Latino Review are report­ing that Tim Rob­bins is set to play Howard Stark whilst char­ac­ters Hawk­eye and Black Widow are rumored to make an appear­ance in the Iron Man sequel:

From what I’m told, Tim Rob­bins is going to be play­ing Howard Stark in an impor­tant flash­back sequence that is going to set up the Avengers and Cap­tain Amer­ica films. Jon [Favreau] wanted to get a good actor because he didn’t think the guy who played Howard in the last film could carry such an impor­tant scene.

The scooper goes on,

I’m also told that HAWKEYE and BLACK WIDOW are def­i­nitely in Iron Man 2 and they wont be cameos either.

The nom­i­na­tions for the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild have been announced, with Heath Ledger in the run­ning for best male actor in a sup­port­ing role. The cer­e­mony will take place on Sun­day, Jan 25th, with a simul­cast Live on TNT and TBS at 8 PM ET/PT.

Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance by a Male Actor in a Sup­port­ing Role
JOSH BROLIN / Dan White — “MILK” (Focus Fea­tures)
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. / Kirk Lazarus — “TROPIC THUNDER” (Para­mount Pic­tures)
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN / Father Bren­dan Flynn — “DOUBT” (Mira­max Films)
HEATH LEDGER / Joker — “THE DARK KNIGHT” (Warner Bros. Pic­tures)
DEV PATEL / Older Jamal — “SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE” (Fox Search­light Pictures)

Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance by a Stunt Ensem­ble in a Motion Pic­ture
THE DARK KNIGHT (Warner Bros. Pic­tures)
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY (Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures)
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (Para­mount Pic­tures)
IRON MAN (Para­mount Pic­tures)
WANTED (Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures)

Seems like the tabloids are at it again, this time with rumors that Rachel Weisz will be play­ing Cat Woman, Shia LaBoeuf to play Robin and Eddie Mur­phy as The Rid­dler — where do they get this crap? Suf­fice to say, it’s all made up drivel.

Time to get some real voices on the sequel to The Dark Knight; Alan Horn, pres­i­dent of Warner Bros. has recently spo­ken with Col­lider:

We’ve been talk­ing to Chris Nolan and what we have to do is get him in the right place and have him tell us what he thinks the notion might be for a great story, but Chris did a great job and we’d love to have him come back and do another one.”

As far as the tim­ing of the project, he went onto say: “The story is every­thing and we are very respect­ful of Chris. We have a won­der­ful rela­tion­ship with him and we are going to be respect­ful of his tim­ing and we want to get it right. Also, I think the fans expect that – they want us to make a ter­rific movie – we have to give them another great movie.”

UGO caught up with Justin Ther­oux recently and quizzed him about the progress of the Iron Man 2 script and the ongo­ing development:

JT: We’ve kind of got a first draft around. You know what I mean? I just got back from Lon­don where I was work­ing with Robert and Kevin Feige. He was out there. We were talk­ing with Robert, who’s out there doing Sher­lock Holmes, he was giv­ing his input and his notes. We’re sort of there. It’s just sort of chug­ging along. The crews, I think, are now start­ing to see what they need to make, and the places that we might be going and all the rest within the story. That’s sort of one of the more excit­ing times.

UGO: So you weren’t involved in the whole Don Cheadle/Terrence Howard…or were and you want to tell me something…

JT: No, I wasn’t. I gen­uinely wasn’t. (laughs)

UGO: There have been reports that the role of War Machine was scaled back and then beefed up.

JT: No, that’s all non­sense. What­ever their rea­son is, I’ll leave that up to Mar­vel. We’re writ­ing the thing, vir­tu­ally the same for Rhodey that we would for any actor. We’re really tak­ing what’s going to be the most inter­est­ing story for the fans, and what are they going to enjoy watch­ing. And who ever’s in that part is going to have to play that part and make it work for Jon (Favreau) and the fans who are watch­ing the movie.

UGO: So the size of the role wasn’t ever changed?

JT: No. God, no.

UGO: So did you have to, or did you try to accom­mo­date Don Cheadle’s act­ing style?

JT: I think that will prob­a­bly be some­thing that comes up…I haven’t met Don, and I think I’m going to in a lit­tle bit and I think once I get a bet­ter sense of his voice and also hear what he has to say about what he likes about the char­ac­ter and just pick his brain a lit­tle bit, then we’ll obvi­ously start to tai­lor it to him. Once he sort of gets more involved in the process then we’ll start taper­ing the length of his character…making it fit just right.

UGO: Everyone’s spec­u­lat­ing about the vil­lain. Are we talk­ing Man­darin? Or Evil DJ?

JT: (laughs) I think it’s Evil DJ. He could be the vil­lain in this movie. I don’t know. I mean, I do know but I’m not going to let that cat out. I’ll let Jon start dis­cussing when he thinks it’s the right time.

UGO: Con­sid­er­ing that everyone’s com­ing together for the Avengers movie, were you ever told that cer­tain things had to be in the story or that things had to go a cer­tain way?

JT: No. I mean, I think we’re all sort of con­scious of the fact that all these people…it is the Mar­vel uni­verse, but that’s really about as far as we’ve been made…they haven’t given us any instruc­tion as far as we want you to do this or we want you to do that. And really it’s not really a they/us kind of envi­ron­ment, the way they work. It’s just a bunch of guys and girls sit­ting in a room, try­ing to come up with stuff and doing what’s right for the movie and what, at the end of the day, is going to be the most inter­est­ing film that can be made. Kind of a fun film. I think once we’re sort of locked on that we’ll be able to think about how we can thread things through. There’s a cou­ple lit­tle things that we’ve been work­ing on, but it’s not that we’ve been tak­ing meet­ings with Avengers peo­ple. It’s not like we’re six screen­writ­ers sit­ting in a room from each movie and think­ing about how we’re gonna work on each other’s things.

UGO: Have you writ­ten Stan Lee’s cameo yet?

JT: No, I don’t think so. (laughs) I don’t know, I don’t know. Jon will anoint him with that cameo, I’m sure.

UGO: Gwyneth Pal­trow is still listed as “rumored”. Is she confirmed?

JT: I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s con­firmed or not…I’m plan­ning like she is there but I have no idea.

UGO: Finally, what voice do you think you bring to the script, to make it dif­fer­ent from the last one?

JT: I’m not really try­ing to bring a dif­fer­ent voice. I’m try­ing to mimic and sing in the same key as the script that was there before. If any­thing, I think I bring a knowl­edge of the way Robert’s mind works. I’ve worked with him once before. Hope­fully I’ve proven I have some mod­icum of cre­ative rela­tion­ship with Jon and Mar­vel. So I really think my job is to work with them and not try and strike any new chords. Of course we want to make the story dif­fer­ent and inter­est­ing. We want the action to be really good. But I think my job is really just to…serve the ulti­mate guy, which is Iron Man.

The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald are cur­rently report­ing that New South Wales and Vic­to­ria are in a bid­ding bat­tle to attract the busi­ness of The Green Lantern movie production.

The film­mak­ers have been scout­ing loca­tions and inter­view­ing key crew in Syd­ney for a movie with an esti­mated bud­get of more than $150 mil­lion. Cen­tring on a test pilot who uses a magic ring to become a crime-fighting superhero.

Alan Horn, pres­i­dent of Warner Bros., recently spoke to Col­lider about the future of Bat­man and other super heroes at the WB. The Green Lantern news comes towards the end of the brief inter­view, here is Collider’s transcript:

I then ask when we might be see­ing another Super­man. “Prob­a­bly in the next cou­ple of years. We’re very anx­ious to bring Super­man back also.”

I then say Green Lantern? “Also on the board. On the run­way. Hasn’t taken off yet, but we’re close.”

I finally ask what he thinks the next Super­hero prop­erty might be from Warner Bros. He says “I think Green Lantern is prob­a­bly the best guess but I can’t promise it at this moment.”

And Jus­tice League? “Not yet.”

The Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute has listed its top movies of 2008, and The Dark Knight is listed in it along with some pres­ti­gious company:

The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Frozen River
Gran Torino
Iron Man
Milk
WALL-E
Wendy and Lucy
The Wrestler

More of the same really, but SSH recently spoke with Frank Miller, ask­ing him about the 300 spin-off and Sin City 2.

With regards to Mickey Rourke’s recent com­ments con­cern­ing his hes­i­ta­tion in repris­ing his role as Marv, Frank says,

“He has a pretty big role. I hope Mickey plays it.”

And about Robert Rodriguez,

“I hope to work with Robert. We’re talk­ing it over and try­ing to work out the mechan­ics of actu­ally get­ting it made. It’s always tricky with movies. I believe that a movie’s going to come out as soon as I see its name on a marquee.”