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Movie Round Up – December 28th to January 1st

By | January 2nd, 2010
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Happy New Year! It’s a slow news week due to that, but we’ve still got a good amount of things for you to be interested in. I’ve gone through the darkest hole in the internet, and I’ve gotten the cream of the crop to share with you this week!

Click through the cut to see what we’ve got this wonderful week.

So I bet you thought that we wouldn’t have new Green Lantern news for you, didn’t you? Yeah, you thought wrong! It seems like every week we get something even more exciting about the upcoming movie. I guess the people behind the film realize Green Lantern’s intense comic following and have decided that the movie needs to be done really well. So what is happening with the film? Check this out:

The first movie to be made under Warner Bros.’ new DC Entertainment umbrella will be shot by cinematographer Dion Beebe, who won an Oscar for his work with Rob Marshall on Memoirs of a Geisha (having previously been nominated for Chicago). Even more exciting than that is who Campbell hired to help create the look and vision of the movie, production designer Grant Major and costume designer Ngila Dickson, both of whom won Oscars for their work on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Major also fulfilled the same capacity on Jackson’s remake of King Kong.

Art director François Audouy may not have won any Oscars, but his resume working in genre movies is impressive, everything from doing concept art for James Cameron’s Avatar and I Am Legend, acting as art director for Watchmen and the first Transformers movie, and working in various art capacities on all three Spider-Man movies.

Yowza! If that’s not enough to get excited about this movie, then I don’t know what to tell you. DC Entertainment are certainly pulling in all the stops for this, though.

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In the midst of an article ripe with information about the upcoming Wolfman film starring Franky Four Fingers, director Joe Johnston revealed that Marvel Studios and he are planning to start the Captain America film in June of 2010. It’s mentioned ina remark that is actually incredibly brief, and if you weren’t looking for it, you would miss it.

“By the time I got on a plane and arrived, it was three,” recalls Johnston, speaking from the art department of THE FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA, which he’s readying for a June start. “But at that point, what kind of difference can a week make?”

Weird way to drop that bit of news, but interesting regardless. Captain America is supposed to come out July 22, 2011, so they better start it soon!

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Garrett Warren. Does that name mean anything to you? Well, it should. Garrett Warren is one of Hollywood’s biggest stunt coordinators, including recently released Avatar and… hmm… oh, this is how it’s relevant to our interests! Iron Man 2! And The Losers! The LA Times has a very large interview with him about those two films, as well as the Tin Tin film and Burton’s Alicei n Wonderland, and in it he talks a lot about how much he loves The Losers:

GW: That has a special place in my heart, actually. Zoe Saldana was the one who got me on that movie. We were shooting “Avatar,” at the time and she came to me saying there was a movie she wanted to be in called “The Losers.” The people weren’t sure whether or not she could handle action. She felt so heartbroken because they weren’t able to see the stuff she was doing on “Avatar.” It was all top secret. She was such an action machine, but nobody knew it yet. I suggested we take a weekend to put together a video to help get her the job. I helped shoot this promotional video for her to show that she could do action. We had her shooting guns, wielding swords, knife work. … It was unbelievable. She was unreal. She got the part. And then she suggested they use me as their stunt coordinator. I actually was on our re-shoots of “Avatar” when I got the call from Sylvain White, the director for “The Losers.” He wanted it to be not only like the comic book but somewhat more visceral. It’s an amazingly real yet superbly comical look at these black ops special agents. And I loved the dichotomy. He was thinking the “Bourne” films and “24,” and yet he wanted to have comedy involved. We met. And he hired me. It’s all live action, 100%. There is some amazing action in that movie. You will be blown away. People will think, “Wow, that had to be CG.” No. Nothing was CG. We did everything. For real. I dropped actors and actresses on wires. I threw people through doors and windows. And Zoe … she’s a wrecking machine. I can’t tell you how much fun it was to work on that movie.

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What a mouthful! If you haven’t read the Losers, I recommend doing your best to hunt it down. DC/Vertigo are reprinting it at the end of January, if I remember carefully, so keep your eyes open.

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Not going to beat around the bush on this one: I know nothing about Solomon Kane. I know he was a comic book character, although not originally, but other than that I’m kind of at a loss. There is an upcoming Solomon Kane film, though, and a new widget with a trailer and other things has been released. So I’ll post that for your viewing pleasure:

Over at Marvel.com, a column has been posted with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige in which he talks about all the things he’s excited about from the past decade of Marvel films as well as to the future. It’s a very interesting article broken up into many different bits as he discusses each individual film and the various impacts they had. If you’ve enjoyed the Marvel films we’ve seen so far, it might be of worth to you to take a look at this article, which begins with his discussion of the X-Men film…

I started at Marvel proper in August 2000; I had been working as an associate producer on “X-Men” in 1998. We worked on that for almost three years. Back in those days there was the “Marvel Curse.” It was the dawn of aintitcoolnews.com and other fan sites saying that our movies were going to suck. We just kind of kept of our head down and made the movie. We focused on the characters and kept it true to the comics.

…and ends with a look at the upcoming Thor.

To be honest the thing that I’m most excited about right now though, is the screen test we just finished for “Thor.” We’ve done some costume tests and watching the Asgardians walk onto the sound stage takes me back to that first time I saw the X-Men on the set all together in Toronto. Only it was unlike anything we’ve ever put on film before! It’s great to be starting the next decade in such an exciting way just as we did last decade. We’re really redefining the comic book genre and what a Marvel movie can be. It’s going to be great.

Really neat stuff here.

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This isn’t necessarily movie news, but still something interesting enough to post:

Marvel Entertainment, Inc. announced that at a special meeting held this morning, Marvel stockholders approved the adoption of the Agreement and Plan of Merger entered into by Marvel and The Walt Disney Company, which provides for a merger in which Marvel will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney.

Marvel anticipates that the merger, which, based on the closing price of Disney’s common stock on December 30, 2009, has an estimated value of approximately $4.3 billion, will be completed today after the close of the market.

The completion of the merger is subject to satisfaction of remaining conditions disclosed in the definitive proxy statement/prospectus filed by Disney with the Securities and Exchange Commission pursuant to Rule 424 on December 2, 2009.

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Want to see what the cover of the the next DC Animated DVD will look like? Ok, you don’t have to beg! Take a look:

…exclusive short on the Spectre? Hmm! I didn’t know about that one. Love that cover though. Ver neat. DC Animated and Marvel Animated have been kicking ass with their most recent films/upcoming stuff. And seeing as this is based on an already great story by Grant Morrison, I think you can count me in as an excited party.

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Not only that, Robot 6 posted some teaser stills from the film. Let’s take a look:




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Oh hell yes.

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Interested in knowing when Scott Pilgrim vs the World comes out? I can’t give you a definite answer, but I can tell you that Collider has reported it’s release for August in 2010 in the UK. Hmm. Wonder what that means for the rest of the world, don’t you? The first official plot synopsis of the movie has also been released:

Meet charming and jobless Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera). A bass guitarist for totally average garage band Sex Bob-omb, the 22 year-old has just met the girl of his dreams… literally. The only catch to winning Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)? Her seven evil exes are coming to kill him. Genre-smashing filmmaker Edgar Wright (”Hot Fuzz,” “Shaun of the Dead”) tells the amazing story of one romantic slacker’s quest to power up with love in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Scott Pilgrim has never had a problem getting a girlfriend. It’s getting rid of them that proves difficult. From the girl who kicked his heart’s ass (and now is back in town), to the teenage distraction he’s trying to shake when Ramona rollerblades into his world, love hasn’t been easy. He soon discovers, however, his new crush has the most unusual baggage of all: a nefarious league of exes controls her love life and will do whatever it takes to eliminate him as a suitor. As Scott gets closer to Ramona, he must face an increasingly vicious rogues’ gallery from her past – from infamous skateboarders to vegan rock stars and fearsomely identical twins. And if he hopes to win his true love, he must vanquish.

Hmm. Not bad. I do want to point out that it looks like someone at Collider didn’t pull in the whole of the synopsis though. “He must vanquish.” Yeah? Did you have anything more to say there?

I also find it funny that just last night I gave someone the first book to read, and she literally devoured it in the span of an hour. Just goes to show you how good the title is.

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You can also see an interview with Schwartzman in which he briefly mentions Scott Pilgrim here

Here’s an odd intermission for you:

If you’re like me, you actually liked the last Hulk movie. At least, more than the comics! This was due not to comic accuracy but good performances by Ed Norton and Tim Roth has the Hulk and the Abomination, respectively. However no one really knows what the future with the Hulk is. Norton speculates that he may be the villain to the Avengers movie (especially if they’re taking after the Ultimates). Then there is of course the appearance of Samuel Sterns who undergoes his own accident near the end of the film, an obvious cliffhanger towards the introduction of the Leader. But what about Tim Roth? Will Emil Blonsky return?

“Yeah, we’ve talked about it – I’ve talked about it with Marvel,” said Roth. “When you do your deal, you sign up for three [films]. So, I’ve done the one … and basically, I don’t know what they have planned, but they can bring me back.”

“What they’re doing now is … putting these characters together in different ways,” he added. “With the Sam Jackson thing, and having [Robert Downey Jr.] come in at the end of ‘Incredible Hulk’ was the first clue to that – and I don’t know if they want to bring [Blonsky] back, but I told them I’m absolutely game for it. It would be so much fun to do it again. I’m in it for three.”

Of course, Roth’s willingness to return for another film seems like a given if the experience was even half as fun as he made it out to be.

“I had the best time ever with that one – more fun on set than anybody,” he laughed. “I did it purely for my kids, so my boys can laugh at their dad and have fun with it.”

“What’s been really interesting [about recent superhero movies] is, they’re taking these heavy-weight actors and turning them into these characters, and populating a very bizarre world,” said Roth of Hollywood’s fascination with comic book movies lately. “They’re brilliant, but they also entertain the kids, and I think it’s a very smart move … yet you’re still running around like a kid in them.”

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Fair enough. I don’t think it’s going to be happening any time soon, but I wouldn’t mind another Incredible Hulk film to be honest. It was actually a pretty good thriller, all things considered. It’s hard to make a movie when your main character’s big power is to just morph into a big green rampaging monster, and I’d prefer to see him over in the Avengers where he can “work” with a team… but even so. I’m always open for more Edward Norton.

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Over at Splash Page, Stan Lee briefly talks about what kind of Marvel films he expects to see.

“Doctor Strange I’m sure will be out. You probably know they’re working on Ant-Man now,” he added. “Every one of the Marvel characters, there’s somebody working on it. Somebody is trying to put together a story that will work.”

“It’s just a matter of time – they can only do so many a year,” he explained. “You don’t want to flood the market. I’m sure [they’ll do] the Black Panther, eventually.”

I don’t really want to see any of these movies, to be quite honest. But you know who should get his own movie? Magneto. Like we were already told we’d get.

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Are you worried that War Machine won’t kick enough ass in Iron Man 2? Don’t worry. Joe Quesada says he will kick some major ass.

“[Don] Cheadle is one of the greatest living American actors, what do you expect?” said Quesada of the actor playing War Machine’s alter ego, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, in the blockbuster sequel. “I think fans are going to love it – especially fans of War Machine – and he does kick some major ass.”

Oh Quesada! You’re such an excellent hype machine. As if we weren’t excited about this film enough, now we get the promise of actual War Machine ass kicking! I’ll be there opening night, promise.

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Now – all over the internet you can find various forms of rumor mongering about the upcoming film based on the trailer. Things such as what Black Widow is going to do, and various forms of articles that I refuse to post (in a similar fashion to the Spider-Man 4 rumors). Although, I will say that from the trailer, it looks like we’ll get a trimmed down version of Armor Wars. Just sayin’! And if I had to guess further? Rhodey will be kicking ass against stolen Stark Tech. Just sayin’!


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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