While nothing has been said officially, TV By The Numbers and IGN are reporting that ABC has picked up the Marvel television series spin-off Agents of SHIELD for a debut this Fall.
While ABC has not made an official announcement, they briefly (likely accidentally) published a video on their youtube page, a viral teaser for the upcoming show. The video shows some captured video of The Incredible Hulk causing destruction, captured from a distance. A small logo/badge that reads “Rising Tide” appears on the lower right hand part of the screen. While ABC has removed the video, it seems to still online elsewhere (for now). Watch the video now embedded after the jump.
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Audiences worldwide will eventually get to see the extended Iron Man 3 scenes that were exclusive to China. Director Shane Black shot several scenes in the country, with native actors Wang Xueqi and Fan Bingbing, that are all but absent from the domestic cut of the film. They remain in Chinese theaters, but reportedly don’t add much.
Now it seems those scenes will be at the center of an upcoming Marvel short film tentatively called The Prologue. Read More »
Many people assumed that we would eventually see some animated result from Disney’s purchase of Marvel, and now the first project is out in the open. It is not a Marvel/Pixar crossover, however, and Disney has taken the approach of adapting a fairly obscure Marvel property.
Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau were responsible for the 1998 series Big Hero 6, a Tokyo-set story about government-sanctioned heroes, specifically “a robotics prodigy named Hiro Hamada and his robot companion BayMax, who join a team of superheroes in a high-tech city called San Fransokyo.” Director Don Hall (Winnie the Pooh) found the series and pitched it to John Lasseter, and he’s been directing a CG-animated film at Walt Disney Animation Studios, which will be released on November 7 2014. Read More »
While Marvel movies are usually about one big name hero, there’s a lot of joy in the supporting characters. Two of the most intriguing ones, at least in Phase 2, are Don Cheadle‘s Colonel James Rhodes, aka War Machine/Iron Patriot, from Iron Man 3 and Anthony Mackie‘s Sam Wilson, aka The Falcon, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Each are formidable fighters in their own right; they just happen to play second fiddle to Iron Man and Captain America.
And that’s where they’ll remain for now. In a new interview, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said there are no current plans to develop spin-off films based on those characters. Read More »
Here’s the reason Marvel signs actors to long contracts whenever possible. After the success of Iron Man, Robert Downey, Jr.‘s agents worked out a deal with Marvel in which the actor would receive a percentage of the first-day gross for future films. That’s what led him to nabbing between $50m and $75m for The Avengers. Studios hate paying anyone up front like that whenever it can be avoided, and even Downey has laughed about the unusual pay rate he got to play Tony Stark.
Now, after the release of Iron Man 3, Downey has no contract with Marvel. In fact, a few actors have no contract to appear in The Avengers 2, and after the billion-dollar-plus success of the first film, bringing them back together won’t be cheap. Marvel likes cheap, and so actors have begun to master the art of negotiating in public by letting us know that there’s a chance Marvel will make films without them. How’s that going to work out?
Well, Downey is reportedly in talks for two more Avengers films, but there’s no plan set in stone just yet, and no public talk of Iron Man 4. Read More »
There are a lot of Superhero Bits floating around this week: info is out there for Man of Steel, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers 2 and more. But we’re gonna put those on hold in celebration of the superhero du jour, Iron Man. This edition of Superhero Bits is solely decidated to the film at the top of the box office, Iron Man 3, and everything about it.
Do you want to hear Shane Black and Kevin Feige talk about the film’s big twists? How is the Internet reacting to the surprises? Want to see some new concept art and alternative credits sequences? How many unanswered questions does the film leave? Is The Mandarin the best comic book movie villain ever? Where was Robert Downey Jr. on opening day? What exactly did all each those armors do? Why didn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. come to the rescue? Were the rumors about the film over the years true? Read about all of this and more in today’s all Iron Man 3 edition of Superhero Bits — be warned there are film spoilers ahead. Read More »
Briefly: Tony Stark has defeated the Iron Monger, Whiplash and now he’s beaten Harry Potter, Jack Sparrow and Batman, too. Iron Man 3 opened this weekend with a whopping $175.3 million box-office take, the second best opening weekend of all-time. The only film Stark couldn’t beat? His own. 2012′s The Avengers remains the all-time record holder with $207.4 million from Friday to Sunday.
What’s even more impressive about the Shane Black-directed film? As it opened internationally a week prior to the US opening, Iron Man 3 has now grossed $680 million globally in its first week, outgrossing the entire run of both Iron Man ($585.2) and Iron Man 2 ($623.9 million).
The only questions now are, can Iron Man 3 combine the grosses of 1 and 2? Which other summer movie could topple it, if any? And will there be an Iron Man 4? [Box Office Mojo]
Iron Man 3 is a bundle of contradictions. It is light and genuinely funny, yet a vein of deep cynicism acts as the movie’s spine. At times it is gleefully silly, but it indulges ideas that are merely goofy. It wants to reconcile real-world violence into larger-than-life escapism. Yet the contradictions don’t quite break the movie. Director/writer Shane Black and co-screenwriter Drew Pearce understand the mode in which they have to work, and manage to make both impulses live side by side.
Those contradictions give Iron Man 3 a weird sense of pace, and a personality that isn’t quite like any other superhero movie. This isn’t the gleeful candy-colored romp of The Avengers, and I sympathize with any audience thrown by the film’s shuffling rhythm. Shane Black writes and directs movies that walk a fine line between idiosyncratic and mainstream, and many of the director’s impulses (winking narration, in-jokes, the subversion of cliches) are on display here.
Black and Pearce struggle at times to keep all their ideas in the frame, but that struggle alone makes Iron Man 3 interesting to watch. The film’s giddy highs are quite wonderful, and its personal quirks are testament to the power Marvel Studios has accumulated. The film plays loose with characters and ideas from the comics, but in doing so presents a story that is more unique than we have any right to expect from a threequel. In fact, crossover between real and heightened worlds has defined Marvel Comics since day one, and Iron Man 3 may be more true to Marvel’s spirit than any other film.
(Note: Iron Man 3 features a couple big plot elements that shouldn’t be spoiled, and so the following review avoids discussing those elements. I’m not going to say this is 100% spoiler-free, but I’ve avoided the big points. ) Read More »
