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.]

[Deberg_1990]

Some speculation out there that Phoenix doesnt want to be locked into a multi-pic deal.


We all know hes sort of a weird cat.........who knows?

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Pestilence

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Marve...nge-66969.html
Landing Joaquin Phoenix for Doctor Strange would not only be a great piece of fascinating casting

Wrong. He's absolutely terrible for that role in nearly every way...

[unlurking]

Originally Posted by Rausch

Wrong. He's absolutely terrible for that role in nearly every way...

I think he's a great actor, but this would definitely be a role unlike anything he's ever done.

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by Rausch

Wrong. He's absolutely terrible for that role in nearly every way...

Disagree. He's a tremendous actor who has proven he can play just about anything.

He's quirky and weird yea, but a great actor.

[Anyong Bluth]

First peek at Vision being played by Paul Bettany in Avengers II. Kind of random for the first place to leak what the character will look as opposed to typically a still or on-set photo being the norm. This is just a random promo poster over in Asia somewhere.

[Bowser]

Relevant, kind of....


In less than a month, Marvel will put one of its favorite heroes to sleep. Wolverine, the hairy, Canadian bundle of muscle with the claws, will die on October 8 (just in time for New York Comic-Con), when the comic book The Death of Wolverine wraps up.

There might be some questions as to why Marvel would want to kill one of its most popular characters and the face of the X-Men franchise. And there may be some queries as to how one kills someone who's immortal.




Here then, is a brief guide to the death of Wolverine:

Why is Wolverine dying? I thought he can't die?

Wolverine's death may come as a shock to people who aren't all that familiar with what's going on the Marvel comic universe. Most people know Wolverine to be the mutant with claws, but his real mutant ability, something that X-Men movies have made very clear, is that he has the ability to heal himself and is therefore immortal.

In Wolverine's solo series, writer Paul Cornell has written an arc in which Wolverine gets infected with an alien virus and loses his healing factor as a result. The loss of his mutant ability has been woven into the character's many comic book appearances. Here's a panel from Storm #2, which explores Wolverine's loss of his healing ability:

Wolverine

Wolverine and Storm talk (Marvel)

There's more to this than just telling a good, poignant story. And it has to do with money.

The business of killing your darlings



"It's [death] been done to death, no pun intended," John Jackson Miller, a New York Times best-selling author and curator of Comicchron, a site that tabulates monthly comic book sales, told me. "It developed in the '70s when [comic companies] began aggressively marketing the events of the lives of comic book characters to the people who were most interested in their adventures, the readers."


Superman

The death of Superman (DC Comics)



Comic publishers want to sell issues, and, to sell issues, there needs to be "stuff" happening in them: fights, weddings, births, new characters, and, yes, deaths.

The impact of this only grows when these events involve beloved characters. Fights can get old, but fights between two iconic characters are better. Weddings are fine, but weddings between two well-loved superheroes are better. Births are okay, but the birth of Superman is better. And deaths can be page-turners, but not like the death of a iconic character.

"The seminal moment for character death came in November of 1992 — the death of Superman," Miller said.

Comics readers knew that Superman, like most dead superheroes, would be coming back, but the mainstream press got hold of the story and hyped it up. This was also at a time when people were really into buying rare comic books in hopes that they could later sell them for for sky-high prices. The hype and swirling media frenzy created a mainstream demand for the book and a record day in the comic industry.

"It's what remains, to this day, the biggest sales day in the medium —$30 million of business was done on that day in 1992, and it was spread over 10,000 comic shops in North America," Miller said.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, $30 million in 1992 is equivalent to around $87 million in 2014. If the event of Superman's death occurred in 2014, it would be as big as a summer blockbuster movie opening:



Those sales are what Marvel wants to tap into. However, we're not in the comic bubble of 1992. There have been plenty of iconic superhero deaths since Superman's (Jean Grey multiple times, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Magik — and that's just X-Men characters alone). And each one of those deaths chips away at the idea that superhero death is somehow final or rare.

Miller explained that it's rare to find a comic book today that achieves a great deal of value and retains it. There are no $30-million days in the business anymore. What retailers are aiming for are sales spikes (200,000+ issues sold) when a character dies and when he or she returns, plus hopefully some new readers.

One of the more recent examples of this was in 2012, when Marvel killed Peter Parker. He returned in April of 2014 and sold a megaton of comics:

PeterParker

Marvel's uncanny position

The top-selling comic for the past year has been Batman, from Marvel's chief rival, DC Comics. For the last two years, Batman has held down a spot in the top five comics sold in North America, according to Comicchron's numbers. Save for major crossover events, debuts, or the aforementioned death and return of Peter Parker, it usually holds the top spot. Batman has the kind of success that comic companies want.

Around 30 years ago and up until the early 2000s, Marvel had this kind of power over the industry with the X-Men. In the 90s, several X-Men titles and spinoffs were created and rose to the top of the charts, and the success continued. However, Marvel wasn't doing so well. It had filed for bankruptcy in 1996 and had sold movie rights to its characters, including Spider-Man and X-Men, to Sony and Fox, respectively, in order to keep afloat.

These movie rights have a direct effect on comic business. Marvel isn't in control of X-Men movies, and it doesn't get the same kind of money from an X-Men movie as it would from a movie featuring characters it fully owns, such as the Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy. Tom Brevoort, Marvel's Senior Vice President of Publishing, has confirmed as much. This June, Brevoort said that investing in properties Marvel doesn't own, most notably the X-Men, isn't the best idea.

He wrote on his Tumblr:


If you had two things, and on one you earned 100% of the revenues from the efforts that you put into making it, and the other you earned a much smaller percentage for the same amount of time and effort, you'd be more likely to concentrate more heavily on the first, wouldn't you?

One of the examples of this effort is Rocket Raccoon. Rocket, an anthropomorphic, salty raccoon, was in the Guardians of the Galaxy film and was promoted in every possible way (e.g. toys, merchandise, apparel). In the wake of Guardians' onslaught, a Rocket Raccoon comic was released in July and sold 293,913 copies, taking the top spot away from Batman.

In the same month that Rocket Raccoon got the top spot, the top-selling X-Men title, All-New X-Men, came in at 26th place. The X-Men's loss of dominance begins much earlier, around March of 2006 — two months before the movie X-Men: the Last Stand.

While there is a strong feeling among certain X-Men fans that Marvel wants to see the X-Men fail, low comic sales don't benefit Marvel. In Marvel's perfect world, it would see gigantic comic sales and low interest in X-Men movies, because then it would be able to convince Fox to give back the rights. (This is never happening in our lifetimes.) What the company would settle for is a shot in the arm for a middling franchise and new readers.

R.I.P. (not really)

The only comic book character that has died and stayed dead has been Peter Parker's Uncle Ben. Wolverine is no Uncle Ben. If Wolverine is really, truly going to die, then he will really, truly, come back to life in the future.

In fact, the X-Men have a knack for coming back to life. Jean Grey, a character who comes with a long-running footnote about her multiple deaths and future children, first died in 1980, only to be brought back over and over. Kitty Pryde "died" (she was trapped in a bullet in space) in 2008, and didn't return to the comics until two years later. Nightcrawler died in X-Force #26 in 2008 while facing a villain named Bastion, but he returned in 2013. Other X-Men like Magik and Colossus, and even fringe, baby X-Men like Wallflower have all died and come back at various points.

As Wolverine's death draws near, Wolverine fans can take solace in the words of Len Wein, who created the character in 1974: "No one in comics is ever really dead, unless you can see the body. And usually not even then."

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/14/6132383...lverine-marvel

[Aries Walker]

That's a good article, especially in how it doesn't believe any more than anyone else does that Wolverine, movie rights or not, is going to stay dead. Of course he's coming back; it's just a matter of when, and how.

A few nitpicks: Other characters have stayed dead besides Uncle Ben - Gwen Stacy, for example. Jean Grey is known as Phoenix, and it's not a huge surprise to see a character named Phoenix return from death more than once. And Wallflower never came back.

Otherwise, yeah. I'm giving his death two solid years before the Return of Wolverine story arc sells 200,000 copies.

[Frosty]

Originally Posted by Aries Walker

That's a good article, especially in how it doesn't believe any more than anyone else does that Wolverine, movie rights or not, is going to stay dead. Of course he's coming back; it's just a matter of when, and how.

A few nitpicks: Other characters have stayed dead besides Uncle Ben - Gwen Stacy, for example. Jean Grey is known as Phoenix, and it's not a huge surprise to see a character named Phoenix return from death more than once. And Wallflower never came back.

Otherwise, yeah. I'm giving his death two solid years before the Return of Wolverine story arc sells 200,000 copies.

Gwen Stacy kinda stayed dead. Her clone(s) showed up a bunch of times, iirc.

[unlurking]

Well shit. Been reading old stuff trying to get caught up, had no idea they were going to kill Wolverine. One of my favorites. Guess I'll go pick these up.

I wonder if this is being done with Fox? Would make it easier to write a theatrical finale for Hugh Jackman. Rebooting the character should be easier too.

[Aries Walker]

No, they have nothing to do with Fox. They're essentially two divergent versions of the same character, and each can take it whichever way they want.

[unlurking]

Originally Posted by Aries Walker

No, they have nothing to do with Fox. They're essentially two divergent versions of the same character, and each can take it whichever way they want.

That would suck. The latest XMen movies have been great. Would love to see Marvel and Fox work out their differences. Just wishful thinking since Wolverine has always been one of my favorites I guess.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by unlurking

That would suck. The latest XMen movies have been great.

I thought First class was the best X flick by far.

Future Past had really good performances and I love the younger Magneto/Prof X. The franchise should have been rebooted from that era.

That said the story and plot made no ****ing sense. It was stupid...

[Jamie]

Originally Posted by unlurking

That would suck. The latest XMen movies have been great. Would love to see Marvel and Fox work out their differences. Just wishful thinking since Wolverine has always been one of my favorites I guess.

The deals for the X-Men and Spider-Man movie rights were made while Marvel was going through bankruptcy, and apparently the terms are unfavorable to Marvel. What I've heard is that Marvel's cut of the movie gross is small, and on top of that Fox takes a cut of merchandising. Marvel and Sony are on good terms because Sony renegotiated the deal, but Fox refuses.

[Aries Walker]

Blade was sold away for even less. Marvel doesn't even get their logo at the start of those movies.

Dodged a bullet there, I think, because the Blade movies were pretty damn awful.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Aries Walker

Blade was sold away for even less. Marvel doesn't even get their logo at the start of those movies.

Dodged a bullet there, I think, because the Blade movies were pretty damn awful.

Blade isn't a top property so at this point I doubt they even care.

I'd like to see a Luke Cage, Doc Strange, or Silver Surfer flick more...