There's a major clue about Peter Dinklage's role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. A Thor: The Dark World set report offers some tantalizing hints. There are loads of clips from the alien-abduction film Dark Skies, and dozens of photos from Jack the Giant Slayer. Plus all the latest casting news for Under the Dome and NBC's Dracula!

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from The Walking Dead.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

There's still no official word on who Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage will play in the next X-Men movie, but the latest reports suggest he will play the main antagonist. I will leave it to others to speculate on just which villain he might play, but I feel honor-bound to point out (much as Mr. Dinklage might prefer I didn't) that he already has plenty of valuable experience playing a supervillain.

We've probably reached the point of diminishing returns with Bryan Singer's constant quotes, but here's one more general take on what to expect from his big return to the X-Men director's chair:

"This movie's gonna be not only quite epic, 'Days of Future Past,' but it also takes place in completely different times than the 'X Men' movies have taken place. There'll be new technology, new things we haven't seen before in 'X-Men' films. Certain characters and certain story and certain drama that hasn't be done yet, so it's not so much sequel. It's more of its own kinda thing... I'll be able to correct a few things [from previous movies]."

[Hit Fix]

Thor: The Dark World

An extra who played one of the villainous Marauders in the Thor sequel details his experiences filming with Ray Stevenson and Zachary Levi, who play Warriors Three members Volstagg and Fandral, in this report (any and all typos are sic):

"Onto the first day which was basically lots of running around & pretending to slaughter lots of villagers which sounds fun until you set a loose horse into the equation... [On the fifth day] I'm being held prisoner by Ray Stevenson ready to be transported back to Asgard... Next to me Zachary is on his horse which on this particular day is deciding to play up... I think he's a bit worried too but still manages to pull off a perfect English accent whilst laughing at my predicament... As I'm being held hostage by Ray, it turns out he has nothing to eat & his character is always seen as eating... I produce my apple I had hidden in my ammo pouches & voila, if it makes the final cut I have my mark on a major film! fingers crossed. So if you see Ray chomping an apple whilst waiting to transport us intergalactic warriors to asgard then you know where it came from!

Check out the link for the full, unexpurgated account. [Comic Book Movie]

Oblivion

Here's the latest poster for Tom Cruise's upcoming post-apocalyptic epic. [IGN]

Dark Skies

Here are some sneak peek clips from the alien abduction movie starring The Americans and Felicity's Keri Russell.

Jack the Giant Slayer

And here are some promo photos for the next episode after that, "Dead to Rights." [SpoilerTV]

The Originals

Klaus actor Joseph Morgan says that other Vampire Diaries regulars could drop in on his New Orleans-set spinoff and vice-versa, up to and including main characters like Caroline:

"There are going to be characters that cross over between the two worlds. The whole world is going to be richer. It would imagine all the fans that have been so generous to me are going to want to see what happens with Caroline…I feel like I owe it to the fans for there to be some resolve and for her to possibly turn up in New Orleans at some point. I know there's already talks about different characters that can come over to New Orleans and then go back."

[E! Online]

Lost Girl

Terminator star Linda Hamilton will guest star in an upcoming episode as Acacia, described by Syfy as "a tough, sexy and ruthless assassin who has enjoyed a storied and deadly career." [EW]

Defiance

Here are some cast photos of Syfy's upcoming post-apocalyptic alien western. [SpoilerTV]

Teen Wolf

The seventh episode of season three will reportedly be called "Currents." [SpoilerTV]

Beauty and the Beast

Executive producer Brian Peterson previews what's ahead:

Tess is kind of our window in what a normal person – who doesn't just immediately meet a beast and fall in love – would think about all this. So she's going to have a really interesting journey in these next few episodes; in her relationship with Cat, in her relationship with Joe and in her relationship with the vigilante. Evan and J.T. are going to have a growing ‘situation.' Evan will have a big story, too. His whole goal is to protect Cat. It's kind of a situation of, ‘why is this person I care about doing all of these dumb things?'He is in a position of ‘I need to protect her from herself.' So he's going to kind of continue to protect and get more and more involved in things that he should never be getting involved in.

[Sendhil Ramamurthy is] going to be a very big part of the show all the way up to the season finale at least. He's come in with his own agenda and we're quickly going to see how that's different than anybody else on the show; in his need to catch the beast and working with the task force and creating the task force to find the beast for him. I think he has a really fun introduction with Catherine and pretty quickly develops a certain kind of bond with her in the show.

There's more at the link. [TV Equals]

Additional reporting by Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders.

Bacteria outnumber the cells in our own body by a factor of 10 to 1 — as many as 100 trillion microbes per person — and yet we know almost nothing about how bacteria have changed as humans evolved.

Although they're much more numerous than our own cells, bacteria are so tiny that they represent only a small fraction of our overall mass. Admittedly, it isn't that small a fraction: about 5 pounds of each person is actually all the bacteria living inside us. It's not the most pleasant thought, but it's been a basic, vital part of our biology going back to the very origins of multicellular life.

But that raises an interesting point — whenever we talk about human evolution, we're only talking about the adaptations of Homo sapiens, not the trillions of microbial passengers living inside it. It's like we're always omitting five pounds of every human body — given the estimated 108 billion people who have ever lived, that's a total of 270 million tons over the past 50,000 years that our current evolutionary story just ignores.

And for the most part, that isn't likely to change, as human remains generally don't preserve ancient bacteria. The one major exception is found in dental plaque. Researchers at the Centre for Ancient DNA at Australia's University of Adelaide examined the preserved tartar from 34 prehistoric skeletons found in northern Europe. They used those skeletons to construct a bacterial timeline spanning from the age of hunter-gatherers to the Middle Ages, with modern dental records bringing us up to the present day.

In a statement, study leader Professor Alan Cooper explains the find:

"This is the first record of how our evolution over the last 7500 years has impacted the bacteria we carry with us, and the important health consequences. Oral bacteria in modern man are markedly less diverse than historic populations and this is thought to contribute to chronic oral and other disease in post-industrial lifestyles. The composition of oral bacteria changed markedly with the introduction of farming, and again around 150 years ago. With the introduction of processed sugar and flour in the Industrial Revolution, we can see a dramatically decreased diversity in our oral bacteria, allowing domination by caries-causing strains. The modern mouth basically exists in a permanent disease state."

Via Nature Genetics. Image by woodleywonderworks on Flickr.

This image from the European Southern Observatory's Wide Field Imager in Chile reveals one of the galaxy's brightest regions, with one weird, inky exception. Why is Barnard 86 a dark cloud in the middle of such a starry vista?

What makes the appearance of Barnard 86 particularly striking is that it appears next to the star cluster NGC 6520, which means the brightest and darkest parts of this region of space appear to be neighbors. Both are located roughly 6,000 light-years from Earth, and the star cluster is thought to be approximately 150 million years old. Considering the billion-year lifespans of most stars, that isn't especially old, and indeed the star cluster is thought to be full of young, gigantic stars that will fast burn out.

But what about Barnard 86? To understand why the cloud looks so different from everything around it, let's turn to the experts at the European Southern Observatory:

This object, a small, isolated dark nebula known as a Bok globule, was described as "a drop of ink on the luminous sky" by its discoverer Edward Emerson Barnard, an American astronomer who discovered and photographed numerous comets, dark nebulae, one of Jupiter's moons, and made many other contributions. Through a small telescope Barnard 86 looks like a dearth of stars, or a window onto a patch of distant, clearer sky. However, this object is actually in the foreground of the star field - a cold, dark, dense cloud made up of small dust grains that block starlight and make the region appear opaque. It is thought to have formed from the remnants of a molecular cloud that collapsed to form the nearby star cluster NGC 6520, seen just to the left of Barnard 86 in this image.

For more, check out the full report at the ESO website.

Guillermo del Toro has big plans for Pacific Rim... and its sequel. Steven Moffat hints at the biggest rumor regarding Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson won't be Lobo after all. Plus director David Twohy talks Riddick!

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Pacific Rim.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Zachary Quinto discusses what to expect from the sequel:

Yeah, darker, bigger and there's just more at stake for everybody. So, I think that's exciting for an audience.

What should audiences expect from the next film?
More action, more peril and there's more at stake, as I said, for the crew of the Enterprise this time around. More danger and just a bigger, bolder experience I would say.

Portraying such an iconic character as Spock in Star Trek and doing so successfully in the first film, what kind pressure does reception of the sequel put on you, if it puts pressure on you at all?
I never felt any pressure from being a part of that franchise, I only felt supported and... I have only felt like my job is to get to work and be a part of something that people want to watch and want to see. That certainly was the case the first time around and I think it will be more the case this time, because it is such a bigger experience we shot this movie in 3D and IMAX and I think the story just lends itself to much more of an explosion onto the summer movie schedule scene.

There's more at the link. [Huffington Post]

Star Wars: Episode VII

In case anyone was still wondering about those debunked John Noble Star Wars rumors, here's an official denial from the Fringe star himself.

It's still a great idea though.

Man of Steel

While explaining the attitude that he and director Zack Snyder approached to making the latest Superman movie, star Henry Cavill drops some hints about the character's arc in the film:

"This is not a movie about Zack Snyder directing something, or Henry Cavill playing a character… it's a selfless movie about a character who is going through what he is going through. He wants to do the right thing, but he's fallible, like the rest of us. He messes up, and that makes us love him more."

[Total Film]

Pacific Rim

Director Guillermo del Toro gives the latest update on his giant monster epic:

We're 30 to 40 percent into the 3D conversion and that's going really good. We've done 99 percent of all the animation of Industrial Light & Magic, and we have rendered and finished about 33 percent of the shots. So the big animation haul is basically over. We have about a dozen shots left to animate."

Del Toro also discusses The Wire star Idris Elba's work as Lieutenant-Commander Stacker Pentecost, saying he "needed him to root the whole adventure, morally and ethically." He also discusses his and co-writer Travis Beacham's work on a potential sequel:

"Travis [Beacham, co-writer] and I have been working on it. We co-wrote the screenplay on this first one, and now we're hard at work at doing the second one. We want to take however long it takes to really find out the idea and try to bridge something that really makes the mythology roll... The great thing about Legendary is they're willing to take it to completion in the right way. They're giving us the leeway. Imagine that we're generating the comic book. We're learning more about the [Pacific Rim] world we're creating day by day."

[Total Film via Comic Book Movie]

Mockingjay

Game Change writer (and "Jonathan on Buffy" actor) Danny Strong has reportedly completed the script for the first part of the two-film adaptation of the final book in the Hunger Games series. Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence is reportedly going to return for the next two films — assuming he doesn't abruptly exit the series like predecessor Gary Ross — and so would begin pre-production on the first Mockingjay film potentially while still completing post-production on the current film. For his part, Strong is expected to begin work on the second film straight away, as Lionsgate is reportedly pleased with his first script. [/Film]

Riddick

Director David Twohy explains how he and star Vin Diesel created a third Riddick movie on a fraction of the budget of The Chronicles of Riddick, and why the film's independent status allowed them to do things they couldn't with the previous studio-made film:

If you make it PG-13, then you have to make concessions, and that's what happened on The Chronicles of Riddick where we had to downplay a lot of our action sequences and remove a lot of the blood. We found it was tying our hands, so we vowed not to do that... Vin and I got the rights back and produced it ourselves on a smaller scale. That said, it still looks like a big movie. I think the audience will see the tip of the hat to Pitch Black, but they won't feel claustrophobic.

Based on previous statements it sounds as if Riddick could get additional powers. Is that true or is he just more dangerous?
The cryptic answer is a little of both. Sorry for being coy but I'm already projecting ahead to the theatrical cut versus the director's cut and thinking about what I may re-include.

[Total Film via Comic Book Movie]

Lobo

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson reveals that his potential starring vehicle about D.C. Comics' intergalactic bounty hunter has fizzled out:

"It was [something that I was going to do] for a minute, but then it kind of just went away, as things happen in Hollywood. For a minute, I was interested in it, but then it went away.

[MTV via Spinoff Online]

Bond 24

The plan to film two James Bond films back-to-back as the follow-up to Skyfall has reportedly been dropped, and so director Sam Mendes is reportedly considering coming back for the next film, depending on the script. [Mail Online]

Doctor Who

I would advise against reading this as confirmation that past Doctors will be returning for the fiftieth anniversary special — which is set to start filming in April, so this has to be finalized fairly soon — but writer and showrunner Steven Moffat reportedly had this to say about the possibility:

"Getting the other Doctors involved would be very fitting for the anniversary episode, wouldn't it?"

While it seems unlikely Moffat would say that at this stage if previous Doctors weren't going to appear, the very same report also says the special will see Matt Smith's regeneration into the next Doctor, when it's already been confirmed he will be back for at least the Christmas special. So, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what to make of any of this, although apparently Matt Smith is in favor of bringing past Doctors back too:

"How amazing would it be to see Tom Baker? Can you imagine seeing him back in the scarf? That would be so cool. Paul McGann is a great Doctor – I say bring back Chris [Eccleston] and Dave [Tennant] too."

[Mirror]

In more substantial news, "Asylum of the Daleks" and "The Angels Take Manhattan" director Nick Hurran has revealed he will direct the 50th anniversary special. This report also mentions the rumored running length is 90 minutes, as opposed to past reports that said it would be a relatively short 60 minutes. That might just be a typo or unsourced speculation, but at least it's a sliver of hope for those disappointed with the current running length. [Blogtor Who]

The Walking Dead

Star Andrew Lincoln discusses Rick's journey through the rest of the season:

"A lot of the back half of the season is the struggle between two ideologies and two men [Rick and the Governor], but also a struggle for Rick's sanity. He's probably at his lowest ever. We wanted to hold up a mirror that [the Governor] could've been Rick maybe two to three months down the line with a civilization like Woodbury. Rick and his family have been moving around hand to mouth and haven't had time to digest the grief and the shock and the horror of the situation. So what's possibly happened in Woodbury is that they've had time to sit with it, and that's had a detrimental effect on some of the characters."

And costar Laurie Holden discusses whether Andrea can ever truly rejoin the group after her time in Woodbury:

"Yes, she befriended The Governor, but she was never actively trying to kill the group. That's not who Andrea is. It's a misunderstanding and their misconception of a situation. They assume she's bad now. Unfortunately, she pays a price for being in the dark. It's never about choosing sides, because when she sees the Governor for who he is, she's not going to be with him. She's smarter than that. Rick and the group are her family and she was conned. She's caught in an impossible situation where she doesn't want anyone to die and people do try to force her to take sides."

There's plenty more from other cast members at the link. [TV Guide]

Elsewhere, David Morrissey discusses what's next for the Governor:

"That's going to be one of the surprises in the season — the Governor's methods to getting his revenge. There are people in his group — Andrea and Milton — who are the voice of reason, who pacify his people and don't want this fight and want peace. Maybe there's an element to the Governor that might want that if he can get what he wants. He might not have to go through this all-out war if he can get what he wants, and diplomacy is part of that as well. Deals are done between hostile communities all the time, so there are exchanges that happen. All I can say is it doesn't play out the way that a lot of people think it's going to."

[Live Feed]

Person of Interest

Here's a promo for the next episode, "Relevance", guest starring Fairly Legal's Sarah Shahi.

Revolution

A couple of quick casting snippets — Hailey Renee Wist will play "Young Etta" in episode fifteen, while Daniel R. Jones will play "Cutrone" in episode sixteen. [SpoilerTV]

Touch

Here's a promo for episode four, "Perfect Storm."

And here's the synopsis for episode six, "Broken", which airs March 8:

LIVES ARE ON THE LINE AS THE PAIN AND SUFFERING ESCALATE — After three years of searching for Amelia, Lucy's frustration and fury peaks. When she takes matters with Calvin into her own hands, he offers an unthinkable deal for Amelia's return. As Martin and Jake search for Lucy, they enlist Trevor (guest star Greg Ellis) at Breakwire to help. Meanwhile, Guillermo is reeling from his recent sins in Mexico, and he makes some life-changing decisions after running into a defeated man hiking through the Arizona desert

[SpoilerTV]

Arrow

Here's a short set video of star Stephen Amell from the filming of episode eighteen, "Salvation."

The Vampire Diaries

Here's a promo and a sneak peek for this Thursday's episode, "Stand By Me." [Buddy TV]

Costar Joseph Morgan discusses whether Klaus and Caroline's friendship is now done for good:

"There's always got to be a hint of hope [for them], hasn't there? I would like to think that she is understanding enough [because] this is the thing: No one is truly good or evil. There's always some redeeming quality somewhere, maybe buried very, very deep within someone. I was filming a scene with her the other day, so the characters are still interacting. Their relationship, and I'll use that term loosely, becomes much more complex the more we go on, which is so interesting to play.

He also discusses what's next for Klaus and Katherine:

"Well, there are going to be interesting developments with that. We've got to bear in mind this is someone who Klaus hunted down for 500 years. So she's going to want to do everything she can to avoid him, whether that's trying to kill him or make peace with him or trying to broker a deal with him, that remains to be seen, but absolutely not something that's brushed over."

[TV Guide]

While Daniel Gillies is already set to return as Original vampire Elijah in episode twenty — the backdoor pilot for the show's planned Originals spin-off — he will reportedly make his first return appearance in episode eighteen, though it's not known exactly how he will factor into that episode just yet. [Zap2It]

American Horror Story

Zachary Quinto says he doesn't believe he will be back as a new character for season three:

I haven't had any conversations about coming back, so at this point I don't think I will be part of the third season as no one has mentioned it to me and I know that they have been making other announcements for the cast. Which is fine, when I signed on for the second season, Ryan [Murphy] and I talked about it being a one year commitment and I think just where I am in my work and what I want to accomplish I think it is good to have a little flexibility and a little bit of freedom. So, at this point I don't really have any plans to go back...

[Huffington Post]

Being Human (US)

Here's a sneak peek at the first four minutes of tonight's episode, "What's Blood Got To Do With It?"

Lost Girl

Here's a promo for episode six, "The Kenzi Scale."

Beauty and the Beast

Here's a sneak peek for this week's episode, "Tough Love."

Additional reporting by Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders.

Check out an Iron Man 3 villain in a brand new poster. David Fincher is still having trouble making 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Rachel Nichols discusses time travel in Continuum. Plus G.I. Joe and Sin City sequel updates!

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Oz the Great and Powerful.

Iron Man 3

Here's a new poster featuring Memento star Guy Pearce as villainous inventor Aldrich Killian. [/Film]

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Nothing is official yet beyond the fact that Peter Dinklage will indeed be in the next X-Men movie, but there's now a rumor about exactly which character the Game of Thrones star will play. One inside source — so grains of salt automatically at the ready — says Dinklage will play Bolivar Trask, the creator of the Sentinel robots. Considering the Sentinels' key part in the Days of Future Past comics storyline, Trask is a natural inclusion — although it's a little weird when you consider legendary genre actor Bill Duke already played the part in X-Men: The Last Stand, and he and Dinklage aren't exactly noted for their resemblance. While Days of Future Past is thought to keep continuity with the previous X-Men movies, I'm guessing director Bryan Singer is somewhat less committed to maintaining the sanctity of Brett Ratner's contribution to the franchise. Anyway, approach this all with utmost skepticism until we hear something official, especially since Bryan Singer hasn't been particularly secretive about the project so far. [Comic Book Movie]

Oz the Great and Powerful

Here's another clip from Sam Raimi and James Franco's Wizard of Oz prequel.

This is such a fundamental spoiler that I'll just link to it, but if you want to know which of the three witches in the film — played by Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, and Mila Kunis — turns out to be the evil one, go here.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

David Fincher is still reportedly trying to get his adaptation of the Jules Verne novel off the ground, and the latest reports suggest Disney has given him the green light to shoot the film in Australia, where some pretty huge tax incentives make it a good deal. However, he reportedly won't be making the film with his Fight Club star Brad Pitt, who reportedly passed on the role last month. Fincher's new top choice is reportedly Channing Tatum, but neither Tatum nor any of the other main contenders are available to shoot the film until possibly as late as 2014, so the project may have to keep idling for the foreseeable future. [The Playlist]

Jurassic Park IV

The fourth Jurassic Park movie, featuring a script from Rise of the Planet of the Apes writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, is now supposedly on track for a June 13, 2014 release date, but it will have to get by without one of the franchise's key figures. Longtime series producer Kathleen Kennedy won't be involved with the film, as she's a little busy with the whole "running Lucasfilm" thing. Her husband and fellow producer Frank Marshall confirmed the news on Twitter.

The Rise of the Planet of the Apes sequel is going in a whole new primate-fighting direction. Guillermo del Toro reveals the setup for his latest horror movie Crimson Peak. How does Carol Marcus fit into Star Trek Into Darkness? There are some brand new clips from Jack the Giant Slayer.

All that, plus X-Men: Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer reveals two very familiar chairs, Naomie Harris discusses her James Bond future, a Supernatural writer reveals what's ahead, and Todd MacFarlane claims an Oscar-winning actor is desperate to play Spawn!

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Director J.J. Abrams confirms the Klingons will indeed make an appearance in the sequel after getting cut out of his first Star Trek:

"We shot some stuff that had Klingons in it and then we ended up cutting the scene so it's a deleted scene on the DVD but they are back in this one. Their role in this is definitely adversarial and you'll see how that plays out. But you don't have to know about any preexisting stories to watch this film."

Abrams also discusses what role Alice Eve will play as Dr. Carol Marcus, a character that previously appeared as the mother of Captain Kirk's lovechild in The Wrath of Khan:

"Wouldn't [Chris Pine] like that [having Alice Eve as a love interest]. [Kirk] meets [Carol] fairly early on and again — she plays a science officer, she's someone who is part of the adventure, and it's an action-adventure movie so once that gets going it's a difficult thing to park the story and say 'lets do a romantic interlude.' But her role is important, she wouldn't be in the movie otherwise."

[MTV via Comic Book Movie]

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Director Bryan Singer's latest tweet features the return of a familiar wheelchair — actually, make that two familiar wheelchairs, given the time-traveling, continuity-combining nature of the film.

Marc Webb and Bryan Singer tweet the latest images from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past. The writers of Skyfall discuss the future of James Bond. Plus Once Upon a Time, Arrow, The Vampire Diaries, and much more!

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from The Walking Dead.

Star Wars: Episode VII

Definitive Joker voice actor Mark Hamill — who also apparently has some connection to Star Wars — says that nobody, including Harrison Ford, has actually signed on to appear in J.J. Abrams's Star Wars movie:

"They're talking to us. George [Lucas] wanted to know whether we'd be interested. He did say that if we didn't want to do it, they wouldn't cast another actor in our parts – they would write us out. … I can tell you right away that we haven't signed any contracts. We're in the stage where they want us to go in and meet with Michael Arndt, who is the writer, and Kathleen Kennedy, who is going to run Lucasfilm. Both have had meetings set that were postponed — on their end, not mine. They're more busy than I am."

He also says he thinks it's likely the new Star Wars movie will focus on the next generation of the Skywalker clan — something that's been rumored a few times, but still shouldn't be considered official:

"I'm assuming, because I haven't talked to the writers, that these movies would be about our offspring — like my character would be sort of in the Obi-Wan range [as] an influential character. … When I found out [while making the original trilogy] that ultimate good news/bad news joke – the good news is there's a real attractive, hot girl in the universe; the bad news is she's your sister – I thought, 'Well, I'm going to wind up like Sir Alec [Guinness]. I'm going to be a lonely old hermit living out in some kind of desert igloo with a couple of robots.'"

Finally, he discusses his hopes for the new movie's tone and feel, which includes a return to the original trilogy's use of practical effects:

"I said to George that I wanted to go back to the way it was, in the sense that ours was much more carefree and lighthearted and humorous – in my opinion, anyway. And another thing I'd want to make sure of is are we going to have the whole gang back? Is Carrie and Harrison and Billy Dee and Tony Daniels, everybody that's around from the original [returning]? I want to make sure that everybody's on board here, rather than just one...

I hope they find the right balance of CGI with practical effects. I love props, I love models, miniatures, matte paintings — I'm sort of old school. I think if you go too far in the direction of CGI it winds up looking like just a giant a video game, and that's unfortunate. … If they listen to me at all, it'll be, 'Lighten up and go retro with the way it looks.'"

[ET Online]

Star Trek Into Darkness

Here's a behind-the-scenes video.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Director Marc Webb keeps sending out daily tweets from the set of his Spider-Man sequel, but most are so cryptic that they're not really worth passing along. This one seems to have a bit more substance, that substance being that there are probably going to be some FBI agents in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

We learn Man of Steel's supposed running length, and it's epic. Writer-director James Gunn meets with two crucial Guardians of the Galaxy people. Steven Moffat confirms he's planning Doctor Who's next season. Plus Transformers 4 and Dark Skies hints!

It's spoilers all the way down!

Top image from Man of Steel.

Man of Steel

According to IMDB, the running time of Zack Snyder's Superman movie is an epic 148 minutes, which makes it only 4 minutes shorter than The Dark Knight (and 8 minutes longer than Batman Begins, for sake of comparison). Obviously, anything from IMDB should be met with all due skepticism, but a movie's running length is apparently something the site tends to get right with a decent degree of accuracy. [Comic Book Movie]

Guardians of the Galaxy

Writer-director James Gunn tweeted that he had met with Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, who were responsible for a series of very highly acclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy comics in the late '00s, in the movie's production offices. It's not clear whether Abnett and Lanning actually offered any thoughts on Gunn's film or if this was just a courtesy visit, but Gunn did include this caption of a photo of the three of them that he posted to Instagram: With the genius reimaginers of the Guardians of the Galaxy who I am currently reimagining - Andy Lanning & Dan Abnett! We showed them around the production office today to show them some of the amazing stuff they inspired! We wouldn't be making this movie without them! AND they're super nice guys to boot!

[Comic Book Movie]

The Wolverine

Here's a new promo photo of director James Mangold and star Hugh Jackman's latest, Japan-set entry in the Wolverine saga. [First Showing]

Mangold also tweeted this photo from the editing bay — the image on the screen is apparently from the last reel of the film. [/Film]

Reaffirming that age-old maxim that alcohol is the cause of and solution to all of life's problems, fruit flies have devised an ingenious strategy to protect their unborn young from parasites. They simply lay their eggs in alcohol, and somehow that solves everything.

The researcher who decided to expand that "somehow" into, you know, an actual scientific explanation is Emory evolutionary geneticist Todd Schlenke. He and his team observed that fruit flies are to recognize the presence of tiny parasitic wasps that, if left unchecked, would inject their own eggs inside the fruit flies' larvae and potentially devour the tiny fruit flies from the inside.

To protect against this, fruit flies utilize the natural immunity they have built up to alcohol, which comes as a byproduct of spending so much of their time eating fungi and bacteria off of the surface of rotting, fermenting fruit. Wasps, on the other hand, have no such protection, and so if they inject their eggs into larvae that were deposited in alcohol-rich areas, their own young will die of exposure to the toxins. In a statement, Schlenke explains how the process works:

"The adult flies actually anticipate an infection risk to their children, and then they medicate them by depositing them in alcohol. We found that this medicating behavior was shared by diverse fly species, adding to the evidence that using toxins in the environment to medicate offspring may be common across the animal kingdom. Our data indicate that the flies can visually distinguish the relatively small morphological differences between male and female wasps, and between different species of wasps. The fruit fly larvae raise their blood alcohol levels, so that the wasps living in their blood will suffer. When you think of an immune system, you usually think of blood cells and immune proteins, but behavior can also be a big part of an organism's immune defense."

What's more, this rather nifty defense strategy isn't a learned behavior — even fruit flies that had never encountered wasps before knew to lay their eggs in alcohol:

"The fruit flies clearly change their reproductive behavior when the wasps are present. The alcohol is slightly toxic to the fruit flies as well, but the wasps are a bigger danger than the alcohol. The flies that we work with have not seen wasps in their lives before, and neither have their ancestors going back hundreds of generations. And yet, the flies still recognize these wasps as a danger when they are put in a cage with them. This result was a surprise to me. I thought the flies were probably using olfaction to sense the female wasps. The small, compound eyes of flies are believed to be more geared to detecting motion than high-resolution images. We tested a number of fly species and found that each fly species that uses rotting fruit for food mounts this immune behavior against parasitic wasps. Medication may be far more common in nature than we previously thought."

Original paper at Science. Image by Johnn Tann on Flickr.

Measuring only about a foot and a half long, the lanternshark may seem distinctly less impressive than its larger shark cousins. But this diminutive fish has mastered the art of bioluminescence, concealing themselves from prey while challenging any potential predators.

Because they are deep-sea fish, it's not surprising that lanternsharks have bioluminescent abilities, but they are one of the rare species that can put this adaptation to use in multiple ways. On their bellies, the lanternshark has light-producing photophore cells, which produces light that is visible to the fish swimming beneath it. These are usually prey, as Dr. Julian Claes of Belgium's Catholic University of Louvain explains to the BBC:

"Imagine you are below the shark, the shark is swimming and you have the light from the Sun coming down. If you are just below the shark what you are going to see is a shadow. So imagine if the shark can actually produce a light, which is identical to the light produced by the Sun. Then the shadow of the shark is going to disappear."

That trick allows the lanternshark to make quick work of unsuspecting prey, but what about the lightsabers I promised in the headline? Well, that's what Claes and his fellow researchers refer to the two hard spines that just out of the lanternshark right in front of its two dorsal fins — you can see them both in the photo up top. Those spines are positioned by another set of photophores, which cause the sharp spines to glow in a way that is similar to but (if the lanternshark knows what's good for it) legally distinguishable from the iconic Star Wars weapons. Dr. Claes explains further:

"It was surprising - why would you try to be invisible from below but visible from the dorsal side? It's a way to say: 'Don't bite me, I'm dangerous, I have spines on my back. You could be hurt.' When you live in this dark place, what you try to do is avoid is to be seen by other animals, because there are no places to hide. It can be very dangerous - you put yourself at risk when you produce light from your back, unless it acts as a warning system. It's surprising that these two apparently opposite behaviours can occur in a single organism at the same time. It is really paradoxical."

For more, check out the complete original paper at Scientific Reports.

Via BBC News. Image of lanternshark by Etrusko25 on Wikimedia.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier will be a whole different genre than its predecessor. Guardians of the Galaxy will proceed without Khal Drogo. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes adds another human. Plus Doctor Who, Walking Dead, and more!

Blast into a bold new world of spoilers!

Top image from Iron Man 3.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Director Bryan Singer won't reveal who Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage will play in the film, but he did make it clear that he won't be doing it under a mountain of CGI:

"He's not going to be a CGI character. He'll be himself. Not that he'll be playing Peter Dinklage, he'll be playing this character. It's not a shy character. He's just such a phenomenal actor; I'm a huge fan of Peter's and Game of Thrones. He was my first choice and I was really happy [about the casting]. It's so funny to talk to him because he does that impeccable accent [on Game of Thrones] and then you talk to him and he's this guy from New Jersey."

[IGN]

From the same interview, Singer goes into new detail about the movie's approach to time travel and its 1970s setting:

The movie takes place at different times. It deals with, I don't want to say time travel, but time displacement. A form of time travel which is steeped more in the X-Men [mythos].

There was a real distinctive tone created in First Class, that was sort of in the vein of a film from that era, how are you going to integrate that into this one?
The majority of it...or that part of it, takes place in the early 70's, 1973. So Nixon is a character, and there will be different styles and automobiles. And there will be some futuristic, as well as retro, technology which you haven't seen. There are science fiction aspects of the movie, and then there's some retro science fiction that the X-Men films haven't had quite yet. So we're exploring that, which will be fun. And there's an attitude [difference]. We discover our characters, particularly the younger characters, at a different place in their lives. Every character you discover in this movie is in a completely different place than you've ever seen, emotionally, and it's about them moving through that. Hilarity ensues!

He also suggests he does plan to use the new movie to correct some of the faults of Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand. To wit:

You mean, what you're politely saying is, "fix s**t." Is that what you're saying? That's what I'm hearing. [Laughing]

Maybe…
There's going to be a little of that, a few things I can repair.

Are fans going to be pleased with these things you will be repairing?
I think so, I think so, yes.

There's still plenty more at the link. [IGN]

Iron Man 3

Here's a rather excellent new poster featuring Ben Kingsley as the villainous Mandarin. [IGN]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige explains the staying power of the superhero genre by explaining it isn't really a genre at all, but rather a template onto which you can place other genres. Further, he explains the fundamental difference between the first and second Captain America films:

"If [the superhero movie] is a fad, it's one that lasts 30 to 40 years, as the Western did, because each one is so different. There's an opportunity to graft almost sub-genres onto them. Our first Captain America film was a World War II picture, and the next is a political thriller. They all have their own textures and patinas, and that's what is exciting about it."

[Variety]

Guardians of the Galaxy

Looks like we all spoke a bit too soon when it came to the casting of Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa as Drax the Destroyer. He has reportedly passed on Marvel's offer, and so James Gunn and company are reportedly back to screen-testing potential candidates for the part. [IGN]

The Wolverine

Director James Mangold tweeted this photo from the set, featuring Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in repose.

Ray Winstone explains the world of Darren Aronofsky's Noah. Robert Kirkman discusses The Walking Dead. Dane DeHaan reveals his training regimen for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Tom Cruise rides a motorcycle in an All You Need Is Kill set video!

Spoilers from this point forward!

Top image from Star Trek Into Darkness.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Spock actor Zachary Quinto hints at his character's continuing emotional — or emotional by Vulcan standards, at least — arc:

"I think we tapped into something in the first film that a lot of people weren't expecting, which is the emotional undercurrent and how powerfully it runs through him. That continues in this film. There are things that happen to him - and things that he's part of - that are incredibly personal.... That was really exciting for me both physically and emotionally."

And director J.J. Abrams discusses the decision to push back the movie's originally planned release date until the script was ready:

"It would have been better probably for the studio [if we'd put it out earlier], because it would have been fresher in people's minds. But I'm happy we didn't rush it. It wouldn't have been a better movie if it came out earlier, I know that."

[EW]

Iron Man 3

Writer-director Shane Black discusses what to expect from Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance as Tony Stark this time around:

"Tony Stark is [now] relying on these suits to feel like he's in any way capable. He surrounds himself with these things almost like a blanket. In The Avengers, he fought aliens, but he was the one character I would not have picked to fight aliens. Now we've taken advantage of the fact that he's fought aliens and he talks about it... Robert's portrayal of Tony is ultimately the American cowboy who defies authority, thinks for himself and is fiercely individualistic. That's an America we like to believe in, which is why The Mandarin, who hates America, is a good match for Tony in this movie."

Speaking of the Mandarin, actor Ben Kingsley previews what to expect:

"A pastiche of American iconography. It's there to confuse - you don't know what's coming next. Shane allowed me to push the boundaries of the role so that I'm allow to go a bit bonkers."

It's also confirmed that the President, played by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Fringe recurring player William Sadler, will give Don Cheadle's James Rhodes the new code name of Iron Patriot. Cheadle explains:

"The name makes as much sense as Iron Man," Cheadle laughed. "It's a new and interesting look. I don't know how, personally, I'd feel about being draped in the flag, but Rhodey doesn't care what the paint job is like. He just wants it to do what it does."

[Empire Online via Comic Book Movie]

In terms of the long-term future of Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, his current contract actually ends with this film, and while it's still probably a safe bet he will return for The Avengers 2, it sounds like Downey isn't making any promises about returning to the role beyond that:

"Let's just say that the only thing I ever let go of had claw marks in it. There's a little bit of soul reclamation going on. I feel that the first time I played Tony, I did it best. Sorry! The affinity with Tony now is: how do you sustain something? I'm not stupid, I like to play ball, I love the company, I love the character, and the business side of things, I'm not too picky about that either... [Being recast] would probably be the best thing in the world for me. You know, ego...but sometimes ego just has to be smashed. Let's see what happens. I take the audience very seriously - I feel bad when I see folks doing movies and the audience is like, 'Don't do that anymore.' I don't have to overstay my welcome..."

For his part, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige simply said "Tony's going to carry on — Avengers 2 already has a release date!", which leaves room for the role to be recast as soon as The Avengers 2, although I'd be surprised if Downey called it a day quite that early. [Empire Online via Comic Book Movie]

Green Lantern 2

After Green Lantern's somewhat underwhelming box office, there was still talk that a sequel might be forthcoming — but Sinestro actor Mark Strong says you shouldn't hold your breath. He told MTV, "I would be surprised if they made a second one because I've heard nothing about it in quite a while now." He also responded to criticisms of Sinestro putting on the yellow ring at the end of the first movie, saying:

A lot of people seemed to be confused by him putting on the ring at the end of the movie. They felt that it came out of nowhere. All it was, during the credits, there was a sequence which was a nod to where the trilogy was intending to head to. It wasn't ever meant to be part of the story of the first film... The putting on of the ring and the whole suit turning yellow would have been great fun.

[MTV]

After Earth

Here's a new synopsis for the post-apocalyptic epic from stars Will and Jaden Smith and director M. Night Shyamalan. Admittedly, that wouldn't generally be considered the most promising combination, but Shyamalan is sharing the scripting duties for this one with Traffic and Syriana writer Stephen Gaghan, so at least that's something. Anyway, to the synopsis:

A crash landing leaves teenager Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) and his legendary father Cypher (Will Smith) stranded on Earth, 1,000 years after cataclysmic events forced humanity's escape. With Cypher critically injured, Kitai must embark on a perilous journey to signal for help, facing uncharted terrain, evolved animal species that now rule the planet, and an unstoppable alien creature that escaped during the crash. Father and son must learn to work together and trust one another if they want any chance of returning home.

[IGN]

Game of Thrones

Readers of A Storm of Swords already know to expect an... interesting storyline involving Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister. But in case you wondered if this will be prominent in season three, or how the show will approach it, Sansa actor Sophie Turner has some hints. She tells the Windsor Star that she shares a lot of screen time with Peter Dinklage:

I can tell you that Sansa kind of goes through this little roller coaster on season 3 emotionally, she kind of gets her hopes up a little at times and they kind of get crushed - as per (usual) pretty much, nothing much different. It's very emotionally testing for Sansa this season... Peter's such a cool guy, he's amazing to act alongside with and I think I've been really lucky in terms of having worked with Sean Bean closely - him being my dad, (Ned Stark) - and now Peter, I'm very lucky getting to work in scenes with these guys because they're big successful actors. Peter's comedic timing is amazing.

[Windsor Star]

The Walking Dead

Here's a promo and two sneak peeks for episode twelve, "Clear."

Supernatural

In recognition of his growing importance to the show's ongoing storyline, Misha Collins has been re-promoted to "series regular" status for season nine. [TV Line]

The Vampire Diaries

Showrunner Julie Plec discusses what's ahead for the characters, starting with whether Elena, Damon, or Stefon even want to find the cure at this point:

Ultimately, the race for the cure has sort of been channeled into the race to find Katherine. Klaus doesn't know if Katherine's going to use it against him [to kill him] or use it as leverage to get her freedom, but he doesn't really like option A, so he's got a lot of concerns. Rebekah, of course, still very much wants to be human, and we're going to just keep exploring that more and more as she gets closer to finding Katherine.

What's in it for Stefan and Damon at this point?
The question for the boys is always "How do we help Elena through this?" If they have an easy time of it, then the cure isn't necessarily the first thing on their minds, but I can tell you, Elena's situation right now is not going to be the prettiest thing. It doesn't go so well. Elena is not going to be the best-behaved humanity-free vampire in town. The cure kind of comes back into play for the boys as a method to fix her. The irony is that their arguments over whether or not to fix her at the beginning of the season come full circle back around to "How do we fix this version of her, and should we?"

Can Elena and Damon sustain any kind of romance with her humanity gone? Is that even on the table?
Well, the first question is, what does she feel, if anything? And who does she feel it for, if anything? And where does she stand with Damon? Poor Damon, the big, lingering question that he's been feeling from the beginning is "Is this love that she feels for me real?" He doesn't believe it's real because he doesn't believe he deserves it, and he doesn't believe he can be happy, but he wants so desperately to know. Now we're in a predicament where she's not really feeling anything at all.

There's more at the link. [Zap2It]

Being Human (UK)

Here's a preview for the fifth episode, entitled "No Care, All Responsibility." [Cultfix]

Lost Girl

Here's a description for episode eight, "Fae-ge Against the Machine":

What was meant as a much-needed night off for Bo grows into a scavenger hunt in a lawless Dark Fae territory. In Bo's absence, Trick is placed in a precarious position with potentially dire consequences.

[SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders.

Just how many time travel paradoxes will there be in X-Men: Days of Future Past? Plus the Godzilla cast gets even more wonderfully ludicrous. Nicholas Hoult offers some Mad Max: Fury Road updates. The Wolverine director James Mangold keeps on tweeting. Russell Crowe discusses Man of Steel. Plus new details on the Fantastic Four reboot!

It's all spoilers from here on out!

Top image from The Wolverine.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Young Professor Charles Xavier actor James McAvoy shared a potentially disappointing update on the movie's time travel conceit, indicating he might not actually share any scenes with Patrick Stewart's older version of the character:

"It'll be cool, but I don't think we get any scenes together, sadly. I don't think there's any future self talking to past self."

[Empire Magazine via Comic Book Movie]

For his part, X-Men: First Class and Warm Bodies star Nicholas Hoult says he's been trying to get information about the new film from his Jack the Giant Slayer director Bryan Singer, with limited success:

Yes, I've been trying to get a fair bit of information out of him, he's kind of making me hang on until the script a little bit, but he's given a few rough ideas of what's going to be going on. The brilliant thing about it is seeing him so excited about it because that's always a good sign when you get a director that excited about the story and the ideas and what's going to be happening then you know that it sign to be a real thrill to work on.

Do you know when you're shooting yet? Do you have your schedule?
I don't have the complete dates yet, I know it's going to be starting fairly soon here. Bryan's already scouting locations and really getting into pre-production so still waiting to hear exactly, but in the not too distant future.

There's some more at the link, including some not especially spoiler-y thoughts on the making of Jack the Giant Slayer. [Collider]

Iron Man 3

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige explains why the inclusion of Extremis nanotechnology allows writer-director Shane Black's film to sidestep the previous Iron Man movies' reliance on armored villains:

"We're calling it a biological reality and there's a science behind it that allows people to glow and rip apart Iron Man suits. Frankly, Shane was not interested, and we were not interested, in having another armoured character and another armored character fight. We've done that twice before."

And here's a passage from the new Empire Magazine issue that drops some details on a particular scene:

The scene ends with Stark, bloodied and dazed, flying away not entirely in control of his malfunctioning prototype. He lands hundreds of miles away in a snowy field, where, out of power, he can't get in touch with Pepper. Or Rhodey. Or The Avengers, neatly sidestepping that question.

Breaking into a deserted-looking garage, the tone then zigzags again as Tony is startled by a ten year-old kid, Harley (Ty Simpkins) sparking what [Drew] Pearce calls the film's "sci-fi Capra" phase. "We loved the idea of doing something classically Spielbergian - a kid finds a superhero in a shed. Their relationship is not something you would traditionally see in Spielberg, though; it's bawdier, more fractious." Extremis is a scientific program invented by Hansen and abused by the Mandarin and his right-hand man, Guy Pearce's slimy Aldrich Killian. It rewrites the operating system of the body, upgrading strength, speed and durability to the very zenith of human possibility.

[Empire Magazine via Comic Book Movie]

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Falling Skies

Here's a first-look video for the third season of TNT's alien invasion drama. [Screen Crush]

Being Human (US)

Here's a promo and a sneak peek for the next episode, "Your Body Is A Condemned Wonderland." [SpoilerTV]

Warehouse 13

The show is set to return for the second half of its fourth season on Monday, April 29 at a new 10 PM time. [SpoilerTV]

Lost Girl

Here are some promo photos for episode seven, "There's Bo Place Like Home." [SpoilerTV]

Teen Wolf

The show is set to return Monday, June 3 at 10:00 PM. [SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders.

The early, internal reviews for Man of Steel are in — and if we can believe them, they're ridiculously promising. Zoe Saldana talks Star Trek Into Darkness and Avatar 2. Jason Clarke briefly discusses his star turn in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Plus S.H.I.E.L.D., The Walking Dead, Vampire Diaries, and more!

It's all spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Oblivion.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Uhura actress Zoe Saldana discusses the status of her character's romantic relationship with Spock heading into the sequel:

"I don't know. They're figuring things out. They're definitely together, you know, because they work together on the Enterprise, and there's so much that's going on this time around with their situation as a crew, as the Enterprise, that it definitely is going to add a little stress to their relationship."

[MTV Movies Blog]

Man of Steel

There have already been some positive reports from the studio screenings at Warner Bros., but I've been hesitant to report on these because it's not necessarily wise to trust the reviews of people whose livelihoods depend on the movie's success — hell, even Green Lantern supposedly had positive buzz coming out of its screenings. Still, a supposed inside source has passed along relatively concrete, extremely positive details on the film. Take this with a grain of salt on multiple levels, but still, it's interesting reading:

- Imagine a Nolan story with Snyder effects/action.
- It's the best movie of the year.
- There's TONS of action with Superman kicking all kinds of ass in his suit.
- The cape is CG'd most of the time so it can look awesome.
- They have intentionally left out most of the the Super action in trailers to save it.
- It's not nearly as dour and serious as the trailers suggest.
- The movie is complete, minus the 3D post-conversion, which is currently taking place.

[JoBlo]

Iron Man 3

Here's the latest poster. [IGN]

The Town's Rebecca Hall, who plays scientist Maya Hansen in the film, offers some fulsome praise for franchise star Robert Downey, Jr., which if nothing else confirms that her character will indeed be sharing scenes with Tony Stark, in case there was any doubt:

"[I] can't even come close to matching wits with [RDJ] - but it was fun to try! He's a really brilliant improvisationalist. He's incredibly quick-witted. Everything he brings to Tony Stark is him. Of course there's all of the tradition from the comic books, the movie, and also the writing is brilliant, but there's also a heavy dose of that character is Robert Downey Jr. He's inspiring to work with and watch. He's a force."

[MTV Splash Page]

Hulk

During an audience question and answer session at the Glasgow Film Festival, Joss Whedon explained why it's so tricky to create a good solo Hulk movie. Considering he's not only the writer-director for The Avengers series but also creative consultant on all Marvel Studios movies, his opinion is worth considering even more than normal:

Yes. But it would be very, very hard. Hulk is a tricky son of a bitch. He's the Claudio of superheroes. Because the problem is it's a very popular character, but it's not a superhero. Half of it's a superhero, half of it's a werewolf. And you can't structure it like a superhero movie, you can't light it like a superhero movie. How do you develop that? It would be extremely difficult. The one thing you would have in your favour would be Mark Ruffalo. But right now I don't know if they have plans to do that or not, because he works so well as part of a greater whole, but by himself, it's tough. I don't envy the guys who went before.

[Geek Chocolate]

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Director Bryan Singer offers this latest general update:

It's just a good feeling. It's a good feeling because I'm anxious to work with these new cast members in the capacity of a director. And also to work with my old friends. And we've remained friends: Ian and I are great friends — and Hugh. I just can't really wait to work with everybody on what is a very good story. It's a story that that really involves all of those characters and really puts them to good use. They're not just thrown in for the sake of it. And it's also a very epic story and takes place in multiple times. And, also you'll see, there will be things that haven't been in an X-Men film yet that fans and non-fans alike will appreciate.

[Huffington Post]

Asked about possible return appearances by Halle Berry as Storm and Rebecca Romijn as Mystique — who actually already cameoed in X-Men: First Class — Singer wouldn't rule it out:

"It depends on how it works out. I loved working with Halle, so all I can say is we'll see what happens... I'm excited about all the actors. It's an incredible cast. It's a great story and it involves a lot of stuff that hasn't been in X-Men films before. New kids of technology, science fiction aspects."

[E! Online]

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Zero Dark Thirty actor Jason Clarke confirmed his starring role in the Rise of the Planet of the Apes sequel, revealing only that "I play a guy who's trying to save humanity." [MTV Movies Blog]

Oblivion

The Walking Dead

Grindhouse star Rose McGowan previews her role as the young version of Barbara Hershey's Cora:

"I fall madly in love, and then it ends tragically," she tells us. "Most of my stuff is with Rumple. And it was an amazing experience and I'll see them again next season. [A return appearance is] in the works."

[E! Online]

Touch

Here are some promo photos for episode seven, "Ghosts." [SpoilerTV]

While this doesn't officially mean the show is dead, Kiefer Sutherland has reportedly been offered the lead role in an NBC pilot, which is a pretty good indication that Sutherland doesn't expect the show to be back for a third season. [EW]

Supernatural

Episode twenty-one will reportedly be called "The Great Escapist." [SpoilerTV]

Arrow

Episode twenty will reportedly be called "Home Invasion." [SpoilerTV]

The Vampire Diaries

Showrunner Julie Plec checks in with another update, starting with a possible return for Tyler:

Tyler had to leave in the same way Katherine had to leave. When Klaus puts his mark on you, you're pretty f—-ed. So we do not have any plans to bring him back until there is a resolution to his Klaus problem and with Katherine it took her out for two years. Tyler does appear in one episode [this season], but it's not his "return."

What can we expect from Caroline and Klaus' relationship?
We haven't seen the end of the strange and somewhat perverse and beautiful and horrific and amazing and awful dynamic between Caroline and Klaus. Even if the spin-off does happen and we have two shows, I don't predict that that would be the end of that relationship.

[TV Guide]

Continuum

The second season will make its Canadian premiere on April 21. [SpoilerTV]

Teen Wolf

Ian Nelson, best known as a District 3 tribute in The Hunger Games, will reportedly appear as a 15-year-old version of Derek Hale, playing the character "when he was a popular and charming star athlete; this is Derek before disaster struck his family, turning him into a lone werewolf always in search of a new pack." The same episode will introduce Derek's mother Talia and his sister Laura, as alluded to in a previous item. [E! Online]

Additional reporting by Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders.

Warner Bros. might be moving ahead with a Man of Steel sequel. A J.G. Ballard novel and a Victorian supernatural thriller get movie adaptations. Watch some new Oz the Great and Powerful videos. Plus Game of Thrones, American Horror Story, Arrow, and more!

It's spoilers all the way down!

Top image from Oz the Great and Powerful.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

There's a new batch of set photos, featuring Shailene Woodley's Mary Jane Watson and our first glimpse of Sally Field's return appearance as Aunt May. Go here for the rest, or click the picture at left. [/Film]

Man of Steel 2

Following on from yesterday's positive reports about the movie — which, again, might be total bullshit, but still — comes a rumor that Warner Bros. is pushing ahead with development of the sequel. David Goyer, who had a hand in writing all three Dark Knight movies as well as Man of Steel, is reportedly returning to write the sequel, although it should be stressed that this is all very much in the rumor stage. [Think McFly Think]

Transcendence

Christopher Nolan's longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister is currently working on his directorial debut, which is being described as a cross between Inception and 2001. If nothing else, Pfister will have plenty of star power on hand, as Johnny Depp has now officially signed on for the project, which begins shooting in April. Depp is described as playing "a man who creates a computer that develops a malevolent awareness." Also in negotiations to appear in the film: Paul Bettany, who voices Tony Stark's computer J.A.R.V.I.S. and could just possibly be doing something similar here — although no details about Bettany's possible role have yet been released. [THR]

Oz the Great and Powerful

There's a bunch more videos pertaining to Sam Raimi's Wizard of Oz prequel. First, here's an interview with star James Franco:

And here's a sneak peek clip featuring the China Girl, followed by an interview with actress Joey King, who previously played the young Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises.

The Drowned World

Warner Bros. is working on an adaptation of the late J.G. Ballard's acclaimed novel. The movie is being produced by the super-team of David Heyman, producer of the Harry Potter movies, and Jeffrey Clifford, producer of Hotel For Dogs. Yes, THE Hotel For Dogs — I've got to think Heyman is a little in awe of his new colleague. Anyway, for those unfamiliar, here's a synopsis of Ballard's novel, courtesy of Deadline:

[The book] is set during 2145 and imagines a terrifying world in which solar radiation has melted the ice caps. Jungles have overrun continental Europe, and London is for the most part left submerged under water. The protagonist is a biologist who lives on the 35th floor of a high-rise, where only two floors sit above the water line. He battles a savage environment, and primordial creatures that prowl the undergrowth. Oh yeah, and there are also the Mad Max-like anarchists who rule the city and terrorize its inhabitants.

[Deadline]

Angelica

Jena Malone, whose previous credits include Donnie Darko and Sucker Punch, will reportedly star as the mother of the title character in the adaptation of Arthur Philips's 2007 "Victorian ghost story." The movie is set to be directed by Teeth's Mitchell Lichtenstein. Here's a description of the original novel:

The novel opens in London, the 1880's, and the Barton household is on the brink of collapse. Mother, father, and daughter provoke each other, consciously and unconsciously, and a horrifying crisis is triggered. As the family's tragedy is told several times from different perspectives, events are recast, and sympathies shift; nothing is at it seems. These differing accounts appear to contradict each other, but each one casts new light-and new shadows-on the others, and on the desires and fears that drive these vivid characters.

In the dark of night, a chilling sexual spectre is making its way through the house, hovering over the sleeping girl and terrorizing her fragile mother. Are these visions real, or is there something more sinister, and more human, to fear? A spiritualist is summoned to cleanse the place of its terrors, but with her arrival the complexities of motive and desire only multiply. By day, the mother's failing health and the father's many secrets fuel the growing conflicts, while the daughter-innocent and vulnerable, or precocious and manipulative-flirts dangerously with truth and fantasy.

[Deadline]

Game of Thrones

Here's a nearly complete list of episode titles for season three:

Ep. 301 – Valar Dohaeris
Ep. 302 – Dark Wings, Dark Words
Ep. 303 – Walk of Punishment
Ep. 304 – And Now His Watch is Ended
Ep. 305 – Kissed by Fire
Ep. 306 – to be determined
Ep. 307 – The Bear and the Maiden Fair
Ep. 308 – to be determined
Ep. 309 – The Rains of Castamere
Ep. 310 – Mhysa

[Winter Is Coming]

The Walking Dead

Here's another promo photo from this weekend's episode, "Clear." More pics at the link. [Shock Till You Drop]

Once Upon a Time

Here are some sneak peeks for this Sunday's episode, "The Queen Is Dead."

Episode twenty-one will reportedly feature Heidi, who is "13, British, and also described as being compassionate, mischievous, and somewhat naive about how dangerous the world can be." [SpoilerTV]

Grimm

Here's a promo photo from episode fourteen, "Natural Born Wesen." Go here for the rest.

Episode twenty is reportedly called "Kiss of the Muse." Here are a couple tidbits about the episode:

It will feature Zoe, a Musai — an Elfin-like Wesen whose kiss is euphoric and addictive. Also in this episode we will meet Anton, a painter who can morph into a Luisant-Pecheur (an otter-like creature).

[SpoilerTV]

Supernatural

Here's a promo for the next episode, "Goodbye Stranger." The description for the episode is below:

SAM, DEAN, CASTIEL AND MEG TEAM UP AGAINST CROWLEY AND HIS DEMONS - Castiel (Misha Collins) reappears in Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean's (Jensen Ackles) life and tells them Crowley (guest star Mark Sheppard) has unleashed several demons into a small town. The demons are looking for Lucifer's Crypt, which holds a valuable asset, but Castiel lies to Sam and Dean about what it is. While interrogating a demon, the three discover Crowley has been torturing Meg (guest star Rachel Miner), who knows the exact location of the crypt. Sam and Meg fight to hold Crowley off while Dean and Castiel go in search of the crypt. Thomas J. Wright directed the episode written by Robbie Thompson (#817).

[KSiteTV]

Arrow

Here's a promo for the next episode, "The Huntress Returns."

And here's a synopsis of the episode:

EDM MEGASTAR STEVE AOKI OPENS OLIVER'S NEW NIGHTCLUB - With his nightclub set to open and a new romance brewing with McKenna (guest star Janina Gavankar), Oliver (Stephen Amell) is as happy as he's been since returning to Starling City. But when Oliver's ex, The Huntress (guest star Jessica De Gouw), suddenly returns to town, she threatens to destroy everything and everyone he cares about. Meanwhile, Laurel (Katie Cassidy) and her father (Paul Blackthorne) struggle with the return of Dinah Lance (guest star Alex Kingston) who claims she has proof Sara is still alive. Thea (Willa Holland) gets Roy Harper (guest star Colton Haynes) a job at Oliver's club, but he's not too inclined to stop his life of crime. Oliver and Tommy (Colin Donnell) are thrilled they were able to get Steve Aoki to play at the opening of their new nightclub, Verdant. David Ramsey and Susanna Thompson also star.

[SpoilerTV]

Here's a preview of episode twenty's main villain, courtesy of E! Online:

Edward Rasmus, a wealthy investment broker/fraud who has a network of criminal associates at his disposal and thinks he's untouchable in Starling City. Ha! Rasmus, who has silver-streaked hair (Hmmm...), defrauds investors and rides off with their money, something we're sure Oliver isn't too impressed by.

[E! Online]

Omnipresent comics writer Geoff Johns, who also wrote this week's episode, discusses Oliver's decision to reveal his secret identity to Diggle, Felicity Smoak, and now Tommy:

Yeah, for specific different reasons. Revealing to Diggle (David Ramsey) and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) was by necessity. He wanted to work with them, so he chose to do it. But in this case, it's something that was surprising to everybody. When he revealed it to Diggle and Felicity, it wasn't as surprising. But, this moment took everybody by surprise, including the characters. And the fall-out is very different. With Diggle, it was like, "Okay, you're out of your mind, but let's do this." Felicity was like, "I'll help how I can, but I don't like how you're going about this." But, they're still with him. I think Tommy (Colin Donnell) is going to have an extremely different viewpoint, and Oliver (Stephen Amell) is going to question whether or not he should have done it, in the first place.

How will the big reveal affect the friendship with Tommy and Oliver?
The heartbeat of this episode was this friendship, and it's a real friendship. I think Tommy was as lost as Oliver was, when Oliver was on that island. You see Oliver come back into Tommy's life, and he starts to turn it around. Tommy has a lot of pain and Oliver was always there for him, and then he disappeared. Now, Oliver has come back into Tommy's life, and for Tommy, it's the greatest thing that could have ever happened to him, save for maybe the return of his mother. You can clearly see how important Oliver is to Tommy, and this episode potentially threatens that. Tommy is important to Oliver, too, but he hasn't been able to be truthful with him. He hasn't been able to be himself with him anymore. Things have changed, and he's trying to help his friend, but there's just so much mystery and secrets between the both. Obviously, this episode will have a lot of fall-out on that. We'll see it in upcoming episodes.

He also offers some insight into Malcolm's motivations:

Malcolm thinks he's doing the right thing, and maybe he is, on some level, but the consequences of what he wants to do, which hasn't been quite revealed yet, are pretty massive. But, I think his end goal is altruistic and also informed by the death of his wife, so you can understand it and certainly understand him. The characters that have greys are the more interesting characters. The hero who sometimes crosses the line and the villain who sometimes doesn't are just much more interesting.

There's more at the link. [Collider]

American Horror Story

Series creator Ryan Murphy previews Titanic and About Schmidt star Kathy Bates's role in the upcoming third season:

"Oh, Kathy's never [played] someone this bad. Her [character] is a bad, bad woman! [She's] five times worse than [her] Misery character - which is why she liked it. When I pitched this to Kathy, her mouth was drop-jawed because what I was pitching actually happened. It's a true event… You'll see. It's some good stuff."

[TV Line]

Defiance

Here's the latest promo for Syfy's upcoming post-apocalyptic alien western.

Lost Girl

Here's a promo photo for episode eight, "Fae-ge Against The Machine." Go here for more. [SpoilerTV]

The Canadian hit has been renewed for a fourth season. [TV Line]

Continuum

Here's a teaser for the second season.

Additional reporting by Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders.

When the human body becomes infected with particularly severe forms of diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy, its immune response is to produce lots of interferon-beta, a virus-destroying protein. There's just one problem. Those diseases are bacteria, not viruses.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles first discovered this unusual property while studying leprosy. Patients whose immune systems were dealing with a milder form of the disease produced interferon-gamma, which is the correct protein to ward off bacterial infections. But when the leprosy was more severe, interferon-beta became more prominent. Not only is this antiviral protein useless in fighting off bacterial infection, it also can jam the proper working of interferon-gamma, meaning the bacteria has free rein to spread and multiply within the body.

So why does this faulty immune response occur? The researchers looked at the recent outbreaks of homeless people in the LA area, which typically occur most often in the early spring. Flu outbreaks can be relatively common in shelters, where the homeless typically live in very close quarters. These outbreaks, combined with vitamin D deficiencies due to lack of exposure to sunlight, can combine to provoke a strong antiviral response in the immune system, which means producing lots of interferon-beta.

This in turn prevents the immune system's usual production of interferon-gamma, leaving the body exposed and susceptible to bacterial infection. This effect might not be observed until months after flu season passes, which would line up with the observed spring outbreaks of tuberculosis. For more on this story, check out the original paper at Science and this report from BBC News.

Flu virus image via Shutterstock/Mopic.

Or, to put that somewhat more accurately, did not being able to kill adorable little bunnies in turn kill the Neanderthals? When all that stood between extinction and survival was figuring out how to hunt rabbits, it seems Neanderthals chose extinction.

There are lots of hypotheses as to why the Neanderthals went extinct, most focusing on some combination of environmental change and encroachment by our human ancestors. But, on a basic level, Neanderthals should have been able to survive for as long as there was food available for them to eat. A lot of previous thinking has suggested that Neanderthals weren't able to hunt some of the more complicated prey that their human counterparts feasted on, but recent research at Neanderthal sites have revealed that they were apparently perfectly capable of hunting fish, birds, and marine mammals.

The one species that might have outwitted them — or at least proved too difficult to hunt — was the rabbit. As New Scientist reports, John Fa and his research team at the UK's Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust examined cave sites belonging to both humans and Neanderthals in France and Spain. Judging by animal remains found in the caves, both groups appeared to subsist on large animals like deer until about 30,000 years ago, at which point humans switched over to eating smaller prey like rabbits.

There's no evidence that Neanderthals made a similar move, and that coincides with when their populations went into irrevocable decline. It could be a sudden scarcity of large prey meant Europe"s hominins had to adapt quickly and eat smaller prey, with rabbits serving as a new backbone of the human diet (although, it should be pointed out that humans weren't eating only rabbit, as that's a very, very bad idea). Fa and his team speculate that large-scale rabbit-hunting required the use of fire or dogs to chase rabbits out of their warrens, which might have proved too complex a strategy for Neanderthals to master.

For more, check out New Scientist and the original paper at the Journal of Human Evolution.

Image by Moyan Brenn on Flickr.

Shane Black ponders whether Iron Man 3 is the end of an era. Ed Harris discusses his role in the post-apocalyptic train movie Snowpiercer. Greg Nicotero reveals how The Walking Dead will evolve in season four. Plus interviews with the stars of Oz the Great and Powerful and Once Upon a Time!

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Riddick.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past

Director Bryan Singer tweeted the latest casting announcement:

The Frenchman, who became the first actor of African origin to win the Cesar Award for Best Actor for his role in the 2011 comedy-drama The Intouchables, will make his English-language debut with the film. Like previous new addition Peter Dinklage, it's not yet known who Sy will play.

Elsewhere, Halle Berry has more or less confirmed with multiple outlets that she will be back as Storm, pending the finalization of some contracts. Speaking to Black Tree TV, she commented:

"Yeah. I'm excited too. The fans really love Storm, and so I'm really happy that it's worked out that way. No matter what my part will be or won't be, to be a part of that is always a good thing. I love it."

[Comic Book Movie]

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Gwen Stacy actress Emma Stone offers praise for the script, which was rewritten by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Jeff Pinkner from an original draft by Amazing Spider-Man writer James Vanderbilt:

"I'm in it, Andrew is in it. They just cast Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborn, who is such a great actor, I think that will be wonderful. And Shaeline Woodley as Mary Jane, who's also wonderful. So there's all that, and the script is very, very good. I'm very much looking forward to it.

I'm very happy the way our first one was received so well. It'll be cool on the next one to see how Gwen and Peter bridge that distance that was between us at the end of it. I think it all unfolds pretty neat. And I hope they continue letting Gwen be heroic. I think they might!"

[Cineplex via Comic Book Movie]

Guardians of the Galaxy

Game of Thrones costar Jason Momoa reportedly is still in contention to play Drax the Destroyer — the current rumor is that about half of the key decision-makers want Momoa even though he's holding out for more money, while the other half want to go with a cheaper option. The main alternative right now is reportedly Dave Bautista, a former WWE star who has recently landed roles in action fare like The Man with the Iron Fists and the upcoming Riddick. If neither of these two work out, Marvel Studios will reportedly choose "a complete unknown" for the part. Also, Real Steel/Lost actor Kevin Durand is reportedly in the mix for an unknown role. [Latino Review]

Iron Man 3

This interview with writer-director Shane Black comes from the French magazine Premiere, so this is almost certainly a case of Black's thoughts being translated from English to French and then back again to English. As such, this may not be a totally accurate reflection of his thoughts on how Iron Man 3 fits into the larger franchise and his writing process, but it's still interesting:

I have the feeling that the story that we have developed for Iron Man 3 actually concluded a trilogy, while [also] leaving the door open to a fourth. I had a lot of discussions on this subject: "Is that it is the last Iron Man for Robert?" Something tells me that it will not be the case, and will be seen in a fourth, or fifth ... But I can be a little excited...

When Marvel hires a director, the script of the film is generally already written. Except that they had someone who is a writer at the base ... This was a problem at first, because they had already hired Drew Pierce to write Iron Man 3. I was like, "But I do not need this Drew Pierce, what's the story?" (laughs) I finally agreed to meet him, and it was immediately heard. Today I am not only a fan of Drew Pierce, but I've also become a friend. He came [to my] home everyday, we asked our leaf and our pencil and brainstorming from morning to night. The script was really written for four hands. Excellent collaboration because they had already hired Drew Pierce to write.

[Premiere via Comic Book Movie]

The Wolverine

Director James Mangold tweeted a bunch of images from films that "inspired/influenced The Wolverine." The list includes:

He then followed these up with a pair of photos, one from Shane and the other from Chinatown, which in case anyone was wondering is my pick for greatest film of all time.

Riddick

Here's the latest photo from the film that Vin Diesel posted to his Facebook page. This one features Diesel and costar Dave Bautista, who you might remember from such stories as that Guardians of the Galaxy item a few paragraphs ago. [Facebook]

Snow Piercer

Apollo 13's Ed Harris discusses what drew him to Bong Joon-ho's upcoming sci-fi epic, in which the remnants of humanity survive a new Ice Age inside a gigantic train:

I saw three of director Bong's movies and I said, "I want to do this. I don't care what he's asking me to do because he's a really great filmmaker." His friend and fellow filmmaker is director Park, who did Stoker. I met director Park when I was in Prague. He came by the set and actually produced director Bong's film. He seemed like a really interesting guy, and Oldboy just blew me away.

Who are you playing in that?
I play a guy who owns and runs a train. You don't see me until the end. There's a revolution going on with all the poor people that starts in the back of the train and moves its way forward. They finally get up to the front where I'm at. It was trippy. The sets were unbelievable. They had these big train cars that they build on a soundstage, and the whole thing was on this gimble deal. I hope the film works. I can't see that it won't, but it was amazing. That was really a trip, working on that. His whole way of working is so different. He'll just shoot bits of a scene at a time. Normally, you'll shoot a master and shoot the whole scene on one person and then shoot the whole scene on another, but he'll shoot a little bit one way, and then shoot a couple lines another way. He just constantly gets the pieces that he knows he wants. And he had the editing thing down below the stage where the trains were, and the editor was cutting while he was shooting. It was out there.

[Collider]

Oz the Great and Powerful

Confirming that Mila Kunis is indeed playing the Wicked Witch, director Sam Raimi discusses how she approached her performance and why he didn't feel the need to play up its scariness:

I love making those horror movies, but I was really guided by Mila Kunis' performance and what her instincts were, in playing that character, and she decided that she would play her like a woman scorned. She wasn't really thinking about the fact that she was green. She was playing it as an innocent who fell in love and her heart was broken and she suffered, but she couldn't take the suffering and wanted to end that suffering, and her sister was all too willing to let that suffering end. It awakened something that was already there, but just fueled the fire, and that rage drove her. So, I wasn't tempted to make it more like a horror movie. I wanted her to guide us, and I would follow her with the camera.

[Collider]

Fellow witches Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams explain how the elaborate costuming helped shape their performances:

Weisz: Sam is so up for exploration. He was making this really big-budget movie, and I can't even imagine the level of pressure he was under, but he was just up for an exploration, all the time. There were these incredible drawings of our costumes that were done by Michael Kutsche. My character looks a bit like a bird of prey, and she's slightly militaristic via Las Vegas. Because I was getting into character, Sam said to play around with Gary Jones, the costume designer. So, we spent a couple of weeks in a room and I cooked up this costume that I brought to the first screen test, where I looked a bit like the Duchess of Windsor. It was this little green dress and a little crown because there was a side of my character who just desperately wanted to be queen, and Sam looked at it and said, "It's just not right. You need to go back to the original thing." But, part of my process was me finding my desire to be queen. The dress turns from green to black, once I'm out to the audience as a bad girl.

Williams: I remember that it became very clear to me that Glinda needed to change her dress to go into battle, and that she needed something that she could move more freely in and that could look like armor, after we had already shot something of me in my other dress, doing something in battle. I went to Sam and said, "It's really important to me. I know what it should look like. Is there any way, please?" And Sam is so accommodating that he said, "If it means that much to you, then it means that much to me," and we got to reshoot that with the new dress.

There's more at the link. [Collider]

Evil Dead 4

Sam Raimi would like to make it clear that this weekend's comments about writing a new Evil Dead movie aren't entirely accurate, and basically he blames all of you for forcing him to get your hopes up:

Those guys made me say that. I am thinking about it but a crowd goes "Come on Sam, do it!" so I said "Okay, I guess I was talking to my brother about it." But I feel like I was pushed into saying that, a little bit. In the hallway today I joked with Ivan [his brother] "Get working on that script!" but I really don't know. I'm afraid that every time I talk about it people get really mad at me when I don't follow through with it. I would like to work on the script over the summer, that much is true. But the reason to come back and do it again is only that they're making me, those fans.

[Bleeding Cool]

Wreck-It Ralph 2

Director Rich Moore says one concept they're kicking around for the likely (but unconfirmed) sequel is whether other versions of the title video game character could exist and interact. Either because there are other copies of the same arcade machine plugged in elsewhere, or because there are different versions — sort of like teaming up the title characters from Mario Bros., Mario 64, and Mario Galaxy. Which, now that I've mentioned it, is something I really, really want to see:

"Are there other Ralphs? What would happen if another Fix It Felix, Jr. game was plugged in? Are there other Ralphs that are more contemporary? Is there another version of the game that was made for mobile? Are there those kind of Super Smash Brothers types games where all the characters are gathered in a fighting game? What would that be like for Ralph to come face to face with those different iterations of himself? And it's created some really cool conversations, so I think that that is so funny you bring up because it's something we're playing around with right now... I'm at the point right now where it's kind of hard to answer that question [whether this will actually be in the sequel] because we're thinking about it right now and it's a very very interesting story. It's a complex issue that would make for a very interesting storyline. I really appreciate you bringing it up, because it means we're not the only ones thinking about it."

Doctor Who

We already saw the first promo image from the second half of season seven, which kicks off on March 30, but here's some words from head honcho Steven Moffat:

It's the 50th year of Doctor Who and look what's going on! We're up in the sky and under the sea! We're running round the rings of an alien world and then a haunted house. There's new Cybermen, new Ice Warriors and a never before attempted journey to the centre of the TARDIS. And in the finale, the Doctor's greatest secret will at last be revealed! If this wasn't already our most exciting year it would be anyway!

And here's the description for the mid-series premiere, the Moffat-penned "The Bells Of St. John":

Set in London against the backdrop of new and old iconic landmarks, The Shard and Westminster Bridge, 'The Bells of St John' will also establish a new nemesis, the Spoonheads, who will battle the Doctor as he discovers something sinister is lurking in the Wi-Fi.

[Doctor Who News]

The Walking Dead

Executive producer and makeup maestro Greg Nicotero discusses what to expect from season four, which begins production on May 6:

"I think there may be a wee bit less of the run and gun. And [we'll] get a little more into some of our characters. The challenge with a show like this, when you have a big ensemble, is you don't want any of the characters to get lost; it's important that we know what Carol's story is and that we know what Beth's story is. And when you're trying to service a lot of characters, it becomes challenging. Watching the first season of Walking Dead and seeing how grounded it was, that's really important to all of us. Andy Lincoln and I spent a lot of time going through the scripts and making sure we feel that they're grounded. Because that's what keeps our audience coming back. The walkers and the gore and the action and stuff, that's fun, that's the popcorn part of it. But if you don't have characters that people are invested in, you lose your audience."

There's a bunch more at the link. [EW]

Once Upon a Time

Star Jennifer Morrison discusses what's ahead on the show, starting with what the seer told Rumplestiltskin:

There's now this looming threat, basically, on Henry's life that no one's aware of, and it's something I think they're setting up to pay off over time. It's also interesting because the Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold character has really evolved - we've gotten to see two very different sides of this man, even in the Storybrooke world. He does have this love for Belle and he doeshave capacity to be good, and yet he's also got this capacity to be darker than anyone else. He's also made true on his deals with Emma, so oftentimes Emma does end up aligning with him, knowing it's like "the devil you know or the devil you don't." With him, there's a certain, almost bizarre "code of ethics" to his evil.

Has Emma unwittingly leveled the playing field with regards to Regina? Is Regina going to seize an opportunity to prey on Henry's hurt?
On some level. But unfortunately for Regina at this point, she is so wrapped up in her own sort of mess that's going on with her mother… and her failing at trying to not use magic … that she sort of misses seeing her opportunity. She does make a move to get him back, but she doesn't necessarily make the most strategic move based on the circumstances.

Adam told me that Emma's love life is going to become "really complicated" — care to elaborate?
[Laughs] I think it's becoming incredibly complicated, incredibly slowly. Nothing happens quickly for Emma in love, unfortunately. Neal has someone in his life (played by The Walking Dead‘s Sonequa Martin-Green), so even though Emma's saying she doesn't care for him, you see that glimpse of, "Oh, Ireally don't want to hear about this guy having someone he's in love with." In the meantime, obviously there's always been a connection, some kind of "kindred spirit" element, between Hook (Colin O'Donoghue) and Emma.

There's still plenty more at the link. [TV Line]

Additional reporting by Katharine Trendacosta.

Mila Kunis discusses her starring roles in Oz the Great and Powerful and Jupiter Ascending. Another star joins Wally Pfister's enigmatic Transcendence. Daniel Radcliffe's Frankenstein movie will be unlike any previous Frankenstein film. Plus Walking Dead, True Blood, and more!

It's all spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige reveals the vast, vast majority of James Gunn's cosmic superhero movies will indeed take place in space:

The Thor film and the Guardians Of The Galaxy film certainly are cosmic. Guardians and Thor will take the brunt of the cosmic side of the universe, particularly Guardians, which is 95% in space...

Will Guardians Of The Galaxy prove as integral to Avengers 2 as each Avenger's solo film?
I would say that it does not. It's much more of a standalone film. It takes place in the same universe. And when we've been on the other side of that universe in other movies, you might see those characteristics in Guardians, but the Avengers are not involved with what's happening out there at this time.

[SFX]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Kevin Feige also talks some more about how the Captain America sequel departs from its predecessor:

Captain America will showcase… What's exciting to me about Cap –- sort of about Iron Man 3 too if you look at it -– is it's tonally almost like a different genre. Shane Black's described Iron Man 3 as a Tom Clancy sort of political thriller, which I like a lot. We hired our directors on Cap because they loved our explanation that we really want to make a '70s political thriller masquerading as a big superhero movie. Just like with the first film -– we got Joe Johnston because we said, ‘We want to do a '40s World War Two movie masquerading as a big superhero movie.' I love that we're doing a sequel to a film that's a completely different genre than the first film. I think that's fun. And the comics do it all the time."

[SFX]

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Bryan Singer has now confirmed yesterday's casting news:

Take a high-resolution look at Doctor Who's next classic villains to make a comeback. Shane Black explains how Iron Man 3 reinvents the Mandarin — but will the movie have a post-credits scene? Also, is an early review of a Man of Steel test screening legit? Sam Raimi discusses the crazy effects of his Oz prequel. Plus The Walking Dead and Revolution hints!

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

Iron Man 3

Writer-director Shane Black explains how he approached the film, particularly with regards to the depiction of the Mandarin:

I consider the fan base to basically be Marvel's job. Mine is to be a fan and I am one and I have been from a young age, of Iron Man, so for me, I just please me and I hope that pleases the rest of the fans. It should. For instance, one of the joys for me has always been seeing how you take a villain from the comic book and realize him in a slightly more realistic way for the movie, render him for movies in a way that's recognizable, but different. And that's fun. Like the Joker in "The Dark Knight" is not the Joker from the comic book, but there's just enough of him that you recognize him and go, "Wow, what a creative way of interpreting the Joker for motion pictures." So that was our task here too. The fans love this character the Mandarin and we just said, "Well, what we don't want is this potentially racist, stereotype of a Fu Manchu villain just waving his fist." But we found a way, I think, to get an iteration of the Mandarin that we like. We got very excited about having cracked this story when we found out that we could include The Mandarin and give him a character that would be a perfect match, the ultimate Iron Man villain, but without relying too heavily on what the comic book stereotype was.

He then offers the most in-depth description yet of just what Ben Kingsley's villain is all about:

From the very beginning we were all about that, yeah. The idea of just a real world interpretation of this guy who, I hate to break it to you, but he's not from space in this. The rings are rings. They're showmanship. They're accouterments. They're paraphernalia of warfare that he sort of drapes himself with. He studies Sun Tzu. He studies insurgency tactics. He surrounds himself with dragons and symbols of warlords and Chinese iconography because he wants to represent this sort of prototypical terrorist. We use as the example Colonel Kurtz from "Apocalypse Now," this guy who may have been an American, may have been a British National, someone who is out there doing field work, supervising atrocities for the intelligence community who went nuts in the field and became this sort of devotee of war tactics, and now has surrounded himself with a group of people over which he presides, and the only thing that unifies them is this hatred of America. So he's the ultimate terrorist, but he's also savvy. He's been in the intelligence world. He knows how to use the media. And taking it to a real world level like that was a lot fun for us.

There's a ton more at the link from both Black and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. There's also some description of footage screened for journalists. Here's an excerpt:

We learn that some kind of terrorist attack has happened and that Jon Favreau's Happy Hogan is in the hospital. Furious, Stark has announced on live television that, whoever the Mandarin is, he isn't afraid of him and challenges the villain to come meet him at his home address. The next morning, Stark is in his home with Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts when, disguised as news choppers, the Mandarin's force launch an attack, accompanied by some very impressive special effects. During the battle, Stark actually sends the Iron Armor to Pepper so that she can be protected in the suit as chaos erupts.

After he manages to get into a suit of his own, Stark, worried that his designs might fall into the wrong hands, actually activates a self-destruct sequence that destroys his original Mark I - VII designs or "the classics," as he calls them. He does make a point of asking Jarvis, however, if the "wine cellar" is still protected, likely a nod to multiple suits of armor pictured on the most recent poster and hinted at by the XLII designation. As the entire building falls into the ocean, Stark finds himself pinned by debris and makes a last-ditch effort to escape with one tremendous blast. He winds up overshooting, and launches into the sky. Unable to navigate and with systems failing, he crashes to Earth and blacks out.

Again, check out the link for more. [Coming Soon]

Kevin Feige discusses the possibility of a post-credits scene, which was originally rumored to feature the introduction of Ant-Man but has more recently been linked with a first appearance for the Guardians of the Galaxy:

It's sort of case by case. I don't want to be in that theater for the first time when even 2 people stay behind and nothing happens, frankly. I like that we've trained at least some people to stay behind and get a little reward, but you're absolutely right it served a different purpose. It was a part of the, "Hey surprise, these are connected. We're building towards something here." Shawarma, which everyone knows famously was an idea we came up with much, much later and shot after the premiere just because we thought it would be fun. There was not going to be a tag until that point. So it's a little faster and looser now because people know, and frankly the whole purpose of Iron Man 3 is to say that these characters can exist just as successfully on their own again. But, as I said I don't want to be there when nothing happens after people sit through 8 minutes of credits.

[Collider]

Man of Steel

Take this with a total grain of salt, but someone claims to have attended a test screening and so decided to post a review of the film, non-disclosure agreements be damned. It's an overwhelmingly positive review, but this could easily be fabricated, or just wildly unrepresentative of the typical reaction to the film. For those interested, the complete post is here.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Here's director Bryan Singer's latest tweet from the set.