Welcome back to the Hero Express, your one-stop sometimes SPOILER filled shop through the news filled world of superhero’s in Film, TV, Video Games and whatever else floats your boat.
This is the Hero Express for November 23rd, 2011:
SyFy shooting Booster Gold Pilot – (MTV)
Here’s a short one to lead us back in to where Scoot left off in yesterday’s Express: Andrew Kreisberg , whose work you may know from Fringe, is slated to write a pilot for SyFy based on DC hero, Booster Gold. Executive Producer Greg Berlanti will be backing the project, which fits in nicely with his previous work on Green Lantern and No Ordinary Family.
It will be interesting to see if DC can find a place for its lesser-known heroes on television, as it seems they remain unable to find a lasting home on the silver screen.
‘Powers’ Pilot getting another Shot on FX – (MTV)
A while ago it was announced that the popular comic, Powers, was shooting a live-action pilot for FX, though it seemed initially like it wasn’t going to make it through. However, word is that FX has passed on a competing pilot and given Powers another chance, provided they can go back and do some more work on the special effects.
The comic’s writer, Brian Michael Bendis, tweeted happily about the news:
“In regard to ‘Powers’ TV: the pilot was crazy expensive and very lovely and shows incredible potential for a long series,” Bendis wrote. “The reshoots are planned for January and are all about tone and clarity. I am very proud of the pilot, as [is] [Michael Avon Oeming]. Stay tuned.”
Supposedly, according to Bendis, the process of going back to work on a pilot is not necessarily a bad sign, as FX is known to do this sort of thing. He mentioned that hit series Sons of Anarchy had to do the same.
A Slew of Set Photos from The Amazing Spider-Man – (SuperHero Hype/Newscom)
Two sets of photos have surfaced regarding The Amazing Spider-Man production. One features an extensive gallery of the cast on set for re-shoots, which you can see here. The other is much smaller, but much more revealing:
Most exciting to see, at least for me, is Rhys Ifans‘ ugly hand up there, which looks a lot like it means Connor’s experiment was a success (Giant lizard-monster transformation notwithstanding).
Empire Magazine’s TDKR Issue – (SuperHero Hype)
And here we are with the the Hero Express segment that likely overshadows the rest of these links; welcome to Dark Knight Station. Here are some photos (The best quality the internet has of them so far) of the Empire issue dedicated to the upcoming Batman movie:
The issue also includes probably the biggest insight yet into TDKR‘s actual narrative, through interviews with some very important people from the production, namely director Chris Nolan and actor Tom Hardy. Nolan spoke about the direction the final film will take following Batman’s sacrifice at the end of The Dark Knight:
“It’s really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne’s story. We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after ‘The Dark Knight.’ So he’s an older Bruce Wayne; he’s not in a great state. With Bane, we’re looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn’t had before. With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we’re testing Batman both physically as well as mentally.”
Meanwhile Hardy essentially gushed about Bane’s brutality:
“He’s a big dude who’s incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style. It’s not about fighting. It’s about carnage. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it’s nasty. Anything from small-joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. He is a terrorist in mentality as well as brutal action.”
Finally, costume designer Lindy Hemming revealed some key details about Bane’s back story and the function of the creepy face mask:
“He was injured early in his story. He’s suffering from pain and needs gas to survive. He can’t survive the pain without the mask. The pipes from the mask go back along his jawline and feed into the thing at his back, where there are two cannisters.”
The article also confirms that there will be a 6 minute prologue, essentially the first moments of the movie, which will play prior to Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in IMAX.
Barely Credible Dark Knight Rises Rumor – (Cinema Blend)
A reader of ‘DarkKnightRisesRumours.com’ claims to have been wandering around the set in New York when they happened upon a door to a trailer marked with a very intriguing sign. He quickly took an awfully blurry photo of the discovery:
In case you can’t read it, the sign reads “E. Page – “B. Gordon”, which would pretty much definitively mean that Ellen Page will appear in the film playing Barbara Gordon, daughter to commissioner Gordon and eventual Gotham heroine, Batgirl. While there are a massive number of ways this could be a hoax, the rumor does hold some water based on Christopher Nolan’s habit of reusing actors in multiple films (Inception alone already shares four of its stars with TDKR. Page’s addition would make five).
Still, I remain skeptical of the idea – By now, the rest of the cast has been pretty openly discussed, though their roles certainly haven’t. Why would Page’s role be treated any differently? I think if Page were a part of the cast, they’d have announced it and simply kept quiet about her playing Batgirl, like they’ve done with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard and their respective parts. Also, as Cinema Blend mentions, Page is supposed to be currently filming The East, which would provide little time for a role in TDKR. Whatever the case, time will tell.
More Possible Dark Knight Rises Rumors – (i09)
Someone following the production of TDKR claims to have overheard and witnessed a whole lot of information regarding some of the more interesting areas of Nolan’s Batman finale. There is a lot of stuff here, none of it to be taken as factual and all of it reported without an actual source, so remember that and take from it what you will. The original report comes from Comic Book Movie, but I’ll go into the stuff i09 reported that I think is most relevant to our interests:
1. Bane.
“First of all, Bane is “a successful villain” who comes to Gotham with a plan that he executes flawlessly, ruthlessly stopping anyone who might oppose him. He’s also “tactical”, “smart”, but “has a short fuse” that causes him to resort to “drastic measures” when Batman starts to beat him.”
2. Catwoman.
“Catwoman’s arc is meant to mirror Joe Chill’s, in that she is completely desperate and so resorts to a life of crime. She apparently faces a crucial moment where “she has to decide whether to let her desperation get to her like Chill or to use her desperation for something else”, which presumably is the moment where she chooses to be a hero or a villain.”
3. Talia Al-Ghul.
“Wayne Enterprises executive Miranda Tate, played by Marion Cotillard, is indeed Talia al Ghul.”
4. Commissioner Gordon.
“Commissioner Gordon’s role in this movie is even larger than his part in The Dark Knight[.]“
Star Trek 2 Will Have Tribbles?! – (i09)
And to round things off, from the same i09 rumor page, unofficial statements arise claiming that filming will start January 15, 2012, and that the script is currently undergoing its 3rd draft, which is essentially complete and just needs some kinks worked out.
J.J. Abrams is supposedly scouting locations for a ‘jungle planet’, and a museum in Los Angeles is to be used as a ‘famous Star Trek location’, though there appears to be no more detail than that.
i09 then gets to the juicy stuff, quoting Think McFly Think, who claim to have the outline of the plot based on ‘inside information’:
“The Klingons play a prominent role in Star Trek 2. The angle, according to our sources, plays up them up as a Nomadic sect of warrior aliens causing trouble for the Federation — think an intergalactic Taliban with their home-planet overrun by Tribbles. Yes, those Tribbles, here in the newly rebooted continuity viewed as “furry carnivorous creatures.””
Well that’s certainly unexpected. I wouldn’t have needed a hook to get me interested in a Star Trek sequel, but if I ever did, a good one would be seeing them try to make a threat out of this:
Well that’s it for this edition of the Hero Express, finishing up Scoot’s edition earlier this week. If you missed part 1, don’t forget to check it out. And as always…
Grizzly Bomb 