Tag Archives: Fox

Movie News & Opinions

Could Marvel Studios Get Back Some Characters?

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How’s this for something to make a person stroke their chin in equanimity: A certain character or characters could be returning to a movie home with Marvel Studios in the near future from their very abusive home at Fox. I mean let’s face it, Fox has screwed up with nearly every Marvel movie they’ve churned out of their mediocre studio. Wolverine, the Fantastic  Four movies, Daredevil, Elektra and the Ghost Rider movies have all blown goats of the highest caliber! The only franchise they’ve had some good results with is the X-Men franchise, and even that took a couple stutter steps. I’m always hoping that Fox can step it up and I’m hopeful that Wolverine 2 (The Wolverine) and Josh Trank’s forthcoming Fantastic Four reboot can begin setting things right. Daredevil is another matter entirely and one of the big reasons as to all of the talk and rumors about certain characters reverting back to Marvel.

Like the Hellraiser franchise last year, Dimension needed to do something with the rights or risk losing them. So they produced a crappy movie that was finished in weeks and released on DVD, and now they are supposedly working on a reboot for the franchise. This is the same issue that Fox has with the Daredevil rights. If they don’t start production on a Daredevil movie by October 10th, then ‘the Man Without Fear’ would return to the Marvel Studios stable. This then brings up the rumors of a deal where Fox would trade the characters of Galactus and Silver Surfer back to Marvel so they can retain the rights to Daredevil. Because really, would Fox have the balls to produce a cheap piece of crap like Dimension did with Hellraiser just to hang onto it? I doubt it. They fail at even trying to make legitimate comic movies, let-alone an intentionally crappy one. Studio insiders at Fox are denying all of this of course and as I said it is all rumor at this point, but there has to be some truth to it or no one would be reporting on it.

There are a few different ways that this could boil down.

– Fox could make a piece of crap Daredevil movie and keep his rights, as well as those of Galactus and Silver Surfer, and then make a potentially decent Daredevil flick somewhere down the road.

– Fox could cut a deal with Marvel, letting Galactus and Silver Surfer go back with Marvel and avoid having to make a crappy Daredevil just for the sake of hanging onto the rights.

– ORRRRRRR Fox does absolutely nothing with Daredevil and loses him to Marvel while hanging on to Galactus and Silver Surfer.

Who knows what will happen at this point as the talks continue.

Joe Carnahan (The Grey, The A-Team) is currently in talks with Fox to direct the Daredevil reboot, and as stated before, Chronicle director Josh Trank is going to be rebooting the Fantastic Four franchise for Fox. I don’t see why Fox would have a problem letting Galactus and Silver Surfer go to hang onto Daredevil, because Trank would still have plenty of villains to draw on from the Fantastic Four comics. Dr. Doom is the obvious first choice and could carry over into any sequels. Then they can still use the Skrulls, Annihilus and the Mole Man. Regardless of how stupid the Mole Man looks, they could absolutely change him up to be a legitimate threat in a Fantastic Four movie.

This may just all be wishful thinking on my part since it appears that Marvel is certainly ramping up their foray into the cosmic scene with Thor, Avengers and now an upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Imagine if they had Galactus and Silver Surfer to add into the mix? The Galactus Seed storyline from the Mighty Thor comic in 2011 comes to mind as a great possibility for a crossover movie between Thor and the Asgardians squaring off against Galactus and the Silver Surfer.

I would honestly hate to see Daredevil made into such a terrible film again, but one could only hope that Fox sees how badly it botched the first one. You know, when they cast Ben Affleck and made DD look like the Gimp from Pulp Fiction? And I’d be willing for the trade off of Fox potentially doing that film right in return for Marvel Studios to add more players to its cosmic sandbox.

Movie News & Opinions

‘X-Men: First Class’ Sequel – Subtitle Alludes to Classic Storyline

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I have a confession to make. Despite being a comics fan, spending nearly 50$ a week on comics, collecting comics memorabilia, spending large amounts of time in a comic shop to the point where the employees and the people who are regulars there are now close friends who I see outside of the store, and just generally being admittedly a comic book nerd, I, am not that big a fan of the X-Men.

In fact, I’ve only cursory knowledge of them at best, no better really than the average, yet slightly more dedicated than usual, “Movies Only” X-Men fan. I know which characters are what, but some of the more obscure ones are lost on me, (X3 was a guessing game for a lot of characters I was clueless about), and I generally understand what their comic characterization is, but on the whole, I couldn’t recite to you a cavalcade of GREAT X-Men stories like I could for Superman or Green Lantern. In fact, when I first read this news, I had no clue of the significance of the source material until reading about it, and it’s inspiration to the tons of media that would follow it. So hearing about the X-Men: First Class sequel, was exciting, and also a bit perplexing, because while I loved First Class, I had no idea what the sequel’s “story” was based on.

Let’s get down to the details, according to [EW], the sequel will be based on ‘Days Of Future Past’, which was a story arc I’ve never heard of, or read:

For the newcomers in the audience: Days of Future Past was a time-travel story released in the early ’80s. In a bleak dystopian future, the mutants of the world are hunted down and sent to internment camps. Most of the X-Men are dead; the ones that are still alive are on the run. In the original story, the future version of Kitty Pryde time-travels back in time into her young self’s brain and works with the present-day X-Men to prevent the atrocity that kickstarts the whole miserable future. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Days of Future Past has been frequently imitated in pop culture. (Remember “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World”?)

Now I gotta say, that sounds pretty awesome. I know I’ll be losing some nerd cred by admitting I haven’t read it, but I’m a firm believer in manning up and admitting what you don’t know, rather than bullshitting people about what you do. To that end, First Class was by far the best of the previous X-Men movies, and was a welcome change from the dull talk tests that were the Bryan Singer X-Men movies. X3 was like weird retarded offshoot, that managed to entertain me more by simply being really dumb, but whenever I think about X-Men 1 or 2, my eyes start to glaze over. I think that’s always been why I could never get into X-Men period, because you have all these amazing characters with mind blowing powers (sometimes literally), and all they ever do is talk each other to death. [Ed. Note – X2 is still one of the 10 Best Comic Movies ever] I’m probably showing my ignorance here of all the tons of badass X-Men stories out there, with huge epic battles, but in my experience, picking up any form of X-Men media, be it a comic, movie, or even that animated Fox cartoon from years back, was an exercise in Mutant-related diplomatic relations, carried out slowly to avoid some really big, really important, impending threat thats juuuust on the horizon, but oh no will-they-talk-it-out-first- it’ssoimportantohmygodohmygodwilltheyfight??!??!  BUT no, they never do.

Anyhow, my bitching aside, the movie sounds really good. I’m excited for it. I just tend to complain about things no matter what. You can watch an interview with Bryan Singer about the movie below:

MOVIES

Hero Express – ‘The Avengers’ Banners, ‘Man of Steel 2’. and ‘TDKR’ Wraps?

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Welcome back to the Hero Express, your one-stop sometimes SPOILER filled shop through the news filled world of superhero’s in Film, TV, Video Games and whatever else floats your boat.

Continue reading Hero Express – ‘The Avengers’ Banners, ‘Man of Steel 2’. and ‘TDKR’ Wraps? →

Movie News & Opinions

‘Independence Day’ Might Become a Trilogy

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Independence Day is a movie I genuinely adored as a kid, and ironically love as an adult. It’s got all the best ingredients of a ’90s blockbuster – Will Smith, explosions, aliens and a dog jumping out of a fireball. Sure, there are some Grand Canyon-sized plot holes and, well, everything mentioned here, but it certainly is fun to watch aliens blow up cities.

Movies are art!

Gamma Squad reports that Roland Emmerich has been working on scripts for two back-to-back sequels to ID4 since 2009, and in that time Fox has been trying to wrangle Smith into returning to his old role, though Big Willie hasn’t been very receptive to their offers:

“Fox started working on structuring a deal to sign him back in early 2009, but the world’s last bankable action star was seeking $50 million to shoot both ID2 and ID3 back-to-back, and Fox balked at so large a price tag in combination with Emmerich’s own hefty salary demands to direct.”

While no one’s ready to give up on The Fresh Prince yet, Fox has stated they’re willing to go through with production with our without Smith, and that the two sequels will be able to function as standalone movies.

All of this is irrelevant, of course, unless they can bring back Jeff Goldblum…

TV

New Girl – Series Premiere Review

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This is not a show I had planned to review…or like…or even watch. But I did, and it was actually really funny. Initial previews for this show made it look like another CBS yuck-fest, but since it was being paired on FOX with Raising Hope (which I like) I thought I’d give it a chance. And I’m glad I did.

Zooey Deschanel and her ‘it factor’ successfully steer what could have otherwise been a train wreck. The premise is that she moves in with 3 bachelors and zany situations are sure to arise, but what made it different from your normal sitcom is how sincere it felt. They actually make you believe that Jess (Deschanel) is clueless and you feel for her when she gets stood up. And it’s even kind of touching when the guys come to her rescue.

Speaking of the guys, they drive the actual humor in the show. My favorite has to be Schmidt (Max Greenfield from Veronica Mars) as he is constantly relegated to sticking dollar bills in the ‘Douchebag Jar’ after almost everything he says.

His 2 best friends are Coach (Damon Wayans Jr. – Who actually sounds just like his Dad) and Nick (Jake M. Johnson). Coach is a personal trainer who can’t speak to women and is constantly delivering the punchline in each scene. Nick however, is the seemingly the most normal of the 3, but who is still reeling over his breakup with The Waitress Caroline (Mary Elizabeth Ellis from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – Seen Here to your right) 6 months after the dumping.

The cast is rounded out by Jess’ beautiful best friend and model – Cece Meyers (Hannah Simone – Below) who informs the guys: “If you let anything happen to her – I’m gonna come here and crazy murder you.”  Which I found to be pretty funny.

The actual episode story itself is pretty recycled, but it’s a testament to the cast that they were able to make it enjoyable and inject some life into it. I’d give it 4/5 Bears with room for improvement, but a lot of potential.

MOVIES

Hero Express – ‘The Wolverine’ Pushed Back, ‘Secret Stash’ Comes to AMC, and ‘Deadman’ on the CW?

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Welcome to Hero Express, your one-stop shop through the news filled world of superhero’s in Film, TV, Video Games and whatever else floats your boat.

This is the Hero Express for September 13, 2011:

Continue reading Hero Express – ‘The Wolverine’ Pushed Back, ‘Secret Stash’ Comes to AMC, and ‘Deadman’ on the CW? →