Oh, boy! It’s news that there’s going to be an Avengers 4 trailer this year!

Can we just think about that for a moment?  Avengers 4, the last time I checked, is coming out in May of 2019.  That’s about six months from now, more or less.  Of course they’re going to put out a trailer in the next two months.  Captain Marvel is coming out in March, and they put out the trailer for that in mid-September.  The odds that Disney would play it weird at this point are just about nil.

Chalk it up to the ravenous content maw that is the modern Internet.  I personally can’t wait for the teaser to the trailer to Avengers 4, myself.  And I absolutely know that that’s going to happen.  I know this because it’s happened in the past, and the studio wants the Avengers 4 hype to glow white-hot for as long as possible.  — And, to be fair: this entire MCU experiment culminates with that movie.  Can it all be pulled together, and leave the audience of hardcore watchers thinking Yeah, that was worth it?  Disney/Marvel won’t know until next year, and the answer very well may shape the very nature of genre films for quite possibly the rest of my life.

So, hey, no pressure.

Marvel shows Scarlett Johansson the money: $15M for standalone film.

(Via @gabrielmalor.) Nice hunk of change, that: “Scarlett Johansson, who has appeared in six movies as Black Widow, is finally landing a $15 million payday for an upcoming stand-alone film centered on the Marvel superheroine, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.” This is Thor and Captain America-level cash; it also makes a good deal of sense, because I’m pretty sure that every person who reads this who also goes to movies in the theater will be planning to watch Black Widow acrobatically beat up a remarkable number of bad guys.

They’re also bringing back Ryan Coogler for Black Panther 2: “…Coogler’s camp shook off the peer pressure and took its time in making a deal, which occurred under the radar some time ago. Sources say the plan at this stage is for Coogler to write the script next year with an eye to start production in either late 2019 or early 2020.” To paraphrase somebody or other, the negotiations probably involved just how many dump trucks full of money Coogler would be getting.  ScarJo, Ryan, bubbelehs: your rule of thumb here should be all that the traffic will bear.  Make ’em make it rain.

 

 

The ‘Dark Phoenix’ trailer.

It looks good…

…but I have lost the thread of this iteration of the X-Men.  I’m not sure which movies I should see first to make sense of Dark Phoenix.  And I don’t even know how much to invest in this series now, given that it will eventually cross the event horizon that is Disney-Marvel.  I mean, most of this is going to go away when they decide to bring in the X-Men to the MCU in 2021 or so, right?

Disney giving Loki and Scarlet Witch their own miniseries.

Interesting, no?  “Marvel Studios will give a solo spotlight to both Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch, with each getting a TV miniseries to be offered exclusively through the Disney streaming service that is expected to launch in late 2019.”

:steady look: Continue reading Disney giving Loki and Scarlet Witch their own miniseries.

First shots of Captain Marvel movie coming out.

There are Kree! And Skrulls!

Note this picture:

Continue reading First shots of Captain Marvel movie coming out.

Looks like MCU’s Phase Four is on track.

Word’s going down that a Marvel Phase 4 flick’s going to start filming in the UK next year.  If I had to guess, from the three possibilities mentioned (Doctor Strange 2, Black Widow, or The Eternals*), I’d say that it’s going to be the Doctor Strange sequel… what’s that?  There was That Thing That Happened? Continue reading Looks like MCU’s Phase Four is on track.

Strong hints of future Fantastic Four flicks in Disney’s conference call.

A very interesting statement here, from the Mouse’s Q3 2018 earnings conference call:

Our strategy is to give the studio what it needs to continue to do what it does best and to also expand the brand’s high-quality storytelling into the DTC space with original television and film projects. 20th Century Fox Film is yet another example. It gives us the opportunity to be associated with and to expand iconic movie franchises like Avatar, Marvel’s X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Deadpool, Planet of the Apes, Kingsman, and many others. We’re obviously very excited to leverage the Fox assets to enhance and accelerate our DTC strategy. But I want to be clear that we remain incredibly supportive and enthusiastic about the movie theater experience. It’s a vital part of our company and in fact, our studio just crossed $6 billion in global box office for the third year in a row.

Continue reading Strong hints of future Fantastic Four flicks in Disney’s conference call.

They’re gonna make a… Kraven the Hunter movie?

Sony, that is.  Part of the ‘Sony Marvel Universe,’ because why not? “The long-time Spider-Man villain, whose real name is Sergei Kravinoff, was a Russian aristocrat who became obsessed with big game hunting. He eventually develops superpowers after taking an elixir from the Voodoo priest Calypso.” …I’m detecting a theme, here.  Sony seems pretty determined to work up the Marvel villains they have a bit more than… well, OK, they only have Spider-Man on the heroe side, so that makes sense.  Expect a lot of tortured anti-hero and villainous movies, then!  And then, when they’ve got that settled, Spider-Man can come back and battle the Sinister Six until the end of time.

Hrm.  That might actually work.

Still, Kraven the Hunter without Squirrel Girl is gonna not be as fun.  And she’s NOT Sony.  Not at all.