In order to reach the May 6th 2011 dead­line release date for Spider-man 4, as much as pos­si­ble must be ready in time for the first pro­duc­tion day, as per usual, this means that the David Lindsay-Abaire penned script should be com­pleted by the end of sum­mer 2009, ‘about three months’ to be more pre­cise. SciFi wire also quizzed Raimi about poten­tial vil­lains for the fourth movie, but he declined to comment.

“We have to make the release date, and on all of these pic­tures, the ‘Spider-Man’ films–and I’m sure it’s the same as with many of the other bigger-budgeted films–they have release dates far in advance of a screenplay/ […] So it’s about get­ting it ready the best you can in time for the first day of pro­duc­tion. That’s what we’ve always done, and that’s what we’ll try to do again.”

“I’m not at lib­erty to dis­cuss the vil­lains yet. […] I think I have to wait till the fin­ished screen­play, and then it’d really be up to Sony Pic­tures and the pro­duc­ers to deter­mine when they want to release that infor­ma­tion. To them, it’s usu­ally a big, a big, big thing, a big moment where they want to present the vil­lain with the proper respect or fear that he or she deserves.”

Raimi has also spo­ken out about the cre­ative power he would like to wield for the next movie. This comes after the third movie whereby pre­sum­ably the stu­dio took over some of the cre­ative deci­sions (is that per­haps what lead to the crazy danc­ing Peter Parker scene?), via Empire:

“They really gave me a tremen­dous amount of con­trol on the first two films, actu­ally. […] But then there were dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the third film and I didn’t really have cre­ative con­trol, so to speak.

The best way for me to move for­ward on films, is that I’ve got to be the sin­gu­lar voice that makes the cre­ative choices on the film. I love Spider-Man so much that I’d like to con­tinue telling Spider-Man sto­ries. But only under those cir­cum­stances where I think I can hon­our him.”

The Chevy Camaro, Beat and Trax have each made an appear­ance at this year’s ShoW­est in Las Vegas, along­side the enor­mous robot Bum­ble­bee fig­ure. Flickr user deltaMike has been on hand to cap­tures some shots of the event, view gallery.

Via TLAMB

Trans­form­ers and ROTF writ­ers Orci and Kurtz­man have spo­ken with Scifi Wire about their work on Trans­form­ers 2. I have taken the lib­erty of sum­ma­riz­ing the inter­view with some bul­let points below:

- Both Sam and Opti­mus Prime are “tested in a very fun­da­men­tal way”.
– The theme is based on Sam leav­ing home two years later and his new respon­si­bil­i­ties.
– In search­ing for vil­lains they went back to the source mate­r­ial; comics and car­toons — “and just started look­ing for kind of the most ele­men­tal bad guy that kind of jumped off the mate­r­ial, and we found one in the Fallen.“
– Some char­ac­ters were cho­sen by Has­bro and Bay dur­ing writer’s strikes as dis­cus­sion between the film mak­ers and the film writ­ers was pro­hib­ited. Oth­ers were taken from a brief 20 page treat­ment. This was nec­es­sary to get the designs rolling.
– Orci says “Jolt” (as seen on the toy) should be named “Volt”.
– Jet­fire was in the treat­ment, whilst the goofy sure to be annoy­ing Mud­flap (Chevy Trax) was added later.
– “You’re not going to get to know them all”, with respect to pil­ing new char­ac­ters into the sec­ond movie.
– Some dis­cus­sion about Nimoy and Frank Welker voic­ing characters.

Read the full inter­view at Scifi Wire

This news seems to have hit a cou­ple of sta­tions in the last 24 hours, orig­i­nally miss-reported as Blink-182 writ­ing a track for Revenge of the Fallen. Blink-182 drum­mer is a twit­terer, and he did tweet:

Lis­ten­ing to a new ver­sion of a track I’m play­ing on for Busta Rhymes for the Trans­form­ers 2 sound­track. Shit is jammin’.

Not hugely news­wor­thy, we should get the film’s full sound­track track list­ing shortly, pos­si­bly in April.

‘Chi­naseller’ over at TFW2005 has posted a pre­vi­ously unseen Revenge of the Fallen repaint of the first movie’s Brawl toy, here be some pics, more in the orig­i­nal post:

The New Trans­form­ers Archive have posted pic­tures of:

Scout Dirt Boss
Scout Dead End
Scout Knock Out
Scout Roll­bar
Deluxe Sound­wave
Deluxe Side­swipe
Deluxe Side­ways
Deluxe Ram­page
Voy­ager Demolisher

We get an espe­cially good look at the Deluxe Ram­page toy, in alt mode and both robot modes (i.e. as a Jackhammer):

Para­mount Pic­tures and Mar­vel Stu­dios plan to release the much antic­i­pated Avengers movie on May 4th, 2012 — a delay of twelve months on the orig­i­nal 2011 date. Zak Penn, co-writer of The Incred­i­ble Hulk, is pen­ning the movie with inspi­ra­tion taken from Mark Mil­lar and Bryan Hitch’s Ulti­mates ver­sion of the team. Iron man direc­tor Jon Favreau is set to exec­u­tive pro­duce and there have been rumors that this delay may also put him inline to direct:

–Avengers is delayed a year because of financ­ing issues but also because the plan is for Favreau to helm it. Every­body here loves the guy and he wants to do it, but it would have been impos­si­ble for him to do before the date change given his Iron Man 2 com­mit­ments. Also partly the rea­son why he agreed to do the Stark sequel on such an accel­er­ated sched­ule was so he could get given first dibs on this. It would still be a pun­ish­ing sched­ule for him, so hes not firmly con­firmed yet, but he is cer­tainly the pre­sump­tive direc­tor at this point.

Marvel’s offi­cial word on which super­heros will appear in The Avengers is cur­rently lim­ited to a small blurb on a press release:

In a movie event, THE AVENGERS will bring together the super hero team of Mar­vel Comics char­ac­ters for the first time ever, includ­ing Iron Man, Cap­tain Amer­ica, Thor, the Hulk and more, as they are forced to band together to bat­tle the biggest foe they’ve ever faced.

Notably the words ‘includ­ing’ and ‘more’ are there, so we can be ready for fur­ther super hero announce­ments in the future as devel­op­ment continues.

Who’s in?

Iron Man — played by Robert Downey Jr.
Hulk, pre­sum­ably played by Ed Nor­ton though this is only rumored
Thor, cast­ing unknown
Cap­tain Amer­ica, cast­ing unknown
Nick Fury — played by Samuel L. Jackson

From Iron Man:
War Machine — played by Don Chea­dle
Black Widow — played by Scar­lett Johansson

Mar­vel press release about Iron Man 2 and The Avengers

ROBERT DOWNEY JR. AND JON FAVREAU SUIT UP FOR MARVEL STUDIOS’ THE AVENGERS AND IRON MAN 2

As part of his four pic­ture deal with Mar­vel Stu­dios, Robert Downey Jr. is appear­ing as Tony Stark in THE AVENGERS motion pic­ture, as well as repris­ing his star­ring role as the larger-than-life lead­ing char­ac­ter in IRON MAN 2. Jon Favreau will return to direct the sequel to the block­buster IRON MAN, which to date has grossed over $578 mil­lion world­wide, as well as exec­u­tive pro­duce THE AVENGERS.

DON CHEADLE WILL STAR AS RHODEY IN IRON MAN 2

Mar­vel Stu­dios is pleased today to con­firm that an agree­ment has been final­ized with award-winning actor Don Chea­dle to take on the role of Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes in Marvel’s IRON MAN 2 due in the­aters on May 7, 2010. In cast­ing Chea­dle, Mar­vel replaces Ter­rence Howard who appeared in the role of Rhodey in IRON MAN.

Chea­dle is also signed on to per­form the same role in THE AVENGERS and sub­se­quent install­ments of the IRON MAN franchise.

“We are very excited about work­ing with the extra­or­di­nar­ily tal­ented Don Chea­dle as we expand the role of Rhodey in Iron Man 2. It has already become appar­ent as we prep the movie for pro­duc­tion, that the dynamic between Robert and Don will take Iron Man 2 to new heights,” said Kevin Feige, Pres­i­dent of Mar­vel Stu­dios.

Insider Nikki Finke and her site Dead­line Hol­ly­wood Daily has spec­u­lated about the pos­si­ble cast­ing for Thor.

She com­ments that there is a big push to cast Josh Hart­nett as either Thor or the antag­o­nist Loki; whether this turns out to be the case is ques­tion­able, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing Hartnett’s pre­vi­ous refusal to play Super­man. There is also an equal force want­ing a rel­a­tively unknown actor to play the role; other actors inline include brits Char­lie Hun­nam and Tom Hid­dle­ston, Alexan­dar Skars­gard, Liam Hemsworth and Joel Kin­na­man.

Mean­while, quite sur­pris­ingly, Natalie Port­man is the cur­rent top choice as the female lead. /Film spec­u­late that this could be either of:

1. Amora the Enchantress, Thor’s Asgard love-interest and antag­o­nist.
2. Sif, Thor’s wife who is also a God­dess in Asgard.
3. Jane Fos­ter, Don­ald Blake’s nurse who even­tu­ally devel­ops feel­ings for him, with­out know­ing that Blake is Thor

Do you see Port­man as a God­dess or Enchantress?