Due to last week’s Superhero Showdown, we’ve got a couple of weeks of catching up to do here but truth be told, it was a quiet end to 2011, especially after all of the excitement over the second trailer for The Dark Knight Rises earlier in December. Still, in terms of Christopher Nolan’s final Batman feature, we did get an official behind-the-scenes shot of the director at work, while Hero Complex ended the year by nabbing a rather detailed interview with Selina Kyle herself, Anne Hathaway, which also included the following scene description: Gotham City is a war zone. A ruthless madman named Bane [Tom Hardy] has ripped away any sense of security and the citizens, haggard and clutching suitcases with refugee anxiety, sit behind barbed wire waiting to see what will blow up next. A hooded prisoner is dragged in – it’s Bruce Wayne [Christian Bale], one of Gotham’s most famous faces – but the eyes of the crowd go instead to the woman in black standing at the top of the staircase. “Sorry to spoil things, boys, but Bane needs these guys himself,” says sultry Selina Kyle, navigating the steps with stiletto heels that, on closer inspection, turn out to have serrated edges capable of leaving nasty claw marks in a fight.Apart from that – and some “it’s been changed” / “oh no it hasn’t” back-and-forth over the sound mix for Bane’s dialogue in the IMAX prologue – it’s been strangely quiet on The Dark Knight Rises front recently, although that’s sure to change as we continue the countdown to the film’s arrival on July 20th.
So, with The Dark Knight Rises taking a back seat, much of the talk this past weekend has centred on Marvel’s upcoming team-up The Avengers – or more specifically, the identity of the bad guy(s) who’ll be joining Loki in battling Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and company. First up was a press release announcing that the Red Skull would be featured in a set of Marvel HeroClix miniatures that tie in with the movie, which of course led to talk that Hugo Weaving could be returning as Joss Whedon’s ‘Surprise Villain’. Following this, a whole host of rumours soon began to do the rounds, stating that Red Skull is indeed present and will also be joined by Thanos and a ‘new version’ of the Skrulls, rebranded as ‘The Redacted’ due to Fox owning the movie rights to said extra-terrestrial species. The ‘spoilers’ – which also includes some stuff about the Infinity Gauntlet and the Leviathan – do seem like random speculation, but they’re also pretty plausible. Take a look for yourself here.In other Avengers news, we also got to see snippets of new footage featuring the likes of Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) courtesy of a Russian trailer, while some concept art of the Quinjet and the Hulk also cropped up online. It’s nice to see the Green Goliath is wearing pants, even if they are beige...
Wrapping up the best of the rest...
...We may have received our first look at Rhys Ifans' fully-transformed Lizard from Sony's upcoming reboot The Amazing Spider-Man courtesy of toy blog Idle Hands, who posted some images of possible merchandise from the film, which included a remote control quad bike that seems to include an official shot of the villain...
...Hot on the heels of the news that Marvel have won their legal battle against writer Gary Friedrich over the movie rights to Ghost Rider comes a detailed article from Collider on the upcoming sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which includes a set visit report and interviews with co-director Brian Taylor and stars Nicolas Cage, Idris Elba, Ciarán Hinds, Fergus Riordan and Violante Placido......Earlier in the week CosmicBookNews posted their latest completely unsubstantiated rumour, this time suggesting that The Hangover star Bradley Cooper had signed on for a cameo as Lex Luthor in Warner Bros.' upcoming Superman reboot, Man of Steel, although the report has since been shot down by journalist Kurt Orzeck on Twitter. Henry Cavill's Superman will of course be squaring off against Michael Shannon's General Zod in next year's origin story, but it does seem more than plausible that Kal-El's arch-nemesis will crop up somewhere ahead of a full-on bad guy role in the proposed sequel...
...Sticking with the Man of Steel for the moment, those of us unfortunate to remember the aborted 90s reboot Superman Lives (yes, the one that Tim Burton was planning to direct, with Nicolas Cage as Superman) may be interested in taking a look at this toy concept art, which gives us a pretty good idea of just how hideous this would have been...
...Meanwhile concept artist Peter Rubin of Iron Rooster Studios has released some of his creature designs from last year's box-office disappointment Green Lantern, which you can check out here...
...During promotional interviews for Daniel Radcliffe's latest, The Woman in Black, screenwriter Jane Goldman provided a brief update on Kick-Ass 2, confirming pretty much what we already know - that the status of the sequel is currently up in the air: "I think the only thing that is fairly sure is that right now, Matthew Vaughn doesn't have any plans to direct it. He and I are not currently talking about writing it either. It may well be that Matthew oversees it in a producer role, and I may also be involved in that capacity. I know that there is somebody that Matthew has been talking to who would be interested in writing and directing that. That would be cool..."
...And finally, IGN debuted a new 60-second trailer for the ‘found footage’ flick Chronicle, while Machinima also got their hands on an exclusive clip. Directed by Josh Trank, Chronicle centres on three high school students (Michael B. Jordan, Dane DeHaan and Alex Russell) who develop uncanny super powers. Learning to control their abilities, the teens start to use them to their advantage, causing their lives to spin out of control as their darker sides begin to take over. Chronicle is set to arrive in UK cinemas on February 1st, with a North American release two days later.
Gary Collinson
Holy Franchise, Batman! - Coming 2012.
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