First posters for Agent Carter, Gotham and more plus future X-Men to shoot back to back

There’s little over a week until the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, a time travel sequel predicted to become the biggest film of 2014 so far. Its two settings, 1974 and 2024, are setting up two story threads that the series is attempting to follow with future instalments. The only two that we can firmly say are coming soon are Bryan Singer’s (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil, Valkyrie, X-Men 2) X-Men: Apocalypse and James Mangold (3:10, Walk the Line, Girl Interrupted, The Wolverine) Wolverine 3. Oscar nominee Hugh Jackman, a star busy working on Les Mis 2: Dream a Dream Harder!!!, and his iconic anti-hero Wolverine has been in every X-Men film so far and yet his involvement in Apocalypse hasn’t been confirmed.

He managed to let that slip today when he announced his intentions to film Apocalypse and Wolverine 3 back-to-back, confirming his participation in the sci-fi epic. The two projects are likely to be Jackman’s final in the role. He joins James McAvoy (Professor X), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique) and Nicholas Hoult (Beast) while its rumoured that younger versions of Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey and Gambit (traditionally played by James Marsden, Halle Berry, Alan Cumming, Famke Janssen and Taylor Kitsch) will feature. Other X-Men projects we still want to get out there are Jeff Wadlow’s X-Force, Tim Miller’s Deadpool, Lauren Shuler Donner’s Gambit and Mystique.

We recently gained the confirmation that a 13 episode first (potentially of many) season of SHIELD origin story Agent Carter will be filling in the mid-season gap between the two parts Agents of SHIELD season 2. Just to prove that the show is definite, Marvel have revealed an awesome new poster for the show which we hope will star Hayley Atwell, Dominic Cooper and Toby Jones. However, Carter isn’t the only comic book TV show to debut a new teaser image. DC and Danny Cannon’s Batman prequel Gotham (starring Ben McKenzie, Jada Pinkett Smith, Donal Logue and Sea Pertwee), which we can confirm will feature villains such as Penguin, Riddler, Poison Ivy and Catwoman, and Arrow spin off The Flash (starring Grant Gustin) also disclosed as few new sneak peeks. Note – for Gotham look out for the cat, the penguin poster, the plants running up the side of the building and the graffiti “?” hinting at what’s to come for the supporting cast.

Agent Carter – late 2014

The Flash – late 2014

Gotham – late 2014

X-Men: Days of Future Past – May 22nd

X-Men: Apocalypse – May 19th 2016

Wolverine 3 – March 2nd 2017

Simon Kinberg talks X-Men, Richard Armitage on The Five Armies and Snyder set for Justice League

The sequel to 2013’s Man of Steel has began to look increasingly like a straightforward Justice League film, despite the working title being Batman vs Superman. Ben Affleck is Batman, Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman, Henry Cavill is Superman and Ray Fisher was recently confirmed to play Cyborg while Grant Gustin may be to man to portray The Flash, should the upcoming TV series tie in with the film franchise. All we need for a full set would be Aquaman (who Matt Damon has been rumoured for) and Green Lantern, or maybe Hawkman or Martin Manhunter, but we’ve discovered something that my change that.

Zack Snyder (Man of Steel, Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen) has been announced to direct Justice League, which we can assume is a different project to Batman vs Superman. Despite introducing many of the team members early on, we may have to till 2018 to catch of DC’s super-team fully in action. B vs S will also star Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Adams, Callan Mulvey, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Tao Okamoto and Laurence Fishbourne.

Meanwhile, X-Men’s writer/producer Simon Kinberg has spoken out about the future of both X-Men and Fox’s Marvel properties. “Fox does understand that they are sitting on this massive universe with the X-Men, also with Fantastic Four obviously,” says Kinberg. “But they definitely have a sense of it and there’s a real interest and appetite for how to explore and expand that world.”

“It makes sense to tell some of these stories in TV,” he continues, “partly because there’s just not enough screens to do all these characters, and also because the serialized format of comic books is better suited for TV. Because that’s it, every week you come back to the same characters, different story, and in comic books every week it’s the same characters, different story.”

Back to the feature film side of things, Fox are trying to get into cinemas Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse (starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence), Jeff Wadlow’s X-Force, Lauren Shuler Donner’s Gambit (starring Channing Tatum) and Tim Miller’s Deadpool (starring Ryan Reynolds).  “It makes sense to me,” says Kinberg of a movie adaptation. “Genuinely it’s early phases, early days, but if you’re gonna do a Deadpool movie, I think you’ve gotta do a hard-R, darker movie and he is the perfect character to do it with.”

There’s been a recent announcement that The Hobbit’s final chapter will be called The Battle of the Five Armies. Richard Armitage, the portrayer of Dwarven prince Thorin Oakenshield, has elaborated about the epic finale of Peter Jackson’s sextet of Middle Earth adventures. “There’s a couple of big surprises.” He goes on to enthuse, “I think it will probably be quite a cinematic event.”

“It’s going to be quite a nostalgic event I think,” continues Armitage. “It’s going to be 15 years of seeing Middle Earth on the big screen, the culmination of Peter Jackson’s life’s work.” The Five Armies will star Martin Freeman, Luke Evans, Ian McKellen, Evangeline Lilly, Manu Bennett, Orlando Bloom, Aidan Turner, Mikael Persbrandt, Lee Pace, Cate Blanchett, Dean O’Gorman, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Ian Holm, Sylvester McCoy, Lawrence Makoare, Billy Connolly, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving and Benedict Cumberbatch.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – December 12th

Batman vs. Superman – May 6th 2016

Justice League – 2018

Mystique in line for X-Men spin off, Divergent sequel splits into two and Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur raises flag in 2016

Jennifer Lawrence is undoubtedly the most popular actress of the moment; she’s won a Leading Actress Oscar and has a further two Academy Award nominations for Silver Linings Playbook, Winter’s Bone and American Hustle and has the iconic lead role of Katniss Everdeen in blockbuster franchise The Hunger Games at the age of 24. She’s also a major character (hero or villain we’ll discover soon) in the X-Men franchise where she plays the shapeshifting mutant Mystique. Fox seem to be riding on Lawrence’s success however: they’ve dramatically bumped up her rank in the promotion for this May’s X-Men sequel Days of Future Past (which marks Bryan Singer’s return to the series) and they’ve taken that one step further.

Producer Lauren Shuler Donner has let slip that Raven could be one her way to a solo movie. The mutant spin-off isn’t an unheard of occurrence. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has received two already, X-Men: Origins Wolverine and The Wolverine, and for a while standalone adventures for Gambit (Channing Tatum) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) have been in production, with the latter’s Tim Miller determined to bring the fan favourite to the big screen. Meanwhile Singer’s Apocalypse, James Mangold’s next Wolverine and Jeff Wadlow’s X-Force (chronicling the story of time traveller Cable) will be Fox’s priority so we may have to wait a fair while till we get to see Mystique: The Movie.

British writer director Guy Ritchie is probably more associated with his hardcore crime/comedy/thrillers Snatch, Rocknrolla, Revolver and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, as well as Madonna rom-com Swept Away but let’s not go there. More recently, he’s become better known for his surprising critical and commercial success with cracking detective adventure Sherlock Holmes and its sequel A Game of Shadows. We’re still begging for Holmes 3 (hopefully starring Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Stephen Fry, Kelly Reilly and Eddie Marsan) but Ritchie is plowing through to other things with the reboot of 1960s comedy The Man from UNCLE as well as developing project King Arthur, which we haven’t heard anything about since January.

All we know so far is that, after the tanking of 2004’s Arthur and 1995’s First Knight, Ritchie is reinstating the fantasy elements of the story and could be planning as far ahead as six instalments. It’s now confirmed that Warner Bros have slotted Arthur into a July 2016 release, booking early to avoid conflict with the likes of Star Trek 3, Batman vs Superman, X-Men: Apocalypse, Captain America 3 and Avatar 2. You may remember that this version of the story was chosen by the studios, pushing aside David Dobkin’s plans involving Kit Harrington as the young king and Gary Oldman as the magician Merlin.

Divergent may have lost its “the new Hunger Games” potential but it has still done impressive box office numbers, seems to have charmed numerous critics (far more in the US than in the UK however) and is leaps and bounds ahead of The Mortal Instruments, Beautiful Creatures and The Host, other recent failed candidates of the genre. The production was confident enough to greenlight its sequel Insurgent although that’ll be directed by RED’s Robert Schwentke, taking over from Tomorrow When the War Began’s Neil Burger. We’ve got our first piece of news about the third instalment, and adaptation of last year’s novel from Veronica Roth, Allegiant.

It’s not overly surprising to discover that Lionsgate are pulling the same cheap money-extorting approach taken by Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games: they are splitting the final novel into two films. You may have picked up that we’re not fond of this strategy but we’d be more assured if the studios actually bothered to come up with a different name instead of a generic Parts One and Two, how about Hunger Games: Capitol or Harry Potter and the Lost Diadem. The Hobbit managed that three times with excellent success. The Divergent series will likely star Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney, Zoe Kravitz and Miles Teller.

King Arthur – July 22nd 2016

X-Men: Mystique – 2018?

Allegiant: Part One – March 18th 2016

Allegiant: Part Two – 2017

New X-Men Days of Future Past poster and Fox schedules sequels to Fantastic Four and Wolverine plus mystery Marvel project

Fox is overseeing the release of its tentpole X-Men sequel Days of Future Past but it’s going further to launch new Marvel projects into the future. Following DOFP is X-Men: Apocalypse (May 29th 2016), you can find more about that here, and then a reboot of The Fantastic Four, directed by Josh Trank, the man behind chilling superhero horror Chronicle, and was recently confirmed to be starring Michael B Jordan, Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell. The latter is over a year away from release but Fox are confident enough to put in a rudimentary July 2017 release date for a potential sequel.

But that’s not all; we can pencil in the return of Hugh Jackman and James Mangold for March of that year as well as a mystery superhero outing in 2018. We’ve no lead on this so we can timidly speculate these three options First, there’s X-Force, an potential spin off for Days of Future Past’s Bishop directed by Kick Ass 2 and Never Back Down’s Jeff Wadlow. The other obvious choice is Tim Miller and Ryan Reynolds’ oddball fantasy Deadpool. Perhaps it’s the long awaited Gambit spin off, starring Channing Tatum and produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, that we’ve heard so much about.

We finish today with another bit of exciting X-Men news. An awesome new poster has been launched. The time travelling thriller stars Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page, Lucas Till, Evan Peters, Anna Paquin, Booboo Stewart, Omar Sy, Adan Canto, Josh Helman, Fan Bingbing, Evan Jonigkeit, Daniel Cudmore and Halle Berry. It’s the biggest X-Men movie in terms of scale so far and will hopefully be the best.

X-Men: Days of Future Past – May 22nd

X-Men: Apocalypse – May 19th 2016

Deadpool – July 3rd 2018?

Gambit – July 3rd 2018?

X-Force – July 3rd 2018?

The Fantastic Four – June 18th 2014

The Fantastic Four 2 – June 14th 2017

The Wolverine 2 – March 3rd 2017

Deadpool movie “announced”

Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool only movie appearance to date is X-Men: Origins Wolverine. For the guide to that see our post from earlier: https://tuorhothmovies.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/ryan-reynolds-talks-struggling-to-make-the-deadpool-movie/

Anyway this is just a quick notice to say that IMDB’s status on Deadpool has changed from rumour to announced for a 2016 release. It has Tim Miller assigned as director. The four writing credits go to Marvel video game regulars Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza, Rhett Reese (Monsters Inc, Zombieland) and his writing partner Paul Wernick.

This is in the same few days as another “announcement” of Fox interested in making X-Force fly to the screen with Deadpool, Warpath and Cable being members.

Deadpool is out 2016