2011 has started brightly for superhero fans with the last few months delivering flood of images, trailers and gossip from all of the year's big comic book adaptations - Thor, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger - along with plenty of juicy details on future big hitters such as The Dark Knight Rises, Superman: Man of Steel, The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man. Oh, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Nevertheless things have slowed a little over the past seven days, but despite the lack of any earth-shattering highlights we still have plenty of interesting bits and pieces to tide us over as we await the next big story from the land of movie superherodom...
Somewhat unusually we start things off this week with Green Lantern, the upcoming DC Comics adaptation from director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) and starring Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan. Now if you've been following the progress of Green Lantern, you're probably aware that the marketing campaign has been pretty much non-existent, especially considering the film is due to hit cinemas in two months time. Well that all changed this past week as an extended four-minute trailer debuted at CinemaCon and WonderCon before making its way online. Now to me, the majority of the footage seemed like a cut-scene from an Xbox 360 game, but I have to admit it was a big improvement over the rather uninspiring first trailer and really seemed to whet the appetite of Green Lantern fans.Another Green Lantern trailer is rumoured to arrive soon (word is it will be attached to Thor) and the film, which also stars Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Jay O. Sanders, Temuera Morrison, Taika Waititi, Jon Tenney, Angela Bassett, Tim Robbins and Geoffrey Rush, is set for release in the UK and US on June 17th. Meanwhile Ryan Reynolds also dropped a few comments on Warner Bros.' proposed Justice League of America movie that was recently announced by WB President Jeff Robinov: "No one has ever approached me about doing a Justice League movie." So, as it stands at the moment any potential JLA movie looks like it could introduce a new Batman, a new Superman and a new Green Lantern, despite the fact that both Reynolds and Man of Steel star Henry Cavill are yet to appear on screen as their respective characters. No, it doesn't make sense to me either.
Sticking with DC's stable of cinematic superheroes for a moment, RadarOnline revealed that Lindsay Lohan is under consideration for a role in Superman: Man of Steel, if she can remain out of prison that is. According to the report, Lohan (or is it just Lindsay now?) was disappointed to lose out on the part of Lois Lane to Amy Adams but could still audition for a role as a villain, with the same article suggesting that unknown actor Adam Harris would be trying out for Lex Luthor, which has since been confirmed by YouBentMyWookie. In other Superman-related news, director Zack Snyder took part in a video interview with Empire Magazine and had a few words about working with producer Christopher Nolan, describing him as "amazingly generous". Nothing like sucking up to the boss, especially given the recent talk of Snyder being pulled from the upcoming reboot due to the critical and commercial failure of his latest film Sucker Punch.Turning to Nolan's other project and it looks as though The Dark Knight Rises has found a new Gotham City, with the Pittsburgh Post Gazette revealing that the production has opted against a return to Chicago and instead will be descending upon the Steel City for a summer shoot. In other possible news, Inception actress Marion Cottilard confirmed that she has a project lined up for this summer but refused to drop any further details during an interview with The Independent. Cottilard has long been rumoured to join the cast alongside Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Juno Temple, and pretty much every man and his dog suspects that she's playing Talia al Ghul. It seems even more likely now that Josh Pence (The Social Network's digitally-replaced-by-Armie Hammer Winklevoss twin) has been confirmed to feature as a younger Ra's in a flashback sequence, so if true, isn't it about time they confirmed it already? Sheesh.
Moving on now to Marvel and with just a few short weeks until the arrival of the Kenneth Branagh's Thor, the studio's promotional machine continues to ramp up the publicity. Along with the launch of the official website, leading man Chris Hemsworth has been talking to IGN about working on the film, while he also had a few words about his preparation for Joss Whedon's The Avengers and confirmed that the principal cast are set to commence filming in the next month. The site also debuted a short clip from Thor that gives fans the first glimpse of Jeremy Renner in his cameo as Hawkeye, while there seems to be a never-ending stream of TV spots cropping up online (at this rate we'll have seen the entire film before it hits the cinema).Shifting over to Fox's various spin-offs of their X-Men franchise, Deadline continues to report that both David Slade (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) and Duncan Jones (Source Code) are in the frame to fill the vacancy left by Darren Aronofsky on The Wolverine. Slade is currently attached to the proposed Daredevil reboot (he won't, however, be handling Deadpool, with the Los Angeles Times reporting that VFX man Tim Miller has been given the gig of bringing Ryan Reynold's Merc with a Mouth back to the screen), but with Universal said to be interested in Hugh Jackman for a lead role in Snow White and the Hunstman alongside Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron, it's possible that Logan's latest adventure could be put on the backburner for the time being.
In the meantime, Fox have Matthew Vaughn's prequel X-Men: First Class arriving this summer and the official Facebook page continues to update their 'X-Perts' Q&As with Edi Gathegi (Darwin) and Caleb Landry Jones (Banshee) taking up the challenge this past week, while Joe D! delivered a rather cool fan-made retro title sequence that really is worth checking out. And, if that's not enough to give you your X-Men fix for the week, there's also a new trailer for Marvel's Wolverine anime, which debuts in the US this coming July.
Wrapping up the best of the rest, ComicBookMovie posted quick video interview with forgotten 80s star C. Thomas Howell who had a few words to say about his experiences working alongside Andrew Garfield, Martin Sheen and Emma Stone in Sony's upcoming reboot The Amazing Spider-Man... Marvel legend Stan Lee spoke to Hero Complex about filming his cameos for Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, while pondering his next potential role: "I wonder why DC Comics doesn't have me do a cameo in Batman?"... and finally, on the subject of Stan, feast your eyes on the trailer for his latest project, the animated TV series (and possible movie) The Governator, produced in collaboration with star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Words cannot describe... but Arnie gives it a go anyway over at THR.
Gary Collinson
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