Superman Flies Again
First, they remade Batman with a stunning vision that brought one of the world's most popular heroes into the new century. Now, Christopher Nolan (with an assist from David S. Goyer) is going to take the Man of Steel to new heights. Nolan was the director behind both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He tells the Los Angeles Times that he's rebooting the Superman franchise with a film that will have no connection to 
the films that preceded it. Nolan said he was having trouble working on the new Batman movie when Goyer made a suggestion about how he would handle Superman on film. Nolan is taking it and running with it, with Goyer writing the movie and Nolan not directing but supervising whoever will. Not much more detail is available, but expect a lot more news (and of course a ton of fan speculation) to come in the months ahead. Follow the link above for the full story.
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Superheroes Coming to TV Next Season
ABC has announced it's picking up a new superpowered dramedy called No Ordinary Family for the 2010-2011 TV season. The pilot centers around Michael Chiklis (of The Shield and The Commish fame, but also well-known to comics fans as The Thing in the Fantastic Four movies) as a father in a family that suddenly develops some strange abilities. Bleeding Cool has an advance look at the pilot here. This comes on top of news from NBC that it will introduce a new show called The Cape, about a cop framed for murder who takes to becoming a masked vigilante while trying to clear his name.
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Spider-Man in 3D
The Spider-Man movie franchise will be getting a reboot in 2012, with director Sam Raimi and star Toby Maguire no longer involved in the film. A new team will head up the release, which has just been announced as a 3D film. Still no word on who's attached to helm the movie or star in it, but expect casting and more announcements to be made soon.
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A Strong Start for Wimpy Kid
Jeff Kinney's bestselling and much beloved series Diary of a Wimpy Kid is close to debuting onscreen. In just three months, the movie will launch, a full-length live-action adaptation of Kinney's story of middle-school student Greg Heffley and his hilarious attempts to navigate the treacherous waters of
the school years. Very little has been released about the entire plot (but if you've read the books, you probably have a pretty good idea), but a trailer for the film is set to debut next week.
Director: Thor Freudenthal
Release date: April 2, 2010
Cast: Rachael Harris, Alex Farris, Steve Zahn, Chloe Moretz, Zachary Gordon, Devon Bostick
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Suicide Squad and DC News
DC Comics is apparently close to announcing its full moviemaking agenda in the coming weeks. Fans have been anxiously awaiting news on such projects as the Justice League movie and the dozens of other potential movie projects from DC. But in the meantime, Suicide Squad is in production, and that's making many fans pleased. Suicide Squad is a Dirty Dozen-type comic-book series that brought together supervillains who were given a chance to redeem themselves by taking on major cases to earn their freedom. Producer Dan Lin told Collider that the movie is on "the front burner," so hopefully that means we'll be able to watch a live-action version of that classic comic soon.
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Spider-Man on
Broadway
The Spider-Man musical on Broadway has been much beleaguered in its development. The producers reportedly encountered many financial problems in bringing the large-budget production to fruition, and the announced opening date of February 2010 has been changed (although it is still planned for this year). Producers have announced that financing for the play will be in place soon and the play will then be back on track and an opening will be stated. In the meantime, the lead has been cast: Actor/singer Reeve Carney will play Peter Parker/Spider-Man (he'll be joined by previously announced cast members Alan Cumming and Evan Rachel Wood. The music remains the purview of U2's Bono and The Edge, and it will be directed by Julie Taymor.
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Kick-Ass on Screen
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Release Date: April 16, 2010
Plot: High-school student Dave Lizewski decides to become a superhero, despite the fact that he doesn't have any powers. It doesn't go well at first, but after he recovers from his humiliating injuries, he starts to get the hang of it...and that's just the beginning.
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Aaron Johnson, Mark Strong, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
While you're waiting for the movie, look for Titan Books Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie (coming February 23, 2010). Here's a sneak preview of what's inside:
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Iron Man 2 in Pictures
Anticipation continues to build for Iron Man 2, coming May of next year. Several stills from the movie have just been leaked, and they're cool. Check here to see the full set and get even more excited about this sequel to a movie that managed to hold its own (and for very good reason) against The Dark Knight. The pictures are a little something to whet your appetite until May!
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Thor and Powers News
Fan-favorite comics author Brian Michael Bendis gave an interview with G4 recently, and it’s given us tons of info about new developments in the movie and TV realm. Let’s start with Thor.
So far, not too much has been revealed about the movie, but here’s what we’ve heard: Thor will be directed by Kenneth Branagh, which is a very good sign indeed, and will star Chris Hemsworth (who played Kirk’s father in the recent Star Trek movie) as the title character. Other actors involved include Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, and Samuel L. Jackson, who reprises his role as Nick Fury. The plot centers around Thor, an Asgardian warrior who unleashes an epic battle that forces him to be outcast to earth…where the battle continues. The film is set to release in 2011.
Bendis told G4, “Thor is an extravaganza.” After hearing what Branagh plans for the movie, he said, “It was Shakespearean.… When he was done, we were like, ‘Great! You should do that!’ ”
Bendis is also involved with a TV adaptation of his popular Powers series. The show will run on FX, but it hasn’t shot a pilot yet. Bendis revealed his casting wish list at Baltimore Comic-Con, but not too much is set yet. Here’s to hoping that more news—and a firm air date—will be coming soon.
Marvel Movie News
Sorting out comics properties' movie and TV licensing can be mind-bending. Characters are licensed to a variety of studios, and it all ends up getting confusing...especially in the wake of a major deal announcement, such as when Disney bought Marvel for $4 billion recently. So what happens to those highly profitable movie franchises? Don't expect to see some of the most visible ones coming out through Disney anytime soon. Sony has announced plans for three more Spider-Man movies (no surprise there; the Spider-Man movies revolutionized comics movies in the past decade), and Fox is going to do more with Fantastic Four (does this mean we might actually get a watchable FF flick?). Plus, Paramount still has its original deals, which include two Iron Man sequels, Captain America, Thor, and The Avengers. There's talk that Disney's Pixar division might do an Ant-Man feature film, but so far it's the only one and it's just talk at this point. But with 7,000 characters to play with, most of which are not licensed out, Disney has no shortage of characters to start making movies with, though, so just be patient for future announcements.
Books into DVDs
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
Voice Cast: Mark Harmon, James Woods, Bruce Davison, William Baldwin, Chris Noth, and Gina Torres
Distributor: Warner Premiere/DC Comics/Warner Bros. Animation
Release date: February 23, 2010
Ever since the animated series of Batman was rolled out into the world in the early '90s, the DC Comics animated universe has been setting remarkably high standards for quality animated storytelling. That series paid homage to the dark noir roots of the title character and arguably helped form the public perception of Batman as much as Frank Miller's Dark Knight series did nearly a decade before.
The shady tones of that series were balanced out by the bright colors (not to mention the hope and optimism) of Superman. Like yin and yang, Batman and Superman formed an alliance that showed why we love these heroes so much and why they continue to endure, decade after decade.
Flash-forward to now, a decade and a half or so on, as well as several animated series later, all from mostly the same team of people. Exec producer Bruce Timm, coproducer Alan Burnett, writer Dwayne McDuffie, and vocal director Andrea Romano are very familiar names to fans of these animated projects. Some of the most loved of their series include Justice League, which told the ongoing comic-based adventures of seven diverse superheroes, and its "sequel," Justice League Unlimited, which opened the doors to the DC universe of comic characters and let just about everybody in. In between those two series, the production team had planned to tell a story, one that would explain how the original team expanded to include so many more, and why. That story, if it had gotten off the ground as planned, would have been the one now told in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.
It was worth the wait. Better to have this action-packed tale now, when it can build on the legacy of successful live-action movies that have come out in the past decade, and after a string of successful direct-to-video releases. This one builds on the legendary DC storyline of alternate universes and incorporates it with modern quantum theory (even the Heisenberg uncertainty principle gets thrown into the mix, showing writer McDuffie has worked hard to meld goofy comics principles with advanced scientific thought). Even so, the emphasis here is on the battle between good and evil, and the alternate-universe details, as fascinating as they are, are still essentially a MacGuffin that enables our heroes to fight evil, twisted doppelgangers of themselves.
The story begins with the Lex Luthor of another world teaming up with that world's version of the Joker to break in and steal a valuable energy source from the Crime Syndicate (that would be Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman, Power Ring, and a host of other baddies). Luthor, here a hero and a source of hope, manages to escape the evil team (his teammate isn't so lucky) and travel to the Justice League's dimension, enlisting the help of the world's greatest superheroes to save his world, if they can.
But what's really important is how the fight scenes rage, and that is where Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths soars. It's especially great to see Wonder Woman locked in battle with her sinister, blood-lusty counterpart, Superwoman. Fans who have longed to see Wonder Woman really cut loose will be happy to see her in action in a way she rarely has been seen before.
The movie rarely lets up over its 75-minute runtime, so it truly delivers in the areas that fans of these tales expect. Plus, the DVD comes loaded with extras, like a short centered on perennial ghostly hero The Spectre, a sneak peek at Batman: Under the Red Hood, the next animated project coming later this year, bonus episodes of the Justice League series, and more. (The Blu-ray edition contains all those plus two more Justice League Unlimited episodes.)
It's a well-done extravaganza that not only pays tribute to DC Comics history but continues the modern success of the animated videos that the Warner Bros. studio has been rightly acclaimed for. As always, we're looking forward to the next thing coming.
