Sequel Bits: 'The Expendables 2,' 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' Possible 'Dredd' Sequels, And 'The Bourne Legacy'

That's a new banner for The Expendables 2, above, and it does just about as good a job as it could possibly do informing audiences of who is in the film. Click for a larger version, and break out the measurement tools to check out the photoshop work that seems to have re-sized a few of the heads. I wonder if those with a proper head-to-body proportion got paid more? Probably. That could be a good new metric for evaluating movie posters.

In addition to that, after the break you'll find:

At one point, Donnie Yen was offered a role in The Expendables 2, which was possibly the most promising moment in the casting process for the sequel. But he ended up not making it into the film, and now we know why. ComingSoon talked to the actor/martial artist, who said,

They wanted me to be in 'Expendables 2' but I just didn't feel the role clicked. I was flattered that I was approached by the producers but I just didn't see the role they asked me to do being that intriguing. I didn't really want to do it but I'm open for anything. Doing a movie is a stressful thing. You spend months of you life focusing into that one project and I want to make sure I do something I really like or I'm really passionate about.

Instead, you'll be able to see Yen in a film called Dragon (Wu xia), which will be released by the Weinstein Company's Radius imprint within the next year.

The Expendables 2 was directed by Simon West with Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It opens on August 17.300: Battle of Artemisia seems to have been in development for a very long time, and even the casting process has been protracted. But the film is finally getting ready to shoot under the direction of Noam Murro, with an August 2, 2013 release date planned.

And former Skins actor Jack O'Connell is the latest to join the movie, so he'll appear alongside Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Rodrigo Santoro and Callan Mulvey, wearing skimpy armor and a lot of body oil. He plays Calisto, "a 16 year old whose desire to become the heroic man/soldier his father was, leads him to become the leader of a small band of soldiers." That's from ScreenTerrier, via The Playlist.

Alex Garland, who wrote and produced Dredd says he has stories for two more Judge Dredd films ready to go. That's not the most difficult task, given that the character is backed by decades of comics continuity. Still, here's what Garland told HitFix about making more movies, beginning with the reason one famous Dredd character wasn't included in the first movie:

In terms of Dark Judges, I wrote [Judge] Death into this script, but it didn't feel right for the first film. I needed to have set up the city and Dredd first before taking on what is essentially a riff on the Judges. You need to know what the Judges are before you can subvert them... If they want to make sequels, I've got a story that goes from this one into the origins of Dredd and the city. Then the third one has would have a strange, existential attack from the Dark Judges.

Let's see how the first film does, but if Karl Urban's Dredd makes people happy, the independently-produced adaptation could lead to more travels to Mega-City One.

Mad Max: Fury Road is now shooting in Africa, and many photos are showing up of the vehicles that are being used in the film. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has also posted a couple pics of some of her and some of the cast, via Twitter and Instagram (1, 2).

[SHH Forums and MadMaxMovies]

Finally, here are three new TV spots for The Bourne Legacy. The film opens on August 10, with Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Albert Finney, Joan Allen, Scott Glenn, Stacy Keach, and Oscar Isaac appearing. The MovieBox points to this three-in-one embed.

There's also this new international poster for the film, at IMPAwards.