Sci-Fi Storm

This is looking GOOD…the Avengers fracture into two teams – one led by Captain America, and the other by Iron Man, while the government seeks to control them all…

In theaters May 6th!

It’s a good evening for Marvel on TV – ABC just announced among a slew of shows returning that both Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel’s Agent Carter have been renewed for another season!

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the writing duo behind all three Captain America films including the upcoming Captain America: Civil War (which started filming today), as well as Thor: The Dark World and all three Chronicles of Narnia films, and also created Marvel’s Agent Carter (man these guys are BUSY!), have been signed to take on what will be the climax of Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Avengers: Infinity War, Parts 1 and 2.

Marvel announced today that Martin Freeman is joining the cast of Captain America: Civil War.

That’s it. Not a single detail.

Martin Freeman, of course, is known for playing Dr. John Watson on Sherlock (for which he won the 2014 Supporting Actor Emmy) and Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.

Captain America: Civil War is expected to be released on May 6th, 2016.

Last week Ben and Ray Lai, owners of Horizon Comics Productions, filed suit in the Federal Court of Massachusetts against Marvel and parent company Disney over claims that Marvel lifted the design of the Iron Man body armor designs from their own title, Radix.

The two allege that after they created Radix in 2001, they worked for a time for Marvel as artists, and that Radix materials had been distributed within Marvel. Then, in 2008 after the Lai brothers left Marvel, the first Iron Man movie came out, with a full mechanized body armor.

In the suit they say that “Marvel’s “Iron Man” comic book character first appeared in 1963. From that time until the first movie in the franchise was released, the comic typically depicted Iron Man wearing simple spandex-like attire and minimal armor.” But with the movie’s updated look and Marvel employees having access to the Radix designs, they believe their designs were lifted for the movies’ more modern high-tech armor.

However, it appears that their description of the “traditional” Iron Man armor isn’t quite accurate. Going all the way back to the first appearance of Iron Man in “Tales of Suspense #39”, we see him in full body armor…pretty clunky, and not unlike the armor Tony Stark built to escape his captors in the beginning of the 2008 movie. And through the years, although artistically you could probably mistake the depiction as being spandex, showing musculature, it was originally stylized full armor. And if you need other examples of full body armor with anatomical design, just do a Google image search for “George Clooney nipple suit” and witness the destruction of a franchise. 🙂

We’ll see what becomes of it. There is in fact a clear resemblance between a poster shot of Stark/Iron Man in a three point stance to a Radix promotional image…

It seems Netflix’s entry into the superhero universe was successful – it has renewed Marvel’s Daredevil, about Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer by day whose heightened senses make him a formidable masked vigilante at night.

The second season will debut on Netflix in 2016. Other upcoming Marvel titles on Netflix include January Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist.

Starring Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, and Evangeline Lilly – opens July 17th!

Less than two months…opens on May 1st!

That earthquake you felt wasn’t real…it was just a rumored-but-still-surprising deal being made in Hollywood.

Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios, owned by Sony’s rival Disney, struck a deal on Monday for Spider-Man which will allow the character to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – basically all the Marvel movies not done by Sony or Fox thus far, which all exist within the same “universe”, allowing for the crossover of the characters. Kevin Feige, who has led the MCU juggernaut, will come on board as a producer for a new Spider-Man film alongside Amy Pascal, who helped shepherd the Spider-Man franchise for Sony.

Sony will likely want to re-launch the franchise for a third time with a new face. With the second round starring Andrew Garfield, the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made a decent amount of money but was considered a disappointment given its very large budget.

In the meantime Marvel has wanted to include Spider-Man alongside the Avengers – Spidey is a member of the group in the comics after all. Word is that they’d like to include him at least in a cameo for Captain America: Civil War, and I can forsee a bigger role for the webslinger in the third Avengers team film.

In the meantime, Sony had already penciled in a July 28th, 2017 release date – which had already been planned by Marvel/Disney for Thor: Ragnarok. So Marvel/Disney has agreed to shift all of the Marvel films back, with Thor moving to November, taking Black Panther‘s slot, who moves back to Captain Marvel‘s slot, etc. All the relevant dates have been updated in our calendar.

Finally answering a long-gestating rumor, Fox is confirming that they are in negotiations to being one of the Marvel franchises it has had success with on the big screen to the small screen.

Fox TV co-chairs Gary Newman and Dana Walden told TV Insider that they are indeed planning on bringing the X-Men to TV, joining ABC and Netflix with Marvel-based shows and the CW with their DC-based franchises. They are currently very early on as they need to negotiate for the rights with Marvel (now part of rival Disney), which could lead to some interesting changes. Fox has the rights to films based on the X-Men, but Marvel has to grant the rights for TV use.

Since this is in the very early stages, nothing else has really been set up yet. It likely would be late 2016 at the earliest that any series could air.