Hello and welcome back to Hero Express, your stop off point for all superhero entertainment news. It has been a while since the last update and a lot of hero news has come our way so let’s crack on. Firstly, we look at what the Marvel Superheroes have been up to recently with some exciting news on the big and small screen.
Checking out the small screen, we have news of Marvel yet again building their television pipeline with some new shows. Grizzly Bomb covered the news that Marvel and Netflix have combined forces to give us some great TV titles ideas including a possible Defenders show. Well it looks like the Daredevil show mentioned in that article has a writer (sourced from Screen Crush). His name? Drew Goddard. For those that don’t know, Goddard is the man who executive produced Lost and also worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. But for this reviewer his most stunning piece of work was directing Cabin in the Woods which was written by him and the big gun of The Avengers movie franchise, Joss Whedon. With Drew working with Joss on a number of projects in the past, I imagine this series to be quite witty with the dialogue but also not afraid to show some darkness, which should be perfect for Matt Murdock. Finally, here is what Netflix had to say about the whole thing.
[quote]Marvel’s movies, such as ‘ Iron Man’ and ‘Marvel’s The Avengers,’ are huge favorites on our service around the world. Like Disney, Marvel is a known and loved brand that travels. With ‘House of Cards‘ and our other original series, we have pioneered new approaches to storytelling and to global distribution and we’re thrilled to be working with Disney and Marvel to take our brand of television to new levels with a creative project of this magnitude.[/quote]
Moving onto everyone’s favorite mischievous Asgardian now and the rumors of a solo Loki movie were flying about all over the place during the promotion of Thor: The Dark World. This is what Tom Hiddleston had to say about the whole thing (taken from Comic Book.Com).
[quote]It’s up to Kevin Feige. He runs Marvel Studios. And of course, there are many iterations of the character. Many situations that I would love to see him in. I would love to see him somewhere like on his own on Earth in the seventies, running a night club. You know, playing guitar with Jimi Hendrix or something. You know, there is a sort of rock star element to him.
I must also say he is defined in opposition to Thor, so I don’t quite know how it would be to be Loki in a film without Chris Hemsworth.[/quote]
As amazing as Loki is to watch he is the kind of character that does need a partner to verbally spar with and Tom’s words about Chris are spot on. If it is not Thor, who is going to be the adversary to Loki’s schemes?
Moving away from Marvel Studios but still staying in the Marvel Universe, we look at The Bent Bullet, a viral web page set up to support the release of the new X-Men: Days of Future Past. It looks at the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald had help when trying to assassinate J.F.K and that help was in the form of Magneto. Told like a historical documentary, it follows the build up to Kennedy’s death, mixing in anti-mutant protests and the possibility of CIA mutant killings with actual historic events. The site is absolutely fascinating and incredibly well put together. Watch the video to get an idea of what the site is all about.
Staying with the X-Men for a moment, Screen Crush had some potentially awesome news on our favorite mutants. Writer Simon Kinberg (who wrote Days of Future Past) has renewed his contract with Fox for another 3 years. Kinberg is currently working on the Fantastic Four revamp and it seems that the plan is to combine this with the X-Men for one huge combined universe. Seems Kinberg is taking the Marvel approach to films (and he is not the only one which you will see later on) and had this to say about the superhero team up.
[quote]I have a lot of ideas on how to built those brands and do what everybody is thinking of these days: Be like Marvel.[/quote]
Now this seems too good to be true but the only problem that seems to arise from this is from Simon Kinberg himself. Although Days of Future Past looks incredible, this reviewer cannot say if it’s any good. However his previous writing credits I have had the displeasure to watch are XXX 2 and X-Men: The Last Stand (also known as the evil offspring of the X-Men franchise). Now it can be argued that this could be the movie’s directors (with The Last Stand this is true with Brett Ratner at the helm), but some blame surely has to go to the writing. Regardless, one hopes that with good directors and hopefully the rest of the cast from the X-Men movies, this idea of a superhero team-up will be brilliant but time will tell if they manage to capture the Marvel Studios magic.
More comic movie news now and taking a page out of Marvel’s book, DC have decided to follow a similar structure with their movie output. Screen Crush reported that they are planning on making a series of low budget movies (around 40 million) to help lead up to the Justice League movie. Rumors are abound with what projects and titles like Sandman (with Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached), Booster Gold, Team 7 and Deathstroke all being thrown around at some stage but the real serious news seems to be behind Suicide Squad. We assume this would be the new team of villains working for the government that includes Deadshot and Harley Quinn as members. Not much else is known at this stage but Justin Marks has already written a script so whether DC and Warner Bros. would use that one or get a new one is unknown. What is also unknown at this time is whether DC could actually get this up and running, let alone make it any good as their track record has been questionable at best. For every good Batman movie there is a weak Superman movie or a truly terrible Wonder Woman TV movie. Still, this would be a great idea if they can make it work.
Maybe one of these new projects could be Justice League Dark (which we covered in a previous article), the Guillermo del Toro penned movie which Collider brought us some new information on. Not much has been said about the project, but recently del Toro had this to say about the way DC wants to work the movie.
[quote]We’re still on [Justice League Dark] and writing and hopefully it will happen, but there’s no developments that are new. It’s still at Warners. They are making plans for the entire DC Universe, all the superheroes, all the mythologies, and part of that is Justice League Dark. They’re planning on TV, movies, all the media, so we have to fit within that plan.[/quote]
This looks like it ties into the strategy laid out with the possible Suicide Squad film so again it is a wait and see approach until more news is released. But while we wait, why not watch this fan film about the wisecracking friend of Booster Gold, the Blue Beetle? This is a pretty cool short which follows Ted’s return from the dead to his rather mundane way of feeding himself. It is a great series with a lot of love for the character showing through as well as references to other DC events and a general tongue-in-cheek view of Ted, which is just how I remember him from the comic books. Below is episode one but there are quite a few of these videos on YouTube which you would be well advised to watch if you are a fan of the blue guy.
Finally we look at some work not made by the big two comic giants. The first is the news that Sin City may become a TV show. Screen Crush reported the news that after A Dame to Kill For hits cinema screens (which we are still waiting patiently for Weinsteins to release so get a move on), we may see the characters appear in a series of small movies. Bob Weinstein was interviewed about Dimension, the banner he uses to create genre pieces and it is through this interview that he said he wanted to follow up the August release of the film with a TV series from Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez.
Now it is unclear if this will be new stories or left over Sin City stories but the main thing is that Miller and Rodriguez are still involved in the project. Fingers crossed we get more news on this when the film is released.
Secondly, we go to a TV project that has been in limbo for some time now, the Preacher series. Uproxx had the news that an unlikely source may be bringing this show to life and that source is none other than Seth Rogen? Well if this tweet is anything to go by then yes he is.
Seth and his writing and producing partner Evan Goldberg seem to be fully behind this thing and even though Seth’s portrayal of the Green Hornet crashed and burned (Editor’s Note: Debatable.) he may just have the dark comedy skills to pull this kind of thing off. Rogen’s comedy can certainly be dark at times and he certainly seems to have a passion for this amazing comic book series. With AMC behind them, it seems the ball is finally rolling along and we may yet get to see Arseface in live action. Not sure if that is a good thing or not!
As always, keep checking Grizzly Bomb to find out all your up to date superhero news with Hero Express!
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