Why are Cyclops and Jean Grey battling it out with Storm? Who knows, but perhaps this version of the character will start off on the site of Apocalypse before seeing the light and siding with Charles Xavier’s X-Men! We’ll have to wait and see on that one, but the concept art above is a much better quality version that what we saw previously. And hey, no more black leather!
X-Men: Apocalypse, directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past), will hit theaters on May 27, 2016 and stars Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Oscar Isaac (Apocalypse), Rose Byrne (Moira McTaggert), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Ben Hardy (Angel), Olivia Munn(Psylocke), Lucas Till(Havok) and Lana Condor (Jubillee).
“X-Men: Apocalypse” director Bryan Singer released a photo of himself standing in front of the Cerebro set on his Instagram, revealing the size and scope of Professor Xavier’s most famous mutant-locating device.
In the comics, Professor X created Cerebro in order to locate and recruit mutants for his school. The device appeared frequently in Singer’s original X-Men film trilogy, even becoming a plot device during “X2.” A prototype version appeared in “X-Men: First Class” and became fully functional in “X-Men: Days of Futures Past.”
Singer teased construction on the Cerebro set earlier this year and released some concept art that may indicate some changes on Cerebro’s design, though Singer’s latest tease looks more in line with its traditional film appearance.
X-Men: Apocalypse, directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past), will hit theaters on May 27, 2016 and stars Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Oscar Isaac (Apocalypse), Rose Byrne (Moira McTaggert), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Ben Hardy (Angel), Olivia Munn(Psylocke), Lucas Till(Havok) and Lana Condor (Jubillee).
This week’s Marvel Madness is chocked full of Matthew McConaughey, Chris Pratt’s movie contract, Daredevil, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the colour of Psylocke’s hair, and much much more!
Following his breakout roles in Mud, Magic Mike, Dallas Buyers Club, and “True Detective,” actor Matthew McConaughey has been more in-demand than ever before and apparently Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. wanted him in their respective cinematic universes. Speaking with Variety, McConaughey was asked if he’d ever consider being in a superhero movie and revealed that he has been courted by both studios before.
“I’ve read some Marvel and DC scripts and I’ve talked about working with them on some scripts, none of which I’ll share with with you what they are — or were. Yeah, I’ve circled some of those. Nothing has been right for me yet. But I’m sure open to it.”
McConaughey was then asked what would convince him to be a part of one, saying:
“It’s very simple for me. I look at the script. Is the opportunity exciting? Is the money that comes with it exciting? Sure. Is it the possibility of going, ‘Hey you can get on a train and it can be a franchise and you could do 3, 4, 5, and have a great time as some kind of superhero or anti-hero.’ But I would also look at something like that and say, ‘Hey, in success that means you are on the train for a while.’ Contractually, you’re going to return to the character over and over. It’s something I asked myself is it something I’d want to return to. Would I be excited to go back and put the shoes on the character again? Going and doing the press tour with that group of people again? I always ask myself those questions again. It starts with the story and character.”
When Marvel Studios began building their cinematic universe they have the foresight to lock up their future movie stars to multiple films, removing the possible contractual potholes that could appear down the road. Now that Guardians of the Galaxy has grossed a gazillion dollars fans of the MCU are interested in knowing how many films its star Chris Pratt is obligated to do. GQ got some answers.
Guardians of the Galaxy was the making of Pratt, but however effortless it may have seemed on-screen, the movie’s deft combination of action and comedy, sincerity and levity, didn’t come easily.
“[Guardians director] James Gunn had a hard time working with me for about the first half of the movie,” Pratt explains. “He’ll say—and I wouldn’t want to be quoted [sounding like I was] saying this about myself—I’m a much more cerebral person than you may expect. You may see this guy who’s sort of like goofy and funny and doesn’t give two shits, but really I’m thinking a lot, in my head below the surface.” Too much, in fact, so that sometimes Pratt would lose track of the natural instincts Gunn had liked. “It’s a little bit like a Venus flytrap,” says Pratt. “If you stick your finger in and it closes, it takes like a week to open back up. So he had a hard time working with me because he’d tell me something, or I’d do something, and the next thing you know he couldn’t get me back to where I started originally.”
“I think that he had gotten a lot of success over the past few years being the funny sidekick,” says Gunn, “which means that he always has to juggle to entertain everybody. And the truth is, Chris didn’t trust himself to just be Chris Pratt—and how desirable that is to an audience.”
“I thought I was bad,” Pratt concurs. “I thought I was doing bad acting. I would just think: My bullshit meter’s going off. This screams inauthentic to me.” Pratt says that Gunn had little patience with this. “He’s like, ‘Who gives a shit what you think? I don’t fucking care!’ “
He’d literally say that?
“Yes! He’d be, ‘It’s not your fucking movie, dude, it’s mine! Trust me and shut the fuck up and do what the fuck I tell you, and scream it!’ He’s like, ‘More! Louder!’ I would get pissy because as an actor, you sometimes hate that direction: Louder, faster. But it’s true—sometimes you have to be louder, speak more clearly, let the words do the work, and just get out of the way.”
“I think being the center of focus on the actual movie set,” says Gunn, “and having to learn this balance, which I think he had never learned before, of both allowing himself to be the center of attention while simultaneously realizing in what areas he is completely unimportant—that’s what being a movie star is, and it’s a very difficult balance for someone to learn.”
They say the suit makes the man, and with a hero whose look has become as iconic as Daredevil’s, that applies ten-fold.
With the Netflix Original Series “Marvel’s Daredevil,” the creators behind the series had to reimagine Matt Murdock’s classic suit to fit in with the grounded, street-level tone of the series. In order to accomplish this, they looked to the team of designers and costume artists at Marvel Studios—headed up by Ryan Meinerding—to take a crack at some of the visuals and designs for the series.
“Joe Quesada got in touch and asked if I could help out,” recalls Meinerding. “Our whole team actually did designs, [including] Rodney Fuentebella, Andy Park, Jackson Sze, Josh Nizzi, and Anthony Francisco. I think we all did a round of designs as fast as we could, and they settled on one of mine. Beyond that, we did our normal process of modeling the head and the cowl [in] 3D with Josh Herman, and then I was involved throughout the costume creation process.”
Marvel CCO–and one of the series’ Executive Producers–Joe Quesada, known for an immensely influential run as the artist on Daredevil’s comic series, also had a hand in the series’ designs.
“The starting point is always story,” explains Quesada. “We had to come up with a logical reason as to how someone with Matt Murdock’s means and ability to actually make a costume could make that dramatic of a leap from the vigilante costume to the super hero [suit]. Once that logic was in play, which was the Melvin Potter of it all, we had to build to that point. I think if we had gone to that red costume too soon, it would have caused a lot of viewers to bump on the material, because it was so grounded in the real world.”
The “Melvin Potter of it all” refers to the character who, in the series, actually helps Matt build his final Daredevil suit. Having a character like Potter, a mechanic, actually develop and build the costume in the series gave the team a basis to work off of.
“The tone that was really communicated was the sense of realism that they were going for,” relates Meinerding. “I think the way that [manifested itself in] the costume was through the armor and making it feel a little bit more padded than you traditionally think of Daredevil being. When we do these designs, there’s a concept of grounded and a concept of reality. The grounded nature that they brought to the vigilante costume was the simplicity and effectiveness, because you’re trying to conceal your identity but also [have to be] mobile enough to fight. “When you do a super hero costume in that world, it’s hard to be as real as you need to be, because you’re making it heightened. So you try and find the touchstones for that with armoring pieces that you would want armored, like your shins and your forearms for blocking and hitting as well as having things be riveted on. The overall layout of that costume is really that it’s meant to look like a Kevlar vest with stuff underneath it. That’s what we were going for.”
Quesada commends Meinerding’s work, commenting on many of those “touchstones” added to the design.
“One of my favorite parts of the costume is that if you look very, very closely at some of the way the armature is attached to the costume, you can actually see rivets,” Quesada elaborates. “There was something about that particular element that I told Ryan, we should lean into that a little bit because that is so quintessentially New York and how the city itself is constructed. And Melvin Potter, being who a guy who’s working on engines [and] a bunch of different things, rivets seem like something he would use. Ryan also did some great stuff with respect to the placement of blacks against the red, the way that the darker portions of the mask are constructed to really give the full feeling of when comic artists draw that mask and rim light it in red while leaving the center portions black.”
Daredevil’s cowl remains one of the most defining characteristics of his look, lending him the nickname of Hornhead, so that in particular had to come out just right.
“The horns are iconic, and we had to be careful as to how we handled them,” remarks Quesada. “I think what Ryan did is absolutely spectacular, when you really look at the structure of the helmet and the horns, because those can be done in a way where they actually look silly. He created an architectural design, an angular design for the horns, that just feels natural to the cowl.”
As Quesada hinted, bringing that cowl to life wasn’t as simple as slapping a couple of horns on and calling it a day.
“One of the most interesting things about Daredevil, that I hadn’t fully appreciated before I started working on the character, is that I think that head is one of the most difficult heads to design for a live action context,” confesses Meinerding. “Because if you have a mask like Captain America’s, it’s difficult in it’s own ways, but you still have the actor’s eyes coming through. So you get performance, you get a sense of who they are, of their expression, of what they’re doing. [As a result] the bottom half of the face matches the top half, in terms of expression. With Daredevil, because half of his face has to be covered and has its own expression and the actor’s face is going to be doing something else, it’s actually a very difficult challenge to come up with something up top that’s not going to bump with something down below.”
In the end, one more element had to fall in place before Daredevil’s final suit could fully harken to the iconic look from the comics.
“The billy clubs, designed by Andy Park, were also very important,” stresses Quesada. “There was a discussion early in the process, because Charlie Cox [and his stunt double] Chris Brewster are both right handed, of having the billy clubs holster on the right leg. But Daredevil wears those billy clubs on the left hand side. So while it would have been easier to place the holster on the right we all felt that we had to keep to the classic profile and keep them on the left. It made life a bit more difficult for Charlie and Chris, but they caught on pretty quickly. No matter how you sliced it, they were going to have to holster the billy clubs without looking because lets face it, DD would have no need to look.
“Ultimately I think the silhouette is always what’s really important. Does it look heroic? Does it look like our character? If he stands on the parapet of a roof and turns his head and we see those devil horns, is it Daredevil? I think that’s where Ryan succeeded and exceeded all of our expectations. It’s Daredevil.”
Kicking off Marvel’s 2017 plans, the second year of “Phase 3″ of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the first year the studio will have three theatrical releases, will be the sequel to surprise hit Guardians of the Galaxy. Writer and director James Gunn was confirmed to helm GOTG 2 before its predecessor even opened in theaters and he’s already working hard developing the followup.
Over the weekend, Gunn held another live Q&A session via Twitter’s Periscope livestreaming app, and spoke quite a lot about Guardians of the Galaxy 2. In responding to questions, he explains that he’s been rushing to get the sequel’s script done and has already completed a draft, only now finally taking a breather. He’s aiming to complete it before heading to Columbia next month to shoot his next film, The Belco Experiment, which he is writing and producing.
As we reported in early April, Gunn was very quick to submit a lengthy 70-page story treatment to Marvel’s creative committee, not long after pitching a story for the sequel which Gunn claims is “risky” for Marvel in how different and original it is compared to the comics. The “story about fathers,” as Gunn labels it already has at least one draft of the script done which he’s revising and tweaking. Production begins next February so there’s still a long while before concrete details begin leaking out from him and Marvel Studios.
What we do know from this latest Q&A is that one new main character will be joining the team in GOTG 2 and from our talks with Gunn during the Guardians of the Galaxy press junket, he made it clear that he wants at least two female members on the team in the next film. He also hinted that someone familiar may join the team. If it’s not an Avenger (which Gunn has also hinted at in the past) an easy guess would be Yondu (Michael Rooker) who in the comics is a future member of the team and who we know has a major part in the sequel as well, returning alongside his right-hand man, Kraglin (played by James Gunn’s brother, Sean Gunn).
When asked about casting newcomers for Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Gunn revealed that the process has already sort of begun. He’s already talking with someone about playing the character he has in mind, a new Guardian, as he labels it. We don’t yet know who that is, but in terms of the core Guardians of the Galaxy roster, we’re guessing based on Gunn’s words since the first movie came out, that there will be two additions to the team: someone we’ve met and someone we haven’t who he’s talking to now – even if it’s informal talks at this point.
Star Wars creator George Lucas thinks that a new Howard The Duck movie could be a hit—so long as Marvel Studios rendered the titular fowl in computer generated imaging.
“Someday, I hope, Marvel will make a new version of Howard the Duck, and you’ll see it could be a good movie,” Lucas told Wired Magazine. “A digital duck will make that thing work.”
This comment may prompt an eye-roll or two from those familiar with Lucas’ career. Though celebrated as the creator of Star Wars, Lucas has been equally criticized for his over-reliance on CGI effects in the Star Wars prequels, and for stuffing CGI effects into his classic Star Wars trilogy for the “Special Editions” released in 2004.
Interestingly, Lucas served as executive producer on Marvel’s 1986 Howard The Duck movie. Though nary a pixel was to be found, the film is still generally regarded as one of Marvel’s worst. But now that Marvel Studios has brought the character (in full CGI) into their cinematic universe through Guardians of the Galaxy, perhaps Lucas will get his wish.
Phil Lord spoke briefly to The Hippojuice Podcast (via /Film) about the upcoming animated Spider-Man film he and Chris Miller have in early development at Sony Pictures, although it doesn’t sound like there are any solid details to share quite yet.
NON-MCU STUFF!
X-Men: Apocalypse hair designer Felix Lariviere has confirmed, via Twitter, that Psylocke will have purple hair in X-Men: Apocalypse.
In the comics, Psylocke is a British woman and natural blonde. She dyed her hair purple during her early pursuit of a modelling career. Even after Betsy was forced to body swap with the Asian assassin Revanche, she continues to be drawn with purplish hair (black with a purple shine, at its subtlest).
Olivia Munn will play Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse. I’m sure fans will be eager to see the results of her purple dye job.
The X-Men: Days of Future Past – Rogue Cut Blu-ray release will feature a sneak peek at the upcoming Fantastic Four movie.
The Fantastic Four preview is part of the over 90 minutes of never before seen special features promised to be included with the release, in addition to the Rogue Cut itself. The Rogue Cut Blu-ray also includes the theatrical version of Days of Future Past.
The Rogue Cut will add 17 minutes to the theatrical cut of X-Men: Days of Future Past, including a restored action sequence featuring Rogue (Anna Paquin) breaking out of a Sentinel controlled prison camp.
Other special features included on the Rogue Cut Blu-ray are:
Audio Commentary by Bryan Singer and John Ottman for the Rogue Cut Audio Commentary by Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg for the theatrical cut. Mutant vs Machine X-Men: Unguarded Gallery Second Screen App
X-Men: Days of Future Past – Rogue Cut will be released July 14.
And that’s all folks! Hope you have been now inundated with all things Marvel for awhile, BUT be sure to check back next week for more!
A bunch of X-Men related news has been released during the week so I decided to collect all of that and put it into this X-Men Excellence news omnibus just to make it easier for you and me both!
Potential plot and casting details for X-Men: Age of Apocalypse have hit the Internet, giving fans the most detailed description of the upcoming X-film yet.
The updates come from a casting call for the film’s Quebec production location. While the casting agency’s description of the film could have stemmed from rumors instead of actual word from Fox Studios, it does provide a possible road map for the film’s overall direction. And if the casting call’s words are to be believed, it looks like Apocalypse will indeed include Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Channing Tatum’s Gambit. Just cross our claws and playing cards that this description actually holds some truth.
Here’s the full description:
If you would like to be part of the X-Men: Apocalypse Starring Jennifer Lawrence – Movie Casting Call in 2015 please read the info below:
It has all lead to this. All of the battles (both outside and within the group), action, relationships and time travel that the uncanny X-Men have endured have lead to this, their biggest story ever – X-Men: Apocalypse. Following the universe changing events of 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past comes this epic mutant adventure and with it a number of casting opportunities for performers of all ages.
X-Men: Apocalypse will follow the super powered mutants battling their most powerful foe yet, the devious and devastatingly dangerous Apocalypse. This legendary villain uses his incredible abilities to alter his physical form, access other mutant superpowers and telekinesis to recruit a cult-like group called the Four Horsemen to be his servants and do his bidding in an all out war against the X-Men.
The cast of X-Men: Apocalypse will feature a who’s who of X-Men characters and some of Hollywood’s most talented performers playing them including Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games) as Mystique, Channing Tatum (21 Jump Street) as Gambit, Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave) as Magneto, Golden Globe nominee James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland) as Charles Xavier, Academy Award nominee Hugh Jackman (Les Misérables) as Wolverine, 2-time Golden Globe nominee Rose Byrne (Neighbors) as Moira MacTaggert, Nicholas Hoult (Warm Bodies) as Beast, Olivia Munn (The Newsroom) as Psylocke, 3-time Screen Actors Guild Award nominee Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones) as Jean Grey, Kodi Smit-McPhee (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) as Nightcrawler, Alexandra Shipp (Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B) as Storm, Tye Sheridan (The Stanford Prison Experiment) as Cyclops and Golden Globe nominee Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens) as the villain Apocalypse.
Variety reports that Fox has signed “The Fault in Our Stars” director Josh Boone to direct the X-Men spinoff “The New Mutants,” which introduces several new characters to the “X-Men” movie universe.
Boone will also co-write the script for the untitled project with Knate Gwaltney. Producers are Simon Kinberg with Lauren Shuler Donner.
Boone’s “Fault in Our Stars,” starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, was a surprise hit for Fox, with over $300 million in worldwide grosses on a $12 million budget. He’s also attached to direct Stephen King’s “The Stand” for Warner Bros. and has said that the studio is planning a four-part franchise.
Created by Chris Claremont and artist Bob McLeod in 1982, the New Mutants comic book followed a new, younger group of students at the Charles Xavier School For Gifted Youngsters. The original team consists of Cannonball (invulnerable human rocket), Karma (telepath), Mirage aka Dani Moonstar (manifests empathic 3D illusions), Sunspot (solar powered flight and strength) and Wolfsbane (werewolf transformation). Rather than trying to save the mutant race, the New Mutants stories typically focused on what it meant to grow up away from home, possessing awesome and terrible super powers. Typical themes tackled by Claremont and McLeod included teenage angst, hormones, diversity, discrimination and acceptance.
Fox’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past” delivered solidly for the studio last summer with $748 million in worldwide grosses. It’s dated Ryan Reynolds’ “Deadpool” for Feb. 12, followed by Bryan Singer’s “X-Men: Apocalypse” on May 27, 2016, and its developing another Wolverine movie with Hugh Jackman, as well as a “Gambit” project with Channing Tatum attached to star.
Boone also appears to be a super X-Men fan as by the following tweets prove that he is the personification of X-Men fandom!
Ryan Reynolds has taken to Instagram to reveal a brand new image from Deadpool. It doesn’t reveal too much about the movie and is a little less humorous than previous efforts, but that makes it no less awesome! The photo was clearly taken when they were shooting on that overpass in Vancouver, and this is a really fantastic shot of the popular Marvel character in action. Reynolds also Instagrammed a photo of himself in the Deadpool costume “trying to kill” Mario Lopez again!
Star Ryan Reynolds (X-Men: Origins: Wolverine) has been gifting fans with teaser images like the ones above for a few months now showcasing the fan favorite Deadpool doing well… Deadpool-esque things. Early last month, he also appeared with ExtraTV’s Mario Lopez (Saved By The Bell) in an elaborate April Fool’s Day prank video that announced that the film will indeed be rated R.
We see from above another behind-the-scenes snapshot of Reynolds and Lopez together on set and now, the full video from the set visit has been released featuring Reynolds fully decked out in his Deadpool costume. Check it out below:
Based upon Marvel Comics’ most unconventional anti-hero, Deadpool tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.
Deadpool is directed by Tim Miller, and stars Ryan Reynolds (Wade Wilson), Morena Baccarin (Vanessa Carlysle), T.J. Miller (Weasel), with Ed Skrein, and Brianna Hildebrand (Ellie Phimister). The movie is scheduled to hit theaters on February 12, 2016.
Director Bryan Singer has once again returned to Instagram to share a behind the scenes photo from the set of X-Men: Apocalypse. This one features a young girl flanked by bow and arrow wielding soldiers, along with the caption “The past catches up”.
After that mysterious image of a youngster in a forest clearing surrounded by armed soldier types, Bryan Singer has released another head scratcher from the X-Men: Apocalypse set. As the director explains himself in the accompanying text, this is a “mutant guided incoming owl” – so what can we glean from that? Canadian Alpha Flight member Snowbird can transform into a large white owl, but she wasn’t a mutant in the comics and didn’t actually control animals which is what seems to be happening here. Do any of the other characters from this movie fit that description?
X-Men: Apocalypse, directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past), will hit theaters on May 27, 2016 and stars Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Oscar Isaac (Apocalypse), Rose Byrne (Moira McTaggert), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Ben Hardy (Angel), Olivia Munn (Psylocke), Lucas Till (Havok) and Lana Condor (Jubillee).
The X-Men: Days Of Future Past – Rogue Cut will arrive in stores on Blu-ray/DVD on July 14th, which is a significant date in the history of the franchise as its also the date the original X-Men film premiered in the year 2000. Director Bryan Singer went on to tease the new cut, which will include about 17-20 minutes of new footage, now including Anna Paquin’s scenes as fan favorite mutant Rogue and also including new scenes with Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique and Nicholas Hoult’s Beast, amongst others. He didn’t say much more, but he did take us on a quick tour of a steel mill set made for the currently shooting X-Men: Apocalypse that he says Michael Fassbender’s Magneto is going to have some serious fun at.
You can pre-order the Rogue Cut on DigitalHD by clicking HERE.
The latest BTS image from the set of X-Men: Apocalypse is light on mutants, but we are introduced the Cyclops and Havok’s folks. Though Scott and Alex Summers obviously share a surname, it’s never actually been confirmed that the two characters were brothers until now. The X-movie timeline is kind of all over the place after so much retconning and semi-rebooting, but since we know Lucas Till is returning as Havok and Tye Sheridan is playing Cyclops, it’s safe to assume they’ve made the latter the younger of the two.
Since X-Men: First Class was released in 2011, fans have been wondering when James McAvoy would shave his head to portray Charles Xavier in the same way as the comic books. There were no signs in X-Men: Days of Future Past of the character losing his hair, but we now know for sure that he’ll be bald in next year’s X-Men: Apocalypse. It took a while, but this is definitely long overdue.
X-Men: Apocalypse, directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past), will hit theaters on May 27, 2016 and stars Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Oscar Isaac (Apocalypse), Rose Byrne (Moira McTaggert), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Ben Hardy (Angel), Olivia Munn(Psylocke), Lucas Till(Havok) and Lana Condor (Jubillee).
In the video above (apologies for the poor quality), Hugh Jackman reiterates that 2017’s Wolverine movie will be the final time he plays the character. There have been rumours that Bryan Singer is moving on after X-Men: Apocalypse – presumably so the franchise can focus on the new actors playing younger versions of the likes of Cyclops and Jean Grey – and so it makes sense that The Wolverine 3 will be a farewell of sorts to the original timeline which kicked off back in 2000.
“It is my last time,” Jackman said in an interview earlier today in his home country. “It just felt like it was the right time to do it. And let’s be honest, 17 years. I never thought in a million years it would last, so I’m so grateful to the fans for the opportunity of playing it.I kind of have in my head what we’re going to do in this last one. It just feels like this is the perfect way to go out.”
It’s not clear if a new Wolverine will be cast of whether Fox are going to put the character on the shelf for a few years, but Jackman’s time as the clawed mutant is over.
We’ve seen blurry set photos, but Bryan Singer has now taken to Instagram to share the first “official” image of Sophie Turner as Jean Grey and Lana Condor as Jubilee in X-Men: Apocalypse. To say they look like they’ve been torn straight from the pages of the comics would be an understatement.
While this isn’t a still from X-Men: Apocalypse, it is our best look yet at Sophie Turner and Lana Condor as Jean Grey and Jubilee in the 1983 set movie. X-Men: Days of Future Past didn’t look that much different to X-Men: First Class in terms of aesthetics, but it’s clear that the follow-up will fully embrace the decade its set in.
X-Men: Apocalypse, directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past), will hit theaters on May 27, 2016 and stars Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Oscar Isaac (Apocalypse), Rose Byrne (Moira McTaggert), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Ben Hardy (Angel), Olivia Munn(Psylocke), Lucas Till(Havok) and Lana Condor (Jubillee).
As we look forward into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we see Captain America: Civil War, Ant-Man, and…Spider-Man! In a new interview with Crave Online, Marvel CEO Kevin Feige reveals that they’ve had plans for that character (Spider-Man) for a long time and says how he will web his way into the MCU. “Spider-Man we knew about when we were doing that announcement in October. We’ve been thinking about it as long as we’ve been thinking about Phase Three.” He then continues, “In Spider-Man’s very specific case, where there have been two retellings of that origin in the last whatever it’s been – [thirteen] years – for us we are going to take it for granted that people know that, and the specifics. It will not be an origin story. But, with great power comes great responsibility. It is inherent to who his character is. But we want to reveal it in different ways and spend much more time focusing on this young high school kid in the MCU dealing with his powers.”
Besides the Wall-Crawler, he also talked about one of the other heroes that just recently entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Daredevil! Feige reveals that he hasn’t yet watched the full series, but he’s very excited about adding him into the MCU. “I don’t know. I think once something is back in the universe, as certainly Daredevil is, it’s all fair game. It’s just adding more toys outside the sandbox that we can grab to pull in the sandbox. I hear D’Onofrio’s awesome in that. I haven’t seen the whole show.”
Even though Daredevil isn’t a super-powered hero, Feige does talk about a group of super-powered heroes who we will be seeing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s future very soon (The Inhumans)! “I think they’re beginning to seed a lot of that in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show, but the notion from the comics that I think is interesting, is the notion of needing to have this DNA that could be activated by the [Terrigen] Mists, which is what’s so cool about Inhumans to me.” As you know, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. debuted Marvel’s first Inhumans! Will the show carry over into the big screen film? Kevin Feige certainly thinks so! “I think they’re beginning to seed a lot of that in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show, but the notion from the comics that I think is interesting, is the notion of needing to have this DNA that could be activated by the [Terrigen] Mists, which is what’s so cool about Inhumans to me.”
When asked if he would want to reacquire the X-Men franchise from Fox, just as he did with Spider-Man and Sony Pictures, Feige answered in the positive, saying “Well, the answer would always be “yes,” I think, to getting them back. But I think they have a solid plan over that at Fox for a while.”
For those of you who have not seen Avengers: Age of Ultron yet, it’ll be best that you DO NOT read the rest of this interview and more, for it contains SPOILERS!
For those of you who HAVE seen the film (or those of you who do not care about spoilers), let’s get started shall we? Captain America: Civil War, as most of you saw, was set up in Avengers: Age of Ultron, mainly in that awesome scene where The Vision was born! When asked about whether or not Iron Man will have an “Iron Army” fighting against Captain America, Feige responded, “They’re not fighting a lot of Iron People, I’ll tell you that. There’s a lot of people in the movie.” He then elaborated, “Well, there’s a lot of references I think are great. Some of it is just the tension bubbling up between friends, which is why I showed that log-chopping scene at the event last October, if you remember. Some of it is, Thor finally realizing something’s going on here, in a galactic sense. Somebody’s screwing with us. He’s going to go off and investigate that, and the Tesseract, and the orb in Guardians [of the Galaxy], the sceptre in this movie”
Infinity Stones huh? Feige reveals that we’ve already seen the Mind Stone in the Vision, the Space Stone (the Tesseract), The Aether, and The Orb, but there are two that are still missing. “It’s definitely the Mind Stone that is now in the Vision. Space, you’re right. Time and Soul are the two that are not accounted for. Basically there are two we haven’t introduced yet, but the others are more or less accounted for.”
Time has put together an infographic that maps out the connections between Marvel’s movies and television series, including the Netflix Defenders shows, ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.and Agent Carter, current films Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man, and Phase 3 movies like Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, and Captain Marvel.
The Age of Ultron’s mid-credits stinger revealed that, Thanos has officially seized an Infinity Gauntlet and declared that he’ll collect the Infinity Stones himself. Of course, the Gauntlet—which holds all six of the Marvel Universe’s Infinity Stones—was last seen in Odin’s trophy room in Thor. This lead some viewers to wonder how Thanos broke into Asgard’s vaults and took the gauntlet so easily.
But, Marvel Studios Head Kevin Feige recently clarified that Thanos’ gauntlet is not the same one on Asgard. Meaning: the Marvel Cinematic Universe has two Infinity Gauntlets. As Feige put it:
“There are two different gloves,” he told CinemaBlend. “That was not Odin’s vault that you see at the end.”
Ant-Man will be in theaters July 17, 2015; Captain America: Civil War – May 6, 2016; Doctor Strange – November 4, 2016; Guardians of the Galaxy 2 – May 5, 2017; Spider-Man reboot – July 28, 2017; Thor: Ragnarok – November 3, 2017; The Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 – May 4, 2018; Black Panther – July 6, 2018; Captain Marvel – November 2, 2018; The Avengers: Infinity War Part 2 – May 3, 2019; Inhumans – July 12, 2019.
The X-Men: Apocalypse concept art below courtesy of Empire is very interesting indeed, and that Blackbird looks like perhaps the best version of the iconic jet to date. We can also see that Charles Xavier is back in his wheelchair, but still has hair. Is he ever going bald?! There’s also a glimpse of ancient Egypt, with confirmation from Bryan Singer that the movie will partially take place in those times.
There’s been a lot of grumbling about the sheer amount of mutants that X-Men: Apocalypse appears to be cramming in, but fear not, because regardless of how many cameos the movie ends up featuring, the three who matter will be taking on well-deserved leading roles. “They’re as much a part of the movie as our main cast,” writer and producer Simon Kinberg says of Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, and Alexandra Shipp. “Scott is not yet the squeaky-clean leader. Storm is a troubled character who is going down the wrong path in life. And Jean is complex, interesting and not fully mature. It’s fun to see someone struggling with their powers when you know one day they’ll become the most powerful person in the world.” Director Bryan Singer meanwhile promises an X-Men movie very different to what’s come before, and that’s mostly down to the addition of Oscar Isaac’s Apocalypse. “It’s a big monster of a movie. The stakes are so high and global and the villain is so mythic. It’s definitely an X-Men movie, but it really feels different.”
Filming for X-Men: Apocalypse has commenced this week and we now have our first looks at Tye Sheridan as Cyclops/Scott Summers, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, Lana Condor as Jubilee/Jubilation Lee and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagner on the set.
They’re shooting a scene in a mall, set in 1983. It may be a scene involving other mutants recruiting Jubilee as the animated series and the comics used the location for that. If it is anything like the animated series we can expect Jubilee to be under threat and the other coming to her rescue.
Sheridan can be seen sporting new Cyclops visors. Nightcrawler is wearing a red leather jacket like the one Michael Jackson wore in the Thriller music video. Sophie Turner’s hair has been dyed (or it’s a wig) bright-red.
Here is some other BTS shots revealing our first unofficial look at Tye Sheridan as Scott Summers/ Cyclops, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey and Lana Condor as Jubilation Lee/ Jubilee, as well as another look at Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler in very 1980’s clothing!
RUMOUR TERRITORY:
After what will be 16 years and 9 films, it appears Bryan Singer’s X-Men Universe may be coming to an end in 2017. Umberto Gonzalez is reporting that Singer’s X-MEN: APOCALYPSE & James Manglod’s WOLVERINE 3 may serve to cap-off the current series of films, as speculated when Hugh Jackman confirmed that the currently untitled Wolverine solo film would be his last outing as the character, and with the film rumored to adapt Mark Millar’s OLD MAN LOGAN story-arc.
X-Men: Apocalypse, directed by Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past), will hit theaters on May 27, 2016 and stars Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Oscar Isaac (Apocalypse), Rose Byrne (Moira McTaggert), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Ben Hardy (Angel), Olivia Munn(Psylocke), Lucas Till(Havok) and Lana Condor (Jubillee).
daily nerd access 