The Blockbuster Movie Thread

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CAPTAIN AMERICA Sequel To Film In North Carolina?

Once Iron Man 3 wraps filming in Wilmington, North Carolina, production for another film from Marvel Studios' upcoming slate, Captain America 2, is expected to head to the city!


Filming for Iron Man 3 will soon conclude in Wilmington, North Carolina, before production moves to China. And Marvel Studios will apparently return to the Port city to begin shooting another film from their upcoming slate. And according to Latino Review, supported by state reps, that movie will be the highly-anticipated followup to last summer's Captain America: The First Avenger blockbuster.

Turns out, North Carolina politics confirmed a rumor we heard. Seems that the tax breaks for productions are set to expire and the legislative bodies of North Carolina need to scramble to extend them by next Tuesday or watch them expire on January 1st, 2014. yesterday State Rep. Danny McComas said extending the credit could help North Carolina score the sequel to ‘Captain America: The First Avenger.’

The principal photography start-date for the sequel tentatively titled Captain America 2, will commence in January of 2013. Following Iron Man 3 of course, Thor 2 will begin shooting first, kicking off in August overseas in London; where the Captain America: The First Avenger movie was primarily filmed. What do you think?

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Edgar Wright Has Completed Work On A Test Reel For ANT-MAN

Edgar Wright's next project will be At World's End. However, the writer and director has spent a week of June hard at work on a test reel for Ant-Man, bringing the project closer to reality than ever before. Read on for details.



The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Edgar Wright has finished production on Ant-Man. Unfortunately, we're not talking about the film itself. Instead, the director has not only been hard at work perfecting his and Joe Cornish's script, but he's also spent a week shooting a reel of footage which will be used to test out the look of the film and how the character's powers will be portrayed on the big screen. This is usually the case for certain films, and those of you who checked out 300's special features may remember Zack Snyder doing something very similar for that comic book adaptation. This may also explain why comic book stores in London have been finding themselves bombarded with requests for old Ant-Man back-issues (read about that HERE). Will the footage be shown at Comic-Con? Here's hoping...

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MORTAL KOMBAT Director Teases Upcoming Fight Match-Ups

Want to know what's happening with the mysterious MK film? Director Kevin Tancharoen has revealed a few pages of the script which reveal a few of the fight match-ups you can expect to see when the film is released.

Today on Kevin Tancharoen's twitter account, many hungry fans were treated to some minor tidbits of scenes we can expect to see in the upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot!

The scenes involve Jax, Kabal, Scorpion and Sub-Zero.

[Dr Doom]

If Marvel can pull off Guardians Of The Galaxy, they've won. I don't care if Broddie comes in here with a classic seminar on how they won't, but they will.

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New Plot And Cast Details Emerge On Marvel Studios' Short Film ITEM 47

Do you remember when the leaked The Avengers Blu-Ray details revealed that Marvel Studios will release a new one-shot film called Item 47? Now EW provides us with cast information as well as what the story will feature after the jump!

Ever since it was leaked that a short-film called Item 47 had been announced, Marvel Comics fans went on a speculation rampage as to what it could mean. Most believed it to be Agent Coulson's gun that he used against Loki before his tragic death, but now we have the answer.

The short-film will star Lizzy Caplan -- playing Claire -- and Jesse Bradford -- playing Benny -- as a couple who will find one of the guns from the Chitauri after the ending events of The Avengers and proceed to make some very negative decisions with it that they think could better their lives.



These special Marvel "one-shot" films such as The Consultant and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Thor's Hammer have been attached to the Blu-Ray releases of Thor and Captain America. This film is no different as it will be featured on The Avengers Blu-Ray which will release on September 25th. However, if you are lucky enough to attend San Diego Comic-Con the short-film, in it's entirety, will be screened.

Two S.H.I.E.L.D agents played by Maximiliano Hernández (Thor and The Avengers) and Titus Welliver (Lost's Man in Black) were given the assignment of stopping the crimes committed by Benny and Claire and retrieving the Chitauri weapon which SHIELD has designated Item 47.

Marvel Studios co-president and Item 47 director Louis D'Esposito talks about the state of the earth as well as what we can expect from Benny and Claire:

“The world is topsy-turvy now. There’s been an alien invasion, and things are crazy, So when this gun *literally fell into their lap, this is a sign: We’re going to rob a few banks, we’re going to buy a boat, we’re going to the Caribbean, and all our problems will be solved.”

So what exactly is the mission Marvel wants to achieve with Item 47? The screenplay writer of the Marvel one-shots, Eric Pearson, had this to say about the new short film.

“Anything that expands the world and shows you the more human elements of it, that just makes the world more colorful and fun for the average viewer,”

The newest Marvel short film,Item 47, is said to be on a much bigger scale than the previous films which focused around Clark Gregg as S.H.I.E.L.D Agent Phil Coulson in a couple of action scenes. The previous films with Gregg were only about 5 minutes long. You can expect Item 47 to be almost 12 minutes long.

If Item 47 proves to be a big success, could Marvel do short films with their heroes as well? Imagine a short film to introduce lesser known heroes for audiences to get familiar with a character. Think about what DC has done with their showcase of animated short films on their DVDs and Blu-Rays. D'Esposito certainly doesn't think it's an impossible idea to introduce new heroes with the short-film format.

“There’s always a potential to introduce a character. We have 8,000 of them, and they can’t all be at the same level. So maybe there are some that are not so popular, and we introduce them [with a short] – and they take off. I could see that happening.”

“Let’s say we wanted to introduce Ant-Man [in a short], and that would mean we have to cast him prior to having a filmmaker. That’s difficult and something we wouldn’t want to do,”

[Dr Doom]

smh, no mention of the news that Disney is making an animated movie of Marvel's Big Hero 6? This might be the first step on taking the animation crown away from DC as well.

[Broddie]

I have no faith in Disney with animated fare. If it was Pixar then I'd be like "whoa!".

This poster is one of the illest photoshop jobs I've seen in a while. Good work WB; it should've been the official one sheet and not just the IMAX poster. Perfectly conveys the theme in the frame just like the posters for it's predecessors did.

[Dr Doom]

Disney has been slowly but surely stepping their game up again. Have you seen the Wreck-It Ralph trailer? If the movie is even half as good as the trailer implies, I'm confident about them doing Marvel Animated Movies.

[Broddie]

I saw the Rapunzel one and the princess and the frog. They weren't very good. When I was growing up Disney was the only animation company so on point with it that they got boys to watch movie musicals about fucking princesses. Seriously it was like The Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King back to back.

Couple that with also growing up watching their classics like Bambi and Pinocchio on home video and really the stuff from today doesn't really compare. Only PIXAR keeps that spirit and attention to quality alive. So I guess I was spoiled. I actually wanted to be an animator as a kid and a big reason for that was a lot of those disney classics. I might see Wreck-It Ralph though that one looks interesting.

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Marc Guggenheim Talks About Scripting GREEN LANTERN

The Green Lantern writer talks about the original draft that leaked online and the multitude of script rewrites that went down on the project.

Talking to the folks over at b>The Outhousers, Green Lantern writer Marc Guggenheim has a frank discussion about his involvement on Green Lantern---

The original Green Lantern script leaked online before the movie hit theaters. It was set more in space and dove into the Green Lantern Corps. a little more. Was the end result a product of too many voices on the project at once?

MG: It's complicated because movies are very different from television. In movies, there are always "more cooks in the kitchen." It's a dance and I actually look at the process of filmmaking...when you just consider the number of pieces,not people but the components that all have to come together, that all have to align to make a movie good, it's kind of a miracle when it actually turns out well. You're dealing with a huge, complex piece of machinery and Green Lantern is an extraordinarily ambitious property to tackle. You have space, you have earth, you have the combination of the two, and ring constructs and how they work. There's just a lot of pieces that all have to come together and for some people, the way those pieces came together was not satisfying and some people thought it was a very entertaining film.

I don't typically like to second-guess how and why things turn out the way they do. At the end of the day, going back to what I said previously, it's sort of a miracle that any movie turns out well. Green Lantern has gotten a little bit of a bum rap on the internet and even in the mainstream press. I think if you go back and take a look at it with fresh eyes, it actually stands up better than peoples memory of it.

But at the same time, you go, "this is the project, this is the way it turned out, and you move on while asking, "What can I take from this experience?" Which is true, whether you turned in The Dark Knight or Howard the Duck. There should always be an element of learning to improve your craft. I'm not unhappy that the draft that is online is online, it was our very first draft. We did a total of 5 before another writer came in and did a rewrite but I'm glad that it's out there for people to see what were the raw, knee-jerk, first intentions before they there were even the realities of a budget and production. It's very much a blue-sky draft. As a writer, I always enjoy reading other writers blue-sky drafts because they're educational as far as what they were seeing in their head.

Are we entering a 'cosmic age' with the looming possibility of a Green Lantern sequel and Marvel now apparently, moving on Guardians of the Galaxy?

MG: We live in this golden age of visual effects where so many things are possible, you're always limited by time and money and things are possible toady that were not even possible 5 years ago. And you can really tell stories on an incredibly large canvas. It's an exciting time but it's always important to make sure that the spectacle doesn't drown out the character. One of the things I loved about The Avengers movie was that it was this bid budget movie but there were all these little, wonderful character moments or character arcs woven into what probably could've gotten away with just being a big spectacle.