Jon Favreau pre­miered the first Iron Man 2 footage at this years Comic Con. Many descrip­tions have appeared online, I’ve included two in-depth descrip­tions in the full post and sum­ma­rized below.

- The footage opens in the giant donut and a con­ver­sa­tion between Tony Stark and Nick Fury — Stark doesn’t want to join the team.
– It then cuts to a court­room scene that sees the gov­ern­ment attempt­ing to strip Stark of his Iron Man suit
– Rhodey enters to tes­tify against Stark.
– Whiplash is out to get Tony as revenge for the Stark fam­i­lies’ atroc­i­ties, explained by a voiceover whilst Rourke con­structs a suit of his own.
– There’s a quick shot of Black Widow in action and then Whiplash flick­ing his two great electro-whips.
– Justin Ham­mer (Sam Rock­well) is now seen, talk­ing about Iron Man suit mod­i­fi­ca­tions “fire­power” — retro­fitting guns and armor. Rhodey says he’ll take it.
– Then there’s a quick shot of the com­plete War Machine suit.

(more…)

We had a sneak pre­view of a Prince of Per­sia movie poster via a shop win­dow reflec­tion in Con­fes­sions of a Shopa­holic, said poster does not resem­ble the oddly futur­is­tic ones recently released. The intense black and white posters are gar­nished with strong typog­ra­phy that I don’t rate highly — it feels some­how that they have missed the point? “Deny the future”. Although some are argu­ing that this stops the movie look­ing like a video game to movie adap­ta­tion — it is sleek and slick and could help the film find its audience.

Prince of Per­sia movie posters

Click for high res­o­lu­tion version:

Gemma Arter­ton minus text

Ben Kings­ley

Expect a Ben Kings­ley poster shortly, not our first view­ing, but this one is par­tic­u­larly men­ac­ing! Scoop via Com­ing Soon.

More of Jake as Prince

The EW also have a new shot of one star­tled look­ing Jake Gyllenhaal,

Thanks Suzy, Jerry, Javier and Ivan!

What with Comic-con and all there’s a lot of Iron Man 2 news float­ing about; we’ve got new offi­cially released pic­tures of Scar­lett Johans­son as the Black Widow, Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, Don Chea­dle as Rhodey and Sam Rock­well as Justin Hammer.

The first trailer for the offi­cial Iron Man 2 video game has turned up, although don’t expect to see any movie footage or plot arc secrets; the video game is based upon a wholly dif­fer­ent storyline.

This brand-new tale takes gamers deeper into the world of Iron Man, adding to the excite­ment of the upcom­ing Mar­vel Stu­dios film. Iron Man 2 offers fans a chance to play against epic ene­mies not found in the film of the same name, such as the unfor­get­table Crim­son Dynamo. In the game’s orig­i­nal story, Tony Stark has gifted the world with new tech­nol­ogy in order to make it a bet­ter place. His phil­an­thropic nature isn’t enough to keep evil at bay, how­ever, as Iron Man’s ene­mies have crafted their own devi­ous designs based on the tech­nol­ogy. Ulti­mately, Iron Man will face epic bat­tles against huge ene­mies, as the fate of the world is left in his pow­er­ful hands.

The World of War­craft movie is offi­cially on the move, after many months of stag­na­tion we thought the project may have died a quiet death. How­ever, behind the scenes it seems there were some excit­ing dis­cus­sions and today, two years since the ini­tial announce­ment, Bliz­zard and Leg­endary pic­tures have named their direc­tor, one Sam Raimi.

Raimi has directed both the Spider-man and Evil Dead series, and may be a per­fect choice, as some­one that can take a huge wealth of core mate­r­ial (with a strong fan fol­low­ing) and deliver some­thing phenomenal.

Raimi is cur­rently set to direct Spider-man 4 which is due for release in 2011, pro­duc­tion hasn’t yet started on the fourth movie, which gives the World of War­craft movie a release date, at the ear­li­est, some­time in 2012. (Assum­ing Spider-man 4 begins early next year, takes one year to com­plete and meets its release date, and that the WOW movie has a sim­i­lar schedule).

Press release

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – July 22, 2009 — Bliz­zard Enter­tain­ment, Inc. and Leg­endary Pic­tures announced today that Sam Raimi has signed on to direct the eagerly-anticipated major motion pic­ture based on Bliz­zard Entertainment®’s award-winning War­craft® uni­verse. Raimi has, in the course of his career, clearly demon­strated a genius for devel­op­ing and adapt­ing exist­ing fic­tional uni­verses for main­stream audi­ences while stay­ing true to the spirit of the orig­i­nal con­tent.
Raimi directed the Spider-Man tril­ogy, which has bro­ken box-office records around the world and gar­nered five Acad­emy Award® nom­i­na­tions. Known for his imag­i­na­tive film­mak­ing style, richly drawn char­ac­ters and off­beat humor, Raimi wrote and directed the cult clas­sic, The Evil Dead and pro­duced 30 Days Of Night. He most recently wrote and directed the super­nat­ural thriller, Drag Me To Hell.

“At its core, War­craft is a fan­tas­tic, action-packed story,” said Raimi. “I am thrilled to work with such a dyna­mite pro­duc­tion team to bring this project to the big screen.”

Charles Roven’s pro­duc­ing tal­ents were recently seen with last summer’s block­buster The Dark Knight, which grossed in excess of $1 bil­lion, was nom­i­nated for eight Acad­emy Awards® and won two. His body of work also includes the widely acclaimed Bat­man Begins and the sci-fi clas­sic 12 Mon­keys. Roven, with Atlas pro­duc­ing part­ner Alex Gart­ner, will be pro­duc­ing with Leg­endary Pic­tures CEO Thomas Tull, Legendary’s Chief Cre­ative Offi­cer Jon Jashni, Raimi and Raimi’s pro­duc­ing part­ner Joshua Donen. Raimi’s part­ner, Robert Tapert, will be an Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer and Bliz­zard Entertainment’s Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Cre­ative Devel­op­ment, Chris Met­zen, a Co-Producer.

“Part­ner­ing with Sam Raimi exem­pli­fies Legendary’s man­date of mar­ry­ing the high­est qual­ity intel­lec­tual prop­erty to world-class film­mak­ers” said Legendary’s Tull. “Sam’s pas­sion for ‘War­craft’ is unde­ni­able and we know that he will cre­ate an incred­i­ble film wor­thy of Blizzard’s phe­nom­e­nal fran­chise. We look for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with our part­ners at Warner Bros. and con­tin­u­ing our suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ship with Chuck in bring­ing this rich new world to the screen.”

“Bliz­zard Enter­tain­ment and Leg­endary Pic­tures have a shared vision for this film and we searched at length to find the very best direc­tor to bring that vision to life,” said Paul Sams, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of Bliz­zard Enter­tain­ment. “From our first con­ver­sa­tion with Sam, we could tell he was the per­fect choice. Sam knows how to simul­ta­ne­ously sat­isfy the enthu­si­asts and the main­stream audi­ence that might be expe­ri­enc­ing that con­tent for the first time. We’re look­ing for­ward to work­ing with him to achieve that here.”

News has been slow, and that’s an under­state­ment — it’s been almost a year. I apol­o­gize that the con­tent of the blog hasn’t been updated more often, but the truth of it is, there hasn’t been any news. The Gears of War movie has slipped into pro­duc­tion hell; we can only spec­u­late as to why — inter­est, finance and sched­ul­ing are some of the biggest contenders.

The video game adap­ta­tion as such is still in very early stages, despite hav­ing announced that Len Wise­man would direct; news that may no longer hold true given the length of time since the last update. We cer­tainly won’t be meet­ing the rumored 2010 Sum­mer release date, if pro­duc­tion ramped up this com­ing Jan­u­ary the best we could hope for is Spring 2011.

Some fan art

To lighten the mood a lit­tle I give you some fan art pro­duced by Brian Speer, depict­ing Batista as Mar­cus and also fea­tur­ing The Rock, inevitably, com­ments on this post will now turn into a cast­ing discussion.

MakingOf have posted a great inter­view with Harold Ramis with exclu­sives on the Ghost­busters 3 project. A very insight­ful look into the devel­op­ment of the poten­tial sequel.

Back in March we com­mented on the pos­si­bil­ity that Natalie Port­man might play a “strong female lead” in the Thor movie adaptation.

An offi­cial state­ment from Mar­vel reports that Natalie Port­man has been cast as Jane Fos­ter, Don­ald Blake’s nurse. With such a big cast­ing set in present day planet Earth, it’s pos­si­ble that a good pro­por­tion of the movie may take place here, rather than Asgard — giv­ing us a lot of the human ver­sion of Thor.

Mar­vel comments,

Even the Mighty Thor can be thun­der­struck by affairs of the heart!

Mar­vel Stu­dios announced today that Acad­emy Award® nom­i­nated actress Natalie Port­man has been cast to star as Jane Fos­ter in the studio’s highly antic­i­pated movie “Thor.”

In the early “Thor” comics, Jane Fos­ter was a nurse who became Thor’s first love. The char­ac­ter will be updated for the fea­ture adaptation.

Port­man will star oppo­site Chris Hemsworth who will play Thor and Tom Hid­dle­ston who will play the vil­lain Loki. Ken­neth Branagh will direct the film.

Mar­vel Stu­dios expands its film uni­verse with a new type of super hero: “Thor.” This epic adven­ture spans the Mar­vel Uni­verse; from present day Earth to the realm of Asgard. At the cen­ter of the story is The Mighty Thor, a pow­er­ful but arro­gant war­rior whose reck­less actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as pun­ish­ment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dan­ger­ous vil­lain of his world sends the dark­est forces of Asgard to invade Earth.

Thanks Leroy!