions about death and violence. In America, we don’t have that legacy of ancient mythology. Superman (who first appeared in Action Comics in 1938) is probably the closest we get. It’s a way of recounting the myth..."
...Of course attention has now turned towards the Man of Steel sequel Batman vs. Superman, and this week brought confirmation that Snyder and stars Henry Cavill (Superman) and Ben Affleck (Batman) will be heading to Detroit, Michigan to shoot the next stage of Warner Bros.' DC Cinematic Universe, while it's been rumoured that Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas (who were both originally announced as executive producers) have left the project, stemming from the fact that their names have been absent from the last couple of official press releases from the studio. Meanwhile Matt Damon has spoken out to defend the casting of his pal as Batman: "I know there are a lot of people grousing on the internet. I just think it's kind of funny. You know, he's not playing King Lear. It's Batman! Certainly within his skill set. If anybody saw Argo or The Town, and all the work he's been doing lately, it's way more nuanced and interesting and way more difficult than Batman! Batman just sits there with his cowl over his head and whispers in a kinda gruff voice at people. Bruce Wayne is the more challenging part of the role, and Ben will be great at that." And just for good measure, Damon also shot down any (frankly ridiculous) speculation about him joining the cast as the Boy Wonder: "It's safe to say I won't be Robin..."
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...It's not just Matt Damon distancing himself from the role of Batfleck's sidekick, with Justin Timberlake also denying that he has any interest in portraying Robin, although he does admit that he's keen on a specific villain from The Dark Knight's Rogues Gallery: "Not a chance in hell. I ain’t playin’ Robin. I have no aspiration to ever be a superhero in a movie. I just don’t. Now VILLAIN! I’ll tell you the villain I want to play more than anything because I grew up loving Batman, funny enough, is the Riddler. The Riddler is my favorite villain. The Riddler was like a sociopath. He was proper crazy. So if I’m gonna play crazy, I’m wanna play like proper crazy. I’m ready. The Riddler. Gimme a call..."
...Snyder's Batman vs. Superman isn't the first time that Warner Bros. has tried to get a World's Finest movie off the ground, with Wolfgang Petersen (Troy) set to direct a Batman vs. Superman movie back in 2002 (the project ultimately fell apart when Christopher Nolan signed on to reboot The Dark Knight with Batman Begins) and the screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) and revised by Akiva Goldsman (Batman Forever, Batman & Robin) has arrived online this week - be sure to check it out here. Meanwhile, on the subject of failed DC movies, the first trailer has also landed for the Kickstarter-funded documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, which explores the aborted Tim Burton / Nicolas Cage 90s reboot Superman Lives...
...Shifting to DC's "Television Universe" and it seems that Amanda Waller could be set to become the latest DC character to join the roster of The CW's Arrow, with SpoilerTV claiming that the show will introduce Waller as the head of A.R.G.U.S. in the sixth episode of the upcoming second season. Meanwhile a new season two poster and banner have been released which see Stephen Amell's Oliver Queen joined by series regulars Katie Cassidy (Laurel Lance), Manu Bennett (Slade Wilson), Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity Smoak), David Ramsey (John Diggle), Willa Holland (Thea Queen) and Colton Haynes (Roy Harper)...
...And finally, on the DC animation front The World's Finest has details of the Beware the Batman episodes set to air on Cartoon Network during September, while you can head on over to ComicBookMovie for stills and images from the next episode of Teen Titans Go!, along with the latest DC Nation short Metal Men #2.Meanwhile, a new still has arrived online from next year's DC Universe Original Animated Movie Justice League: War, which offers up a new-look Wonder Woman, who appears to have added an ice cream cone to her arsenal.
Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen - Available now via Amazon.co.uk![]()
and Amazon.com![]()
.
Gary Collinson
Watch a selection of superhero clips, trailers, interviews, featurettes and more in our video player...
After Warner Bros. grabbed the headlines by announcing Ben Affleck as the next Dark Knight in Batman vs. Superman, Marvel Studios fired back this week with some casting news for its own 2015 sequel, The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Mere hours after a big "scoop" about Paul Bettany's JARVIS evolving into Ultron emerged online, Marvel debunked the speculation by announcing that James Spader (Stargate, Boston Legal) has signed on to portray the homicidal artificial intelligence in the Joss Whedon-directed sequel. Spader becomes the first new addition to join the cast of Age of Ultron, where he'll appear alongside Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (The Incredible Hulk), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) and Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), while Godzilla co-stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass 2) and Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene) are expected to become the latest members of Earth's Mightiest Heroes in the roles of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch......With so much to fit in The Avengers: Age of Ultron, is there a chance that Whedon could thin out the line-up by killing off an Avenger or two? Well, according to the director, it's certainly a possibility: ""I'm always joking about that. Um... maybe. But I’d have to have a really good reason, a really great sequence for [Marvel execs] to go, ‘We’ll cut off a potential franchise, that’s fine!’ They know as any good studio does, that without some stakes, some real danger, how involved can we get? We don’t just rule it out across the board, but neither is the mission statement ‘Who can we kill?’ We try to build the story organically and go, ‘How hard can we make it on these people?’ You go to the movies to see people you love suffer-that’s why you go to the movies..."
...Next up for the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a return to Asgard for Alan Taylor's (Game of Thrones) Thor: The Dark World, and Marvel has released the first extended TV spot for the solo sequel this week, along with a pair of character posters featuring Chris Hemsworth's God of Thunder and Tom Hiddleston's God of Mischief. Thor: The Dark World opens in the UK on October 30th and in North America on November 8th, with a cast that also includes returning Thor stars Natalie Portman (Jane Foster), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Rene Russo (Frigga), Stellan Skarsgård (Erik Selvig), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Ray Stevenson, (Volstagg) Jaimie Alexander (Lady Sif), Tadanobu Asano (Hogun) and Kat Dennings (Darcy Lewis) alongside MCU newcomers Zachary Levi (Chuck) as Fandral, Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) as Malekith the Accursed, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) as Algrim the Strong / Kurse...
...In a couple of other MCU-related bits and pieces, be sure to check out a Joss Whedon-centric TV spot for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., along with a featurette for Agent Carter which includes interviews with Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter) and director Louis D'Esposito as well as footage from the upcoming Marvel One-Shot, which will be included as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray release of Iron Man 3...
...Moving on to Fox's Marvel properties now and despite the fact that Bryan Singer plans to bring virtually every character from the X-Men universe together for next year's X-Men: Days of Future Past, one familiar face who'll be absent is that of Stan Lee, with the Marvel legend revealing at Fan Expo Canada that he'd chosen to attend last weekend's Toronto convention rather than travelling to Montreal to shoot his traditional cameo appearance, as well as explaining his absence in The Wolverine by stating that the Australia shoot was "too far for him to swim". Meanwhile, Hugh Jackman's latest outing as Logan has pushed its global box-office take beyond the $350 million mark, with the James Mangold-directed solo sequel looking to edge past the $353.6 million haul of X-Men: First Class this coming week...
...Chances are that the majority of people who've seen Ang Lee's Hulk were left feeling pretty disappointed by the Green Goliath's first big screen outing, but that's not the case for leading man Eric Bana, who has told The Huffington Post he's proud of his work in the 2003 Universal Pictures release: "I'm proud of what it tried to do. I apologize to all those people who were so angry about it...I'm fascinated by the people who hated that movie and feel compelled to watch it again, which always blows my mind. But, yeah, it is what it is and I certainly don't regret doing it... I think I'm so lucky [a sequel] didn't happen....One of the things I was most fearful of at the time is it being a huge success... I would have had a completely different career, right? It would have bene less eclectic. And make no mistake, if I had done three Hulks, it would have wiped out -- and it always takes a long time to do those movies -- so it would take six of my movies off the table..."
...Universal hasn't had the best of luck with its latest superhero effort Kick-Ass 2, with the sequel to Matthew Vaughn's 2010 cult hit pulling in just $40.6 million at the box office to date; however, with a budget of just $28 million that's enough to push the film into the black, and comic book co-creator Mark Millar has urged the studio to push ahead with the final chapter of the trilogy before stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass) and Chloe Grace Moretz (Hit-Girl) become too old for their roles: "I don't think we can wait that long because the youth of the characters is really important. Hit-Girl's going to be a mum in the next one if we don't hurry up. I reckon if we do [Kick-Ass 3], we should try and do it in the next couple of years – it depends on schedules though because these guys are all really busy. But we need to move fast with it..." ...During Fan Expo Canada, comic book creator Todd McFarlane offered another update on his long-in-development Spawn reboot, this time stating that he hopes to complete the screenplay by the end of the year in order to shoot in 2014: "The reality is I’ve got a lot of pressure. They want me to deliver the script by the end of the year, which would basically mean we’d be shooting next year. So that’s the goal right now. The thing that keeps slowing it down is that the negotiation I’ve done is I write, produce, direct, but I’ve got to push a lot of my other endeavors off to the side so I can just get tunnel vision on it. Everybody at my company is now going, ‘We’ve got to find Todd the time to finish all this. I think it’s a quick shoot. It’s not going to be a giant budget with a lot of special effects, it’s going to be more of a horror movie and a thriller movie, not a superhero one. I’ve got so many people phoning now that I’ve got to get it done. I’ve made some promises to people this year.” McFarlane then went on to respond to a question about potential casting, with Jamie Foxx (Ray, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) having previously expressed his interest in taking on the lead role: "We’ve had some big names, like who you’re mentioning, come to the office and go we want to be in it. Sometimes they give me their pitch, and I give them my pitch, and I go we can get in it, here’s how it goes. And so those types of actors, Academy Award guys, they’re going, ‘As soon as that script’s done, we’re going.’ So once we get this thing done, we’ll get it off the ground with some big names..."
...Of course attention has now turned towards the Man of Steel sequel Batman vs. Superman, and this week brought confirmation that Snyder and stars Henry Cavill (Superman) and Ben Affleck (Batman) will be heading to Detroit, Michigan to shoot the next stage of Warner Bros.' DC Cinematic Universe, while it's been rumoured that Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas (who were both originally announced as executive producers) have left the project, stemming from the fact that their names have been absent from the last couple of official press releases from the studio. Meanwhile Matt Damon has spoken out to defend the casting of his pal as Batman: "I know there are a lot of people grousing on the internet. I just think it's kind of funny. You know, he's not playing King Lear. It's Batman! Certainly within his skill set. If anybody saw Argo or The Town, and all the work he's been doing lately, it's way more nuanced and interesting and way more difficult than Batman! Batman just sits there with his cowl over his head and whispers in a kinda gruff voice at people. Bruce Wayne is the more challenging part of the role, and Ben will be great at that." And just for good measure, Damon also shot down any (frankly ridiculous) speculation about him joining the cast as the Boy Wonder: "It's safe to say I won't be Robin..."
...Snyder's Batman vs. Superman isn't the first time that Warner Bros. has tried to get a World's Finest movie off the ground, with Wolfgang Petersen (Troy) set to direct a Batman vs. Superman movie back in 2002 (the project ultimately fell apart when Christopher Nolan signed on to reboot The Dark Knight with Batman Begins) and the screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) and revised by Akiva Goldsman (Batman Forever, Batman & Robin) has arrived online this week - be sure to check it out here. Meanwhile, on the subject of failed DC movies, the first trailer has also landed for the Kickstarter-funded documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, which explores the aborted Tim Burton / Nicolas Cage 90s reboot Superman Lives...
...Shifting to DC's "Television Universe" and it seems that Amanda Waller could be set to become the latest DC character to join the roster of The CW's Arrow, with SpoilerTV claiming that the show will introduce Waller as the head of A.R.G.U.S. in the sixth episode of the upcoming second season. Meanwhile a new season two poster and banner have been released which see Stephen Amell's Oliver Queen joined by series regulars Katie Cassidy (Laurel Lance), Manu Bennett (Slade Wilson), Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity Smoak), David Ramsey (John Diggle), Willa Holland (Thea Queen) and Colton Haynes (Roy Harper)...
...And finally, on the DC animation front The World's Finest has details of the Beware the Batman episodes set to air on Cartoon Network during September, while you can head on over to ComicBookMovie for stills and images from the next episode of Teen Titans Go!, along with the latest DC Nation short Metal Men #2.Meanwhile, a new still has arrived online from next year's DC Universe Original Animated Movie Justice League: War, which offers up a new-look Wonder Woman, who appears to have added an ice cream cone to her arsenal.
Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen - Available now via Amazon.co.uk
and Amazon.com
.Gary Collinson
Watch a selection of superhero clips, trailers, interviews, featurettes and more in our video player...