A producer for The Wolverine explains precisely why Logan ends up in Japan. Sam Raimi talks about the relationship between Oz the Great and Powerful and previous Wizard of Oz stories. One of cinema's greatest batshit insane directors wants to bring Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan back to the screen. Plus a bunch of new photos for upcoming superhero movies!
It's all spoilers from here on out!
Top image from Oz the Great and Powerful.
Iron Man 3
Star Robert Downey, Jr. discusses a sequence from the movie and what returning costar Don Cheadle brings to the part of James Rhodes, otherwise known as War Machine:
We've just been talking about one sequence –- the top-secret name is the Boot/Glove Sequence, I can tell you that, just between you and me -– it's where Tony only has one gauntlet and one boot and he has to escape multiple captors. It's really fun, dude. We're taking everything from his first gauntlet test in the first movie up through the most extreme stuff we thought up for Iron Man 2 and The Avengers and pulling on all of it and making this one big, extended challenge of physics...
Rhodey is much more in the dead center of things. He's much more dynamic. We've made this decision that while Tony is a technical guy, he's not really a trained guy. There's a lot of fun to be had with Don because he's really good with hardware and he's a martial artist, so it's been really fun exploiting this possibility of Tony having moments like the one in Avengers, like the one with Cap where he decides, "Oh screw it, he probably knows what he's doing." So there's a lot of that and a lot more fun and a lot more depth to Rhodey this time around.
[EW]
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and Iron Man 3 writer-director Shane Black discuss with Empire Magazine the new character Maya Hansen, as played by The Town's Rebecca Hall:
Feige: Maya is a scientist who makes a pretty astounding discovery that leads her to places - and some are healthier than others. It's not dissimilar to what Tony's been through, and it's a great parallel.
Black: It's one thing we loved about the comic book, which was that it's someone Tony meets in one capacity at one point in his life, and he proves to be touched by that encounter. We needed a snappy and exciting actor to play the part, and not make it this 'female scientist who takes off her glasses and suddenly she's beautiful!' There's a certain element about her being the female Robert Downey Jr in a way.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
While the big casting news is that Marc Webb is apparently trying to build a Sinister Six composed entirely of stars of the 2004 Best Picture Nominees — next up, expect to see Thomas Haden Church back as Sandman, plus Leonardo DiCaprio as Mysterio, Johnny Depp as Morbius, and Clint Eastwood as Vulture, obviously — there are also reports of another new cast member. British actress Felicity Jones, who is probably best known in the US for her main role in the 2011 romantic drama Like Crazy, is reportedly in negotiations for an undisclosed role. [Heat Vision]
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Returning director Bryan Singer discusses what to expect from the First Class followup:
"It's epic. I don't think people realize how big this movie's going to be. We get to bring both casts together. We've cracked it in a way that it makes sense. I had a two-hour conversation with James Cameron about time travel, string theory, multiverses and all that. You have to create your rules and stick wtih them. That's why Terminator and Back To The Future work so well. And there are certain mechanisms in X-Men, certain powers, perceptions and characters, that make this possible. It has a lot of aspects of the comic. The actual comic of Days Of Future Past had a whole ton of stuff going on, so it's like any of these things; you have to distill it. But I think the fans will be pleased that some of the most exciting parts of Days Of Future Past are going to be connected to this movie."
He also reveals that the film will acknowledge the continuity of all previous X-Men movies, including The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, even if no one particularly required that of him:
I'm taking into account every movie – I'm not just grabbing my first two movies and First Class and smashing them together. I'm taking into account the entire universe as it's been laid out so far on the screen, and really respecting it and trying to work with that. People took things in various directions, so there's some clean-up. But ultimately I'm not just ignoring them either."
The Wolverine
Producer Hutch Parker offers the most detailed explanation yet as to just why Wolverine finds himself in Japan, and he also confirms that the World War II prison camp seen in set photos is part of a flashback sequence:
We pick up Logan in a very isolated state, full of self-loathing. He is sought out by a young Asian woman for reasons he doesn't fully understand, who is asking him to follow her to Japan where he is meant to reconnect with someone he spent prison-time with in Nagasaki. And the legacy of that experience - effectively Logan saved him - is that this man is on his deathbed, and is looking to give him a gift, to thank him for the life he's had. But this gift draws Logan into a very complex and very unexpected world within both contemporary Japan, and to some degree the feudal history of Japan. The quality of this story is that it takes Logan on such a challenging personal journey. He's so in isolation, so out of his element. It's a much more powerful distillation of his character than you've seen before. It's why people have always love this particular story.
The Legend of Conan
As a general rule, I try to avoid stories where it's just some random, unconnected person saying they would like to be involved in a project. But when it's Paul Verhoeven saying he wants to reteam with his Total Recall star Arnold Schwarzenegger to make a new Conan the Barbarian movie, well... yeah, exceptions must be made:
"If they asked me, I'd certainly love to — let's put it that way. But I don't know what the script is. I don't know what Arnold wants. I'm a big fan in fact of Conan. That's a great movie and I found that the composer, Basil Poledouris, basically inspired many of my movies [the soundtracks] like Flesh and Blood, RoboCop, Starship Troopers and Total Recall. The score of Conan is great. The style of editing that Milius used was very beautiful, and Arnold does a great job. He was really the perfect choice."
For what it's worth, the creative team has said they want an A-list director to helm Schwarzenegger's return to one of his more iconic characters. Verhoeven probably doesn't qualify as A-list these days, but he's got the kind of style and cachet that distinguishes him from a lot of other likely contenders. [IGN]
Person of Interest
Arrow
Here's a pair of promos for this Wednesday's episode, "Vertigo."
The Vampire Diaries
Being Human (US)
Star vampire Sam Witwer discusses what changes to expect both off-camera and on-camera in season three:
Anna Fricke is now our sole showrunner. The first two seasons, it was her and her husband Jeremy Carver, so she is really staking her claim and is doing a version of the show that, frankly, I have been waiting to do since I read the pilot. Jeremy helped write the first five or six scripts, then went over to Supernatural [where he is showrunner].
Even though there is this flu killing vampires, it still seems lighter than Aidan's brutal storyline last year.
It was really dark. My character was dealing exclusively with the vampires and was kind of removed from the roommate situation. This season, if Aidan isn't dealing with the roommates, he's with some other very interesting human beings. And I emphasize that they are humans, because that is when my character is at his best. He's scarier because we know who he is and how he can hurt people, he's sadder because he wants to be like them, and he's more interesting because he's living this double life. You get to see all of that this season. He's introduced into the general population but how can he just turn off the killer part in him? He's a blood addict and a trained killer!
[TV Guide]
Additional reporting by Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders.