Marvel unviels their next four projects

[Tribal Warfare]

Marvel Unveils CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, THOR: THE DARK WORLD, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and ANT-MAN

Saturday’s Hall H panel for Marvel at Comic-Con was billed as Iron Man 3, but from previous experience we all knew to expect more goodies from Marvel Studios than just IM3. We were right, as the studio announced full, intriguing titles for Thor 2 and Captain America 2, confirmed Guardians of the Galaxy (including which characters will appear), and revealed test footage for Ant-Man with a surprise appearance by Edgar Wright.

Hit the jump for my full recap of this “update” portion of the Marvel panel. [Update: We've updated the article with concept art for the Guardians of the Galaxy movie as well as logos for all the upcoming Marvel films]

Chris-Hemsworth-Thor 2 the dark worldFeige opened the panel by saying that they’re working on four movies in active development. The first is Iron Man 3, hitting theaters on May 3rd, 2013. He then went on to reveal titles for two previously known sequels, and confirmed another property that we’d heard rumblings of in the past few weeks.

Iron Man 3 (May 3, 2013)
Thor: The Dark World (November 8, 2013)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (April 4, 2014)
Guardians of the Galaxy (August 1, 2014)

For fans of the comics, the subtitle “The Winter Soldier” should provide a hint as to where the Captain America sequel will go. The title is a reference to a comics storyline that will find Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) taking an integral role.

guardians-of-the-galaxy-movieFeige added that Zachary Levi has been confirmed as the character of Fandrel in the Thor sequel, and revealed the team that will be unleashed for Guardians of the Galaxy:

StarLord
Drax the Destroyer
Rocket Raccoon
Groot
Gamora

In a fantastic surprise, Feige then introduced Edgar Wright to talk about Ant-Man. Wright had been tweeting about being in London for the past few days in an effort to throw fans off, but he came out to a very warm reception.

“I’m taking the Terrence Malick approach to superheroes,” said Wright referring to the long road of development on Ant-Man.
Wright and Joe Cornish wrote two more drafts of the script last year, but they’ve been done for quite a while.

ant-man-movie-logoThey then revealed test footage that Wright shot for Ant-Man, after Wright toyed for a bit with the audience saying they wouldn’t really want to see a clip of stuff with wires and blue screens in it. It’s completely unfinished since they shot it two weeks ago, but they showed the footage anyway because Marvel absolutely owns Comic-Con.

The footage opened with Ant-Man sitting on a ledge in an air conditioning vent that lead to a hallway guarded by two agents. The costume was pretty metallic looking, and he snuck through the vent hole and started running down the hallway. He morphed to normal size, shocking the guards, then morphed back down to ant size and kept running. Still in “ant size” he leapt up and punched one of the guys in the face, knocking the spit out of him, then he ran and attacked the other guard.

The footage was obviously rough, but I thought the big/small effects worked great. Wright found a way to make Ant-Man’s power work in a cool and useful way on screen, while still allowing room for the playful tone that he does so well. While I was hoping we’d see someone like Simon Pegg play the role just for fun in the test footage, the actor was wearing the Ant-Man helmet the entire time so we never saw his face. The lights then came back up.

“I’ve been doing one second of that for the last six years,” quipped Wright
Wright confirmed that the costume seen in the test footage will most likely be what makes the final film. He described it as a mix between the Silver Age and contemporary Ant-Man, adding “Ant-Man will kick your ass one inch at a time.”
Wright said there’s no casting to announce, but “revealed” that Ant-Man has been here in Hall H all day, pulling out an Ant-Man title card and putting it on the table next to him.

Wright then left the stage to make way for the Iron Man 3 panel, but these bits of news from Marvel were met with wild applause from the audience. Hit the comments to discuss the goings-on from today’s Marvel panel, and read Matt’s recap of Iron Man 3 right here. [Update: Simon Pegg tweeted that he, Nick Frost, and Wright start filming The World's End in 10 weeks, then Wright will film Ant-Man sometime next year.]

[Swanman]

There have been many forms of Ultron, but this one is my favorite, from Annihilation: Conquest. He copies parts of Annihilus into his form, like the multiple eyes going toward the back of his head.

[Aries Walker]

Originally Posted by Swanman

Yes, since you can't have adamantium like the comics. And it works out well to 1) introduce Wakanda or at least mention the source of vibranium and 2) explains how Cap's shield can be broken.

And it would explain how Cap's shield could be fixed.

Originally Posted by Swanman

Klaw also has an alliance with Ultron in the comics so it makes sense there as well.

Since there's been a fair amount of Secret Wars talk lately, I should point out that Doom and Klaw were partnered up during that, in a way.

[GloucesterChief]

Wish they gave Ultron more of his Jack O Lantern face then the skull looking one.

[beach tribe]

Originally Posted by Count Zarth

i ****ing came buckets

that's a ****ing movie villain on par with darth vader man

He is not the Droid you are looking for.
Marvel > SW

[ThaVirus]

Was just thinking how awesome cameos from Spiderman and Wolverine would be in this movie.

Quick shot of Spidey handing out dickins to Ultron bots in NYC. Just some quick damage control.

Wolverine putting claws on Hulk before Iron Man shows up (if that's even Iron Man in the suit).

They've got too much on their plate already if they're trying to introduce Planet Hulk, Civil War, and Black Panther anyway so I'd never expect it in this film but that would be crazy.

[Direckshun]

I don't know why so many people are insisting that's a "hacked" Iron Man in the Hulkbuster suit. People forget that Iron Man is a total asshole when he wants to be -- he has no issue turning on even longtime friends when he thinks it's "right."

We'll see that in the Civil Wars.

[Aries Walker]

I seriously doubt if they're trying to outright introduce Planet Hulk in this movie. As movie makers, they wouldn't want anything to do with a John Carter derivative starring a popular but supporting character who has already had two movies, and where most of the characters are non-human CGI's. The best you can hope for there is on oblique, maybe-we'll-follow-up-someday-but-we-probably-won't one-line reference to it, which they sometimes do.

What's much more likely is that they'll have Hulk follow the arc he had in the first few actual Avengers comics. He was a team member for, I think, two issues, then they had a big fight, and he was an actual villain for them for another few before rampaging off on his own. He's not a lifelong Avenger, like the others.

The Black Panther connection is also tenuous. So far, the only indication we have of that is that Andy Serkis's character has the same beard as Klaw. Marvel has no problem breaking and re-establishing character relationships for the MU (see: Pym/Ultron, Mockingbird/Hawkeye, Mandarin/everyone), so even if Serkis is playing Klaw, I think it likely that he'll be in street clothes and presented as a mad scientist of sorts, operating more or less on his own. Maybe we'll get a Wakanda name drop, like when Jasper Sitwell mentioned Dr. Strange during his panicky rant.

This is all conjecture, of course, but that's part of the fun.

[Direckshun]

Can somebody explain to me why a John Carter derivative is so terrible?

No one saw that movie. Everybody would see Planet Hulk.

[Aries Walker]

Not everyone would see Planet Hulk. It would be a hard, bizarre sell to non-comics fans, and they make up the far-and-away bulk of the viewing audience.

[Direckshun]

Originally Posted by Aries Walker

Not everyone would see Planet Hulk. It would be a hard, bizarre sell to non-comics fans, and they make up the far-and-away bulk of the viewing audience.

Isn't Hulk like THE most popular character from the Marvel films?

Everybody loved Hulk in the Avengers. My assumption was that Hulk and Incredible Hulk did well in theatres, too.

[ThaVirus]

I think Spidey or Wolverine would take Marvel's crown for most popular. Hulk couldn't be far behind, though.

[Aries Walker]

The first one, the Ang Lee Hulk, was a critical bomb and do OK in the money department, but Marvel has pretty much ignored it as much as they could. The second one did well (not great, just well) in both facets, but Marvel has put out far better material since.

Hulk is the breakout character, but breakout characters can't always hold a movie; in fact, forcing one on them often would make them lose their appeal. You have to admit he's not a terribly deep character on his own, when half of his screen time is little more than roaring and punching. Everything I've read from Marvel has said that they don't plan to ever give him his own film, and I think they're right.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Aries Walker

You have to admit he's not a terribly deep character on his own, when half of his screen time is little more than roaring and punching.

This is flat out wrong.

For reasons I don't understand that's the Hulk aspect TV/films have taken with him. He started out an intelligent Hulk and slowly got dumb. He's been an intelligent character since the early 90's.

The Grey Hulk and "Professor" Hulk storylines were some of the best writing (Peter David) out there.

Future Imperfect is another great storyline where the Hulk is pulled into the future to fight an evil world dictator - when he gets there he finds out it's him.

Why Hollywood chooses to create this one dimensional character is beyond me. He's not. There have been 6 long lived versions of the Hulk and they keep going back to the only one dimensional character...

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by Rausch

This is flat out wrong.

For reasons I don't understand that's the Hulk aspect TV/films have taken with him. He started out an intelligent Hulk and slowly got dumb. He's been an intelligent character since the early 90's.

The Grey Hulk and "Professor" Hulk storylines were some of the best writing (Peter David) out there.

Future Imperfect is another great storyline where the Hulk is pulled into the future to fight an evil world dictator - when he gets there he finds out it's him.

Why Hollywood chooses to create this one dimensional character is beyond me. He's not. There have been 6 long lived versions of the Hulk and they keep going back to the only one dimensional character...

Unfortunately, the popular Hulk concept requires that he be a mindless, uncontrolled beast. That's the whole archetype. An almost unstoppable force, but his weakness is that you don't necessarily want to unleash him on things because you don't know exactly what you're going to get. That's paired with him being a sensitive, intelligent dude when he's not the Hulk. It's the classic Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde archetype.

I know that the comics go much deeper than that with him, but I think society pretty much has the above ingrained into our collective conscious. Blame Lou Ferrigno.

[Valiant]

Originally Posted by Aries Walker

Not everyone would see Planet Hulk. It would be a hard, bizarre sell to non-comics fans, and they make up the far-and-away bulk of the viewing audience.

Yeah, Guardians disproves that now.