We recently reported that the Iron Man sequel would be film­ing some big actions scenes at the Monaco Grand Prix. With this in mind, the lat­est news is that the Iron Man 2 crew are build­ing an enor­mous Monaco GP set com­plete with replica race­track at Downey Stu­dios in Downey, California.

One com­menter at SHH suggests,

This is sup­posed to be the famous car rac­ing scene where..stark is drunk as iron­man and gets pissed because he bet on a race car that is los­ing and sab­o­tages the races and blows up all the other cars..causing himm to fear is a hero or a nat­ural villain…good stuff?

Slightly ear­lier than expected, pre-order tick­ets for Revenge of the Fallen are now avail­able across the US. Esti­mated run­ning time is cur­rently some­where between 142 mins and 151 mins accord­ing to tick­et­ing sites. Tick­ets are also on sale at UK IMAX cin­e­mas, although these begin from June 26th, with a 3:20am show­ing — strange con­sid­er­ing the expected 19th June release date.

Buy tick­ets via Fandango

Tick­ets are also avail­able from Movi­eT­ick­ets and Movie­Fone.

Some the­aters that claim to be an IMAX do not give you the full IMAX expe­ri­ence, with this in mind Slash­Film have linked to a handy map show­ing the near­est true IMAX the­ater: Google Maps IMAX theaters

A green marker indi­cates a “real” IMAX screen, mean­ing a screen that is totally immer­sive and fills your field of vision. A red excla­ma­tion mark indi­cates a “fake” IMAX screen, mean­ing a screen that is branded “IMAX” the same as giant screens, but is not that much larger than reg­u­lar movie screens, and does not fill your field of vision. OMNIMAX or “domed” screens are indi­cated by a pur­ple orb shape.

Read the rest of this entry »

A new set of screen­shots from The Revenge of the Fallen has sur­faced, show­ing Bum­ble­bee in var­i­ous states of stress, Opti­mus Prime with swords out and Dev­as­ta­tor in the desert. Each of the images can be clicked for a higher res­o­lu­tion version.

Whilst not strictly Robo­cop movie news, this video gives us an insight into the director’s (Dar­ren Aronof­sky) movie mak­ing techniques.

Dar­ren Aronof­sky is a screen­writer, direc­tor, and pro­ducer, who most recently directed and pro­duced the two-time Golden Globe win­ning and Oscar-nominated film, The Wrestler. In 1996, he began work on his first fea­ture film, Pi, a psy­cho­log­i­cal scifi thriller which landed him an award at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. Aronof­sky quickly became a favorite among indie-film fans. In 2000, he directed and wrote the screen­play to Requiem for a Dream which earned a Best Actress Oscar-nomination. Aronof­sky attended Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, where his senior the­sis film, Super­mar­ket Sweep, became a National Stu­dent Acad­emy Award Final­ist. After grad­u­at­ing Har­vard in 1991, he attended the Amer­i­can Film Institute.

MTV caught up with Thor movie direc­tor Ken­neth Branagh to find out ‘the sto­ries and peo­ple’ inspir­ing the big screen adap­ta­tion. The film cre­ators have rav­aged the fifty year comic his­tory, and could bring plot ele­ments from any num­ber of places.

“I think that [’Thor’ sto­ries] go through golden patches and pur­ple patches and every­one has per­sonal favorites. […] The recent runs have been mar­velous. The J. Michael Straczyn­ski run has been a tremen­dous achievement.”

“But I’ve also been read­ing way back, read­ing clas­sic, vin­tage runs as well. […] There are many Thors and many accounts of the sto­ries across nearly 50 years of the comics. We look to raid from the best.”

“A lot of the job up to this point has been lis­ten­ing to peo­ple who know more and bet­ter than I. […] I have a very strong view of how to approach it myself, but I’m still lis­ten­ing and learn­ing hap­pily.”

As com­mented on by Jon Favreau in his twitter,

Online press vis­it­ing the set today to speak with Robert and me.

AICN and SHH were two of these. They’ve been asked to hold back their reports until Comic-con, when I’m sure we’ll get some big announce­ments. In the mean time they have pro­vided some pre­view reports which I have included below:

AICN’s Beaks

Yesterday’s trip to the set of IRON MAN 2 at Mar­vel Stu­dios’ head­quar­ters in Man­hat­tan Beach was def­i­nitely more filet than Bernsen.

How much more? I’m not at lib­erty to say. Yet. Para­mount and Mar­vel have asked that we hold our full set visit report until closer to Comic Con. And since I’d like to be invited to the sets of THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE AVENGERS, etc., I’ve decided it’s worth my while to play ball.

They have, how­ever, given us clear­ance to post a brief pre­view piece in which I whip you up into a frenzy by telling you that the sets are elab­o­rate and ultra-sleek (they’re using as many as five sound­stages on the Raleigh Stu­dios lot), the cre­ative team is in a groove, and, as far as I can tell, every­one is extremely pleased with what they’re get­ting thus far. This was appar­ent from the way Jon Favreau, Robert Downey Jr., Matthew Liba­tique and oth­ers tweaked and tweaked this one really cool, fairly lengthy take — in which Tony Stark [redacted] — until it was utter, fluid perfection.

Most of the stuff we saw yes­ter­day was set in Stark’s work­shop, which has been mod­i­fied to include some nifty new giz­mos (this includes the floor, oddly enough). There were also a few tan­ta­liz­ing clues left strewn about just to get us worked up over what/who might or might not be appear­ing in the sequel. We were also given an unplanned peek at some­thing stashed away on another sound­stage — and I’m not sure they’re going to let us write about this in our offi­cial write-up next month. Not that my mea­ger words could do it justice.

SHH’s Ryan Rotten

Is Favreau falling into the trap of adding too many ele­ments to his once proven win­ning equa­tion? That’s just one ques­tion Super­hero Hype! had in mind when we ven­tured down to Man­hat­tan Beach where we found Favreau and com­pany back on the sound­stage and in Tony Stark’s lab for a set visit. While there, we toured the remod­eled lab, caught a few glimpses of some very interesting–and revealing–props and drooled over the new Iron Man suit. We also got a chance to speak with Favreau, Downey Jr. and Marvel’s Kevin Feige (the pro­ducer) about Stark’s lat­est adven­ture and the chal­lenges he faces.

We’d love to tell you more, how­ever, we have to remain tight-lipped for now. Sim­ply know Favreau is piec­ing together what sounds like a lay­ered, larger sequel that’s steer­ing Stark in the right emo­tional direc­tion with a few sur­prises in store for the fans. Look for a full set report next month! In the mean­time, “keep the skies clear,” more Iron Man is on the way.

As part of the Straw­berry and Peanut But­ter M&M’s pro­mo­tion, we get to see Opti­mus Prime “deliv­er­ing” the candies:

IGN have posted up two E3 2009 Trans­form­ers 2 video game pre­views, show­ing Bum­ble­bee kick­ing some ass, and then not doing so well as he gets destroyed by Megatron.