Just what is the new Star Trek movie going to be called? The Wolverine adds a new villain. Get a fresh look at Iron Man's latest suit of armor. A new Dark Knight Rises clip spotlights new costars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anne Hathaway. Plus Hellboy 3 might just happen after all!
Spoilers from here on out!
Top image from Looper.
The Dark Knight Rises
This is potentially a massive, massive spoiler, so you may well just want to skip right ahead to the Man of Steel section and just pretend this doesn't exist. OK, for those sticking around, talk show host David Letterman revealed during an interview with star Anne Hathaway that he had seen the film, and that Batman dies at the end of the movie. This is something that has been heavily rumored, and screenwriter David Goyer has occasionally said things that seem to lend credence to it — but even so, it's still nothing more than rumor and speculation.
After a particularly awkward silence, Letterman and Hathaway tried to brush off the moment as just a rather bizarre joke, and it's certainly possible — this is just the sort of thing a cantankerous old crank like Letterman would do to mess with people. On the other hand, it's also completely reasonable to think Letterman would just straight up spoil the ending of one of the biggest movies of 2012, because that's also the sort of thing a cantankerous old crank like Letterman would do. You can watch the clip in question at the link and draw your own conclusions. [Latinos Post]
Oh, and the Anne Hathaway interview also featured this new clip in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt's cop character John Blake interrogates Selina Kyle. In the clip, Blake refers to Bruce Wayne as a friend of his, which some are taking as an indication that Blake knows Wayne's secret identity — which seems reasonable, given the context — and that this might mean Blake will become Robin — which seems distinctly less reasonable given how big a leap of logic that is, particularly considering everything Christopher Nolan has ever said on that specific subject.
Speaking of the good director, here's how Christopher Nolan explains the overall writing process for his trilogy:
"I've always thought of this trilogy as Bruce Wayne's story, and every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. The ending is the most important part to me: That's the first thing I had for The Dark Knight Rises. The trick is to know it on a subliminal level — have the idea of it — but not write it down and make it concrete until you're ready. I've had the great luxury of working on these movies for nine years and letting things grow naturally, knowing the feeling of what I was going for but allowing the narrative to come into focus over time. You have to live your way through stories in order to discover what they are. I wasn't already planning for this movie when we were making Batman Begins, because I'm superstitious. But I was always hopeful I'd get to tell the whole thing."
He also discusses the very grim, very dark stretch of the film in which Gotham City is ruled by Bane and his thugs, and his description might explain the recent revelation that Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities was a key influence on the film:
"That was very much at the forefront of our thoughts: How far do we want to take things? It was a long and torturous process to get that right. There are ways we offset the bleakness of the story. For example, we don't go to a post-apocalyptic place, like Mad Max did. We drew more on the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, which gives the movie more of a feeling of a historical epic. But ultimately, we're testing the characters in this movie, and we're also testing the audience's relationship to them. You want to mine the depths of despair and push the story to an extreme place, so the heroic figure of Batman is needed more than he has ever been needed. His symbol achieves an even greater stature."
There's more at the link. [Miami Herald]
Man of Steel
Here's a teaser poster to accompany the recently screened footage. [Spinoff Online]
Iron Man 3
We showed you the Iron Man suits at the Marvel Booth the other day — but the newest suit from Iron Man 3 was added to the booth after the movie's Comic Con panel. And here's an official photo showing that suit in all its glory. [You Bent My Wookiee]
After a weekend in which we learned lots of key details about the third Iron Man movie, one huge unanswered question still lingered: just where does Stan Lee fit into all this? Well, it's just a rumor, but Lee's latest cameo will reportedly find him playing a judge at a beauty contest. This would fit with some earlier reports that the characters would somehow end up at a beauty pageant, which seems like a fairly reasonable thing for irrepressible playboy rogue Tony Stark to do — but a slightly stranger place for Iron Man to go in the midst of fighting crime. [Latino Review]
The Wolverine
Jessica Biel, who stars in the upcoming Total Recall reboot and whose Marvel background includes a starring role in 2004's Blade Trinity, has reportedly been cast as Viper, a morally complex but mostly villainous character and member of HYDRA whose dealings with Wolverine have included the occasional blackmailed marriage. She would likely be one of the two main villains in the film, along with fellow Total Recall actor Will Yun Lee as the Silver Samurai. [Twitch Film and Deadline]
Fantastic Four
While Chronicle director Josh Trank is apparently now more or less confirmed as the director of 20th Century Fox's Fantastic Four reboot, there's still the question of the screenwriter. And that role is reportedly going to Jeremy Slater, who made the Black List of Hollywood's best unproduced screenplays a couple years back with his script Score and has a couple other screenplays in the pipeline, including the Lovecraft-infused horror film Tape 4 and a teen spy comedy called My Spy, which might be directed by Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story's Jake Kasdan. [/Film]
Star Trek 2
Cowriter Damon Lindelof discusses the great difficulties in coming up with a title for the upcoming Star Trek sequel — since Wrath of Khan already took Star Trek II as a possible title — and that he and the rest of the creative team were leery of using a colon and subtitle:
"There have been more conversations about what we're going to call it than went into actually shooting it at this point...That was the genius of Nolan. There was 'Batman Begins,' and now they're just going to be the 'Dark Knights' and not going to have 2's. It's hard to do movies without colons. I'm not talking about the colon that's in my body that I use for digestion. There's no word that comes after the colon after 'Star Trek' that's cool. Not that 'Star Trek: Insurrection' or 'First Contact' aren't good titles, it's just that everything that people are turned off about when it comes to 'Trek' is represented by the colon."
Lindelof also refused to confirm or deny Dr. McCoy actor Karl Urban's recent reveal that Benedict Cumberbatch's villain character is Gary Mitchell, but he did sort of suggest that Urban is talking crazy because he's Judge Dredd now... or something. [MTV]
As for Karl Urban himself, when asked about the Gary Mitchell reveal while doing press for Dredd at Comic-Con, he simply said, "I'm not at liberty to discuss that" and "There might have been a call or two" from various production team members in response to his slip. As for the all-important question of whether the Mitchell thing was correct, well... Urban did repeatedly promise new Star Trek footage would be released last Friday, and it turned out he was talking about this video that's mostly him surfing — so I'd say there's a very real chance he's just screwing around with all of us. [I Am Rogue]
Fellow writer Roberto Orci also weighed in on these two big mysteries surrounding the project, starting with the title. He says only one or two of the titles under consideration do not include the phrase "Star Trek." He adds:
For the most part all the titles we are considering do have Star Trek in them, but just to get crazy we need to consider crazy things.
And Orci revealed that Peter Weller, Noel Clarke, Nanzeen Contractor, and Joseph Gatt were all playing parts new to the Star Trek universe, whereas Alice Eve and, yes, Benedict Cumberbatch are playing characters we have seen before.
That last bit is something we've all sort of assumed about Cumberbatch's character — whether or not we might have liked to see an entirely new character — but I think this is the first real confirmation that he's playing a familiar character, whether it's Gary Mitchell, Khan, or, I don't know, let's say Morn. There's more at the link, including some discussion of the upcoming schedule and when we might expect to see the first trailer, which will likely be this fall. [TrekMovie]
Finally, someone finally came up with what is obviously the best way to learn the secrets of Benedict Cumberbatch's character: ask his mom about it. Admittedly, Wanda Ventham — herself a genre veteran, with memorable appearances on UFO and classic Doctor Who — didn't give away the identity of the character, but she did reveal he "is dressed in head to toe leather" in the movie. That fits with what we've seen in the set photos, but it's still nice to hear these things straight from the actor's mother. [TrekMovie]
Looper
Star Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to heap praise on Brick director Rian Johnson's awesome-looking time travel movie, in which he is tasked with killing his older self, as played by Bruce Willis:
"It's a scifi movie in the tradition of 'Blade Runner,' 'The Matrix' or 'Inception' that gives you a lot to think about. It's got the badass action, and it's a thrill if you want to just watch it for that. But if you want to, you can find a really dignified drama underneath the genre... Because Rian has been thinking up this, this idea has manifested in his head for years. So he's thought [of] every single thread. Every single reveal or twist or turn in the movie has been thought out perfectly. So I think there's a lot to nerd out over."
There's more at the link, including Emily Blunt chiming in. [MTV]
The World's End
Universal has officially given the green light to the third entry in Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost's so-called Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy, which also includes Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. There's now a new teaser poster to show for it, which presumably gives the name of all the stops on the heroes' epic pub crawl, which just happens to be set against a slight apocalypse. [/Film]
Hellboy 3
Perpetually overbooked director Guillermo del Toro had taken the unusual step of pretty much ruling out a third Hellboy movie, but he says he's now reconsidered and that he and star Ron Perlman want to go ahead with the final part of the planned trilogy. As he explains, Perlman's recent role in the feel-good story of the year had a lot to do with it:
"I can say publicly that now we are together in trying [to do Hellboy 3]. I've encountered a lot of kids who are fans of the movies, but to hear the story of this kid who was watching the movies while going through treatment, it really just moved me a lot. We're going to make an effort to do it. I hope it happens."
To which Perlman added:
"The [first] two movies were really set up to have this unbelievable resolve. Everything that was done in both movies was leading up to this destiny, written in stone, of what Hellboy has been summoned to Earth to do. To not do it, particularly in light of the scope that Guillermo is thinking of for the resolve, would be in my mind a little bit of a shame."
[EW]
Alphas
Here's a whole bunch of character posters for the show's second season, which kicks off next Monday. [SpoilerTV]
Arrow
The CW has announced that X2: X-Men United and The Vampire Diaries actress Kelly Hu — who also voices a bunch of characters on Young Justice — will appear as the villainous China White in an upcoming episode. White appeared in Green Arrow: Year One and is described as "a South Pacific drug cartel leader who Oliver Queen encounters during his five years marooned on a remote island" — the same island where he first starts using the bow and arrow. [OSCK]
Here are some photos of star Stephen Amell both in and out of the Green Arrow costume. [SpoilerTV]
Sleep No More
Dmitry Lipkin and Colette Burson, the husband-and-wife creative team behind The Riches and Hung, are reportedly developing this series for Showtime about "a town where the dead keep returning to life." [Deadline]
Additional reporting by Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders.