Kick-Ass Teaser Trailer

The footage shown at comic-con was awesome…

Blade vs. Batman

More brilliant editing…

Super-Social Networking: Superhero Facebook Status Updates

Oh my god I’m rolling over here…

Comics Alliance: “These days, everyone in the world seems to be on Facebook, including our bosses, parents, and the people we hated in high school. So what would it be like if superheroes like Batman, Spider-Man and Superman were updating their statuses, taking quizzes, and commenting on each other’s profiles like the rest of us? Chris Sims of the Invincible Super-Blog takes a closer look into the Facebook feeds of our favorite heroes.”

Cool Stuff: Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut

/Film:

Warner Bros Home Video has officially announced the expected double dip, Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut, which hits store shelves on November 3rd 2009.. More cover art and details after the jump.

DVD Details:

Disc 1:
• Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut Film
• Audio Commentary with Zack Snyder and Dave Gibbons
Disc 2: Over 3 Hours of Special Features
• The Phenomenon: The Comic that Changed Comics
• Real Super Heroes, Real Vigilantes
• Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World
• Watchmen: Video Journals
• My Chemical Romance Desolation Row
• Under The Hood
• Story Within A Story: The Books of Watchmen

Disc 3: Digital Copy of the Theatrical Version
Disc 4 and 5: Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comics

Blu-Ray Details:

Disc 1:
• Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut Film
• Audio Commentary with Zack Snyder and Dave Gibbons
Disc 2: Over 3 Hours of Special Features
• The Phenomenon: The Comic that Changed Comics
• Real Super Heroes, Real Vigilantes
• Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World
• Watchmen: Video Journals
• My Chemical Romance Desolation Row
• Under The Hood
• Story Within A Story: The Books of Watchmen

Disc 3: Digital Copy of the Theatrical Version
Disc 4: Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comics
BD-Live

The Nic Cage/Tim Burton Superman That Never Was

Oh. My. Dad.

i09:

“A long time ago, Nicolas Cage started a fan war when he was selected to play Tim Burton’s Superman in the final chapter of the boy from Krypton. Test pictures have leaked of the actor in the blue suit.

The movie’s screenplay was written by Kevin Smith and eventually rewritten by Wesley Strick. The whole thing was set to film in 1999. But after spending loads of cash, the studio eventually dropped the movie, which centered on Superman’s demise. This was a good thing, because as much as I enjoy a bad Nic Cage movie, with the yelling on every other emphasis, I don’t think I could handle him as America’s greatest hero.”

Children of Men Screenwriters Are Developing Live-Action Akira Movie

Now this is interesting news….

/Film:

“Warner Bros’ live-action adaptation of Akira is not dead afterall. Collider has confirmed that screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby are hard at work on the project.

Fergus and Ostby wrote earlier drafts of Children of Men and are credited with Iron Man. The screenplay is set in a post-apocalyptic “New Manhattan” and will feature Akira’s famous red motorcycle. The original Katsuhiro Otomo anime was set in a futuristic and post-war city, Neo-Tokyo, in 2019. Let’s just hope it doesn’t end up looking like THIS. The film has been in development by Warner Brothers and Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way for some time, and Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli) had previously worked on the project.

Here is an excerpt from a previous posting by Russ Fischer:

No cast has ever publicly revealed to be attached. The involvement of Appian Way led many to suspect that DiCaprio would star as the teen biker Kaneda, despite being demonstrably too old for the part, but the actor publicly denied any involvement beyond producing duties. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was rumored to be in mind for Tetsuo, the friend of Kaneda whose psychic powers are awakened, setting of a cataclysmic chain of destructive events in Neo-Tokyo. He also denied any attachment.

Frankly, it’s difficult to see why Warner Brothers would move forward with the film(s) after Watchmen failed to become a breakout hit. Akira is similar in that it is highly conceptual with a complex character structure, a great deal of plot and backstory to communicate and, if done in properly detailed fashion, would be wildly expensive. Doing the film on anything less than a grand scale would be to miss the point. With an intricately detailed anime already in existence (and one which struggles to tell the story, even with the scope reduced from that of the manga, which had not completed publication when the film was made) why make a new feature that was forced to scale down?

In the wake of the WGA strike that ended in February ‘08, plans were once announced to fast-track the first film for release this summer. That obviously didn’t happen, in part because the script didn’t come together in time. Yet I’d held out an almost perverse hope that Appian Way could bring the project to fruition. I’m no great fan of the anime (despite its great visual splendor) but would have liked to see something as epic as a two-film Akira adaptation hit screens, in part because of how financially and artistically risky it would be.”

Fox Will Reboot Fantastic Four

WTF? Why?

/Film:

“I find it funny that 20th Century Fox waited until the day when Disney revealed that they would be acquiring Marvel to announce the next step in the Fantastic Four film franchise. Or perhaps the information somehow leaked out when everyone was trying to gather all the details of what properties Disney would have and not have feature film rights to. Either way, tonight it was revealed that Akiva Goldsman has been hired to produce a new Fantastic Four film, a complete reboot.

Variety reports that a screenwriter has been hired to reboot the franchise: Michael Green, a producer/writer for Smallville, Everwood and Heroes (ugh…) who co-wrote the upcoming big screen adaptation of The Green Lantern. No other details are known at this time, as Fox has not commented about its plans. But one would assume that the creative talent (and I use that term loosely) from the original 2005 film and the 2007 sequel, will not be a part of this new attempt. And that includes director Tim Story and stars Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis.

One can only hope that Fox takes a cue from the recent superhero films (The Dark Knight on one extreme, and Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk on the other) and allows a less corny take on the series. I’d likely be happier with a film even if they took a slightly more adult (yet still comic) tone of a film like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2. What would you guys like to see?

Goldsman got his start in Hollywood as a screenwriter, and at one point wrote the bad Batman movies (Forever and Batman & Robin). More recently he has made the transition into producer of such films as I Am Legend, Hancock, and the upcoming comic book films Jonah Hex and The Losers.”

Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 Billion

/Film:

According to the New York Times (via Topless Robot), Disney has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in cash and stock. This deal gives Disney rights to over Marvel’s 5,000+ characters, not to mention control over Marvel’s licensing, publishing, and film production capabilities. This acquisition is interesting for many reasons, not the least of which is that one year ago Marvel re-upped its contract with Paramount to distribute its next five films, including Iron Man 2, The Avengers, and Thor, among others. Furthermore, there are a plethora of loose ends, licensing-wise, that Disney will have to contend with before this deal starts to show its true worth.

Undoubtedly, the effects of this massive shift in the entertainment industry will be felt for quite some time. This is one of the largest acquisitions in Disney’s recent history, surpassed only by its acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006 (and I think it’s safe to say that deal had a pretty significant impact on both companies involved).”

Frank Darabont to Direct The Walking Dead

OHHH MYYYY DADDDDDDDD…..

/Film:

“Frank Darabont, the writer/director of such films as The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist, is in final talks to write and direct a small screen adaptation of the Image Comics series The Walking Dead. Darabont pitched the concept to AMC and several other outlets, with Gale Anne Hurd, who is attached to exec produce. The black and white comic book series was created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore in 2003, and is considered to be the definitive zombie graphic novel ever created.

The ongoing series now has over 60 issues, which have been collected in 10 trade paperbacks (but month’s end). You can pick up the first tradepaperback on Amazon for around $10. Brad Ladlee from Examiner said that The Walking Dead “realistically depicts the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse” and is “[m]ore than just a scary story about zombies, it is about how people would physically and mentally handle the dead rising and survive the fall of modern society.”

The story follows a group of people, led by a small-town Kentucky Police Officer named Rick Grimes, trying to survive in a world overrun by zombies. But unlike most zombie films, the books are more character centric. AMC’s senior vp of programing Joel Stillverman says that the tv show will stay faithful to the graphic novels.

“This is not about zombies popping out of closets,” Stillerman told Variety. “This is a story about survival, and the dynamics of what happens when a group is forced to survive under these circumstances. The world is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way.”

And if you think about it, who better to do a series set in a character survival piece set in a horrific world than Frank Darabont? I have the super duper massive trade paperback which collects the first 8 volumes of the series, but have been unable to find time to begin reading it. That said, I’ve had many conversations in the past with my comic geek friends who have read the series. Most of them agreed that there would be no way to turn this into a film, and that it would work much better as a television series or cable miniseries.”

Source: Variety

Book Of Eli Trailer

Too bad it’s based on a graphic novel, or we could just call it Fallout 3: The Movie!