Posts Tagged ‘ Casting ’

It sounds like Zack Snyder has found his Lois Lane – and she’s Amy Adams.

I have no problem at all with this casting as Adams is pretty damn cute and, more importantly, can do drama and comedy with equal aplomb. She’s a great choice – and I know that some people will complain that she’s a redhead and so would be better as Lana Lang, but let’s face it: hair color only matters to geeks like us.

Although part of me would like to see Amy Adams as the Insect Queen.

In any case; great choice. My next Superman-related question, though, is how long Zack Snyder is going to be linked with Nolan’s Superman given the critical and financial drubbing that SuckerPunch took over the weekend…

EW has the first photo of Adrianne Palicki in costume as Wonder Woman from the new pilot.
(Now clickable in hires thanks to Bleeding Cool)

Now, I like Palicki, and I think she has the acting chops to pull this off – but I’m not too sold on the costume here. Maybe it’s one of those things where I have to see it in motion.

If you add a leather jacket it looks kind of familiar (well, with some extra pants detail)…

…and possibly just in time to be out of sync with the comics again.

That said, it could have been a lot worse…

Edit: Actually, you know, this costume is really growing on me.

The Chris Nolan-led, Zack Snyder-directed Superman movie reboot has landed it’s Jonathan and Martha Kent – Kevin Costner and Diane Lane.

Kevin Costner I understand in a Field of Dreams, down-home, kind of way (and it’s not like he’s doing much else these days aside from trying to save the world) -but Diane Lane?

Not the Ma Kent from the period I first remember reading (I probably read some pre-Crisis stuff too, but Ma was largely absent)…

..or even the current version of her and Pa.

No, this is a Martha and Jonathan Kent who are a bit younger. A bit less homely. A bit sexier.

Just like the Superman: Birthright Kents – which is apparently one of the sources for the movie…

Interesting casting.

I may not be particularly partial to what I hear about David E Kelley’s Wonder Woman pilot – but as far as I’m concerned he nailed the casting – the usually blond Supernatural and Friday Night Lights alum Adrienne Palicki has been cast as Diana, Princess of Themyscria.

For those not in the know, check out the first two seasons of Friday Night Lights.

I’m pretty sure Palicki was mentioned in the casting of the mooted-then-abandoned JLA movie back in 2007 – and although at the time I would rather have seen her as Supergirl (in fact, she was the first Supergirl in an episode of Smallville back in season three, and also the female villain in the Aquaman pilot), I approved of the idea.

Damn – I just got interested in the Wonder Woman show.

Edit: Apparently Levitt and Cotillard haven’t been cast in The Dark Knight Rises and someone with too much time on their hands has faked a press release. But what the hell, I wrote the damn post, found the damn pics, and goddammit I’m leaving it up here anyway. Just you know, caveated by the fact that it was based on bollocks.

Somewhere in Hollywood, Leonardo Dicaprio and Ellen Page are wondering if Chris Nolan doesn’t really like them – because why else would they be the only two main actors from Inception not to be cast in any of his Batman films? Well, there’s Dileep Rao as well, but he could still crop up in a bit part because he’s not too expensive.

According to this press release, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – rumored for every role from Albert Falcone to Hugo Strange to Robin – has been cast as Roman Sionis – better known as Black Mask, the Gotham crime boss.

Black Mask knocked around for a while (debuting way back when before Knightfall) before really making a comeback in Catwoman by torturing Selina Kyle’s brother-in-law to death, then making his wife Maggie (Selina’s sister) eat parts of his body – I definitely remember some eyeball-eating going on somewhere.

Not one to stand on ceremony, the Black Mask later took over Gotham’s gangs during War Games, and tortured Stephanie Brown (former Spoiler, then Robin, now Batgirl) to near-death before she escaped and died anyway (only she didn’t; long story). Finally, a while later, Catwoman decided enough was enough and shot him in the head.

All this makes me wonder if anybody has been cast as Anne Hathaway’s sister in the new movie…

Also cast is Marion Cotillard, last seen doing a real number on the inside of Leonardo Dicaprio’s head. She’ll be playing Talia A Ghul, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul (played by Liam Neeson in Batman Begins).

Talia’s spent most of her comic existence yo-yo’ing between supporting her father and working against him. She found time along the way to bed not only Bruce Wayne – giving him an heir in Damian, the current Robin -

- but she also knocked boots with Jason Todd when she was mentoring him after his resurrection –

- and also Bane, back when he was bumming around as Ra’s new heavy.

So, yes, Talia has a lust for life and, apparently, tall, dark-haired types with a streak of violence a mile wide. She also ran LexCorp while Luthor was busy being President, and has a tendency to show a lot of cleavage. I’m totally resisting some kind of ‘head for business/bod for sin’ Working Girl mash-up here.

Coupled with Tom Hardy’s Bane and Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle, plus the regular returnees, the cast for The Dark Knight Rises is starting to fill out nicely. I imagine Ellen Page is sitting by the phone waiting for that ‘Barbara Gordon’ call right this minute…

According to the never-wrong, top-line investigative journalists at TMZ, Lindsay Lohan is up for a role in the new Superman film.

I’ll admit I had difficulty wrapping my head around Lindsay in the movie – until, of course I remembered a key point of post-Crisis Superman lore.

In the Byrne-rebooted Superman back in 1986, Clark told highschool sweetheart Lana Lang that he had superpowers on prom night (or thereabouts), and took her flying. He then vanished from Smallville and trekked the world until he landed in Metropolis at the Daily Planet. He went to college and met Lori Lemaris at some point in there, too, but whatever.

Anyway, a few short issues into the reboot (Superman #2 to be exact), Lex Luthor had superscientist Amanda McCoy assigned to find out more about Superman. She analyzes a bunch of video from his appearances and finds the same woman hiding out in the crowd at many of his rescues:

Yep, Lana Lang has been stalking Superman.

It turns out that Lana – under the programming of the Manhunters as part of their insidious Millennium plot to take over the world with crappy crossovers – has been following Clark since he left Smallville to keep tabs on him. Yep, Clark’s highschool sweetheart vanished for ten years and he didn’t do anything to find her.

Because, as we all know, Superman is a dick.

Anyway, Lex promptly has Lana kidnapped and tortured for a couple of days before letting her go, where she goes to see Clark.

And – as I recalled the story – I realized that a homeless, crazy Lana who’s been stalking Superman for years might just be the perfect part for Lindsay Lohan.

See? This could work out after all!

Incidentally, brainy scientist Amanda actually works out that Clark Kent is Superman!

Lex doesn’t buy it because there’s no way that Superman could possibly disguise himself as a mere mortal. He then fires Amanda for being stupid, despite having being coercing her into having sex with him for a couple of days.

Because as big a dick as Superman is, Lex is always worse.

I should really have an opinion the casting of Henry Cavill in the reboot of Superman under Chris Nolan’s eye, but I don’t. I mean, I suppose he looks the part and I’d guess he tested for it extensively, but I haven’t seen him in anything I can recall so I don’t really have that much of an opinion.

The only thing I do find kind of amusing is that this makes the third marquee superhero to be played by a British actor (the other two being Spider-Man and Batman).

I’m more concerned about the rumors floating round that the movie is a take on Clark Kent traveling the world and getting embroiled in African unrest, much like Birthright. I honestly have very little interest in that.

On the brightside, somebody somewhere did a Cavill-as-Superman photoshop a while ago (thank you,. google search), so here you go -

Warner Bros has announced that Anne Hathaway has been cast as Selina Kyle (interestingly, the name ‘Catwoman’ doesn’t appear in the release) in the upcoming third (and apparently final) Christopher Nolan Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.

Additionally, they have stated that the much-rumored Tom Hardy will be playing Bane in the movie, and not Hugo Strange as was rumored. Hardy starred in Nolan’s Inception earlier this year (and he absolutely ruled in it, too).

They do say a ‘new interpretation’ of Bane – so it seems he won’t simply be the muscle in this. Then again, even if he is, I’d say Tom Hardy can show that he’s willing to bulk up impressively for a role…

The press release in full:

Warner Bros. Pictures Announces Anne Hathaway for Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises”

BURBANK, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Warner Bros. Pictures announced today that Anne Hathaway has been cast as Selina Kyle in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises.” She will be starring alongside Christian Bale, who returns in the title role of Bruce Wayne/Batman.

Christopher Nolan stated, “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Anne Hathaway, who will be a fantastic addition to our ensemble as we complete our story.”

In addition, Tom Hardy has been set to play Bane. “I am delighted to be working with Tom again and excited to watch him bring to life our new interpretation of one of Batman’s most formidable enemies.”

Christopher Nolan stated, “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Anne Hathaway, who will be a fantastic addition to our ensemble as we complete our story.”

In addition, Tom Hardy has been set to play Bane. Nolan said, “I am delighted to be working with Tom again and excited to watch him bring to life our new interpretation of one of Batman’s most formidable enemies.”

Nolan will direct the film from a screenplay he wrote with Jonathan Nolan, from a story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer. Nolan will also produce the film with his longtime producing partner, Emma Thomas, and Charles Roven.

“The Dark Knight Rises” is slated for release on July 20, 2012. The film will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

A class pic of X-Men: First Class has surfaced in low res on the internet:

(EDITED: Now in Higher res – click on the picture below or here to embiggen it)

I make that as (L-R) Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggart, January Jones as Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng as Azazel, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Lucas Till as Havok, Zoe Kravitz as Angel, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, and James McAvoy as Professor Xavier.

What can we take away from this?

First, Beast is blue and angry; Jason Flemyng is red and looks a little bit like the devil (dear lord, please not the ‘actual’ devil like in The Draco); the X-Men used to wear black and yellow just like the original comics X-Men (only the outfits look a little more like the redesigned New X-Men gear); Magneto and Mystique were on the team; Lucas Till’s Havok looks like a douchebag; Michael Fassbender looks like Don Draper; and, oh, yes, January Jones is not an unattractive woman.

I’m sure there’s more to come…

Via

NOW UPDATED WITH THE OFFICIAL PIC

It’s a day for it.

Here’s a grainy look at Chris Evans and his padded crotch as Captain America from the upcoming movie…

The outfit looks pretty good – and usable – and I can’t help notice his crotchholster, meaning that it seems Cap will be armed. I also like the flying helmet-type thing under the Cap helmet (wings and all!).

Those suits at the back look terrible though. More Hydra soldiers, I expect. Will this version of World War II have Nazis at all?

Via

Presented without comment…

…except that Spidey’s looking lanky these days.

Oh, and is he wearing something around his wrists under the costume?

Yes he is! Mechanical web-shooters are back.

Not that that makes me geekily excited or anything…

Via

Emma Stone’s gone back to blond for the upcoming Spider-Man reboot and her role as Gwen Stacy.

I’ll admit I’m still uncertain on almost all the casting that’s been announced for the new movie, but Stone isn’t a bad choice, as long as the writers are taking their cue from the Ultimate Marvel Gwen, who I seem to understand was a little more ‘bad girl’ than regular Gwen. I mean, the most interesting thing regular Gwen ever did was die. Yes, I know, Sins Past – but that story doesn’t exist in this dojo.

Still, even though Spider-Man 3 is best described as aggressively mediocre, I do think that Bryce Dallas Howard looked a little more like the comic Gwen to me.

According to THR, Campbell Scott has been cast as Peter Parker’s father Richard, while Julianne Nicholson is in the final stages of negotiations to play Mary Parker, Peter’s mother.

Meanwhile, Irrfan Khan and Annie Parisse are in talks for a villain named Van Atter and his wife.

No word on Richard and Mary appear only in flashback, if Van Atter is the bad guy who does away with Peter’s parents, or if Richard and Mary are actually agents of SHIELD (or some other acronym-bearing organization, rights issues allowed).

This is getting shakier sounding by the minute…

You get reboots all the time. I mean, beyond characters like Tarzan and James Bond, who have had more screen incarnations than you can shake a stick at, we’re getting a Spider-Man reboot a scant four or five years after the last trilogy concluded.

So why not Star Wars? It’s been 30 years since the Empire struck back, and 28 since the Jedi returned. Revisiting the original trilogy now would give the opportunity to blend them more effectively with the prequels – or to separate them from them if you like.

But who to cast, who to cast?

Luke Skywalker – let’s face it, Luke’s a bit of a dick. Sure, he heads off on the great adventure and all, but its only after his aunt and uncle die because he’s too chicken shit to tell them he lost some droids. He doesn’t mourn them very long, either, just long enough to go away with this old guy he just met. And hey, when the old guy dies later, he’s much more upset about that than he was about the death of the people who raised him. Looks like Family Guy got that one right. So you need someone who can play douche pretty well.

Han Solo – Solo’s the coolest guy in the room. I was originally going to suggest Josh Holloway but I worry he might be too old for the role in spite of his inherent ‘don’t give a shit’-tedness so I went for the next best thing – and given that Supernatural was basically conceived as Luke and Han Do Truck Stop America, it basically gets real easy…

Princess Leia Organa- Someone feisty who can hold her own with the boys. Looks like somebody read my mind….

C-3PO – Look, we all know that C-3PO is going to be all CGI this time round anyway, so why worry about what poor bastard’s going to be in the suit. Just go with someone who can do a stuck-up English accent. And if England’s too expensive, employ a Canadian…

R2-D2 – If Kenny Baker wants the job, it’s his – but I think R2′s probably better off being remote controlled. Or CGI, of course.

Obi Wan ‘Ben’ Kenobi – Look, these guys are all in their twenties. You don’t need someone in their sixties to play Obi Wan and be older; you just need someone with some gravitas who can act – and preferably someone English. A proper actor, if you will…

Darth Vader – None of that ‘two people playing one person’ crap here. What you need is a big guy in the suit with a voice that can scare the crap out of any living being in twenty yards. There’s only one answer my friends…

So there you go – your Star Wars reboot cast: Shia LaBeouf, Jensen Ackles, Summer Glau, Alexis Denisof, Colin Firth and Tony Todd. That’s the casting done, now onto the script…

…and it is perhaps the most genius bit of casting I’ve seen in a long time.

Battlestar Galactica alum Michael Hogan will be playing Slade Wilson, the world’s most dangerous mercenary

That, my friend, is nigh genius!

Hat tip to Mizzelle!

I know I was away from the internets for a while, but how on earth did I miss this image of Doctor Who’s David Tennant as Peter Vincent in the Fright Night remake?

What would Roddy McDowell say?

More importantly, why isn’t there a collection of Tennant’s increasingly manic “What?”s on YouTube?

The trailer for Danny Boyle’s next movie, 127 Hours, has been released, and it’s not shy about touting the Oscar-winner’s previous successes.

For the sake of movie spoilers, I’m putting the rest of this post behind a jump…

I’ve come to the conclusion that Michael Chabon was right. In his 1995 treatment for a Fantastic Four movie (available for download here) he wrote:

The world of the movie is a timeless, more innocent world, a world where Evil lives behind an Iron Curtain on the Dark Side of the planet, a world where, even in 1995, it is always November 21, 1963. Men still wear hats, kids are into hot rods and spaceships, women have bouffant hairdos, and New York City is the vibrant, shiny capital of the Free World. A Technicolor, bossa nova, Douglas Sirk world. A world where radiation is not only terrifying and evil but also capable of producing wonders and miracles. A world of amazing machinery and devices. There is wickedness, to be sure, and there are bad people, and it takes the eternal vigilance of a few stalwart champions to keep our shores from being overrun, our homes and towns from being infested from within, by the emissaries of darkness. Fortunately such champions exist: the Fantastic Four.

He’s right. As much as I like the two previous Fantastic Four movies (and I like them a lot for what they are – frothy family-friendly superhero flicks), a true FF movie that captures the spirit of the comics should be set in the 1960s.

Think of it – a period superhero movie; where else could you have Mr Fantastic’s inventions seem so amazing? Where the pogo plane wouldn’t be laughed at? Where you could poke fun at the rampant sexism evident in the early FF comic?

Chabon also thought that you should just skip the origin story entirely and have the FF as established celebrity super-heroes; I like that too.

And yesterday when I posted about January Jones being cast in the new X-Men movie, it struck me that she would make a perfect 1960s Sue Storm. Perfect. And if she was Sue, why not populate the entire cast with Mad Men actors?

Jonn Hamm as the emotionally distant, distractingly handsome super-genius, Mr Fantastic!

The aforementioned January Jones as Sue Storm, the model-turned-headstrong superhero that just wants to get married so that she can finally be kissed and not heard!

Vincent Kartheiser as the self-absorbed none-too-bright cad about town, Johnny Storm!

And as we’re skipping the origin, there’s no need to see Ben Grimm at all – which means John Slattery can use his piercing blue eyes to emote ol’ Benjy through the CGI’d rocky hide of the Thing!

Yep, I think we’ve got this all wrapped up!

It seems that Alice Eve is out of the upcoming X-Men First Class just weeks after I looked at some pictures and decided that yes, she’d make a pretty good Emma Frost.

So, goodbye Alice…but hello the really rather spectacular January Jones!

I’m surprised that Jones landed the role if only because she seems to be keeping a low profile during Mad Men‘s run – but in all honesty I consider this an upgrade in the acting department (not that I have much to judge Eve’s acting on…)

And let’s face it, in looks alone Jones matches Frost’s porcelain blonde perfectly.

Also on the cast list – Zoe Kravitz as Angel (presumably Angel Salvadore) who, according to google, dated Ben Foster, the other Angel from X-Men: The Last Stand. Spooky.

Between Jones, Oliver Platt, James McAvoy and Kevin Bacon, I’m starting to get the feeling this could actually be rather good…

Per Blastr, Scott Bakula had this to say about a Quantum Leap movie at SDCC…

The good news is that Don and I will have a part in it somehow.

Don did say that as he was writing, he told me he was having trouble, ‘getting you and Dean out of my head.’ But I know he will do it.

No Scott Bakula as Sam?

No Dean Stockwell as Al?

No point.

The whole show was built around the chemistry these two actors built up – and neither are exactly retired, should a movie get an (admittedly unlikely) green light.

Some may point out that if you can recast Kirk and Spock, you can probably recast anything, but this isn’t Star Trek, this is Quantum Leap – a smaller, more specialized fan base. And if you alienate them, there’s no point at all in making the movie.

Of course, if you were to recast, there are two actors with a fair amount of experience in time travel who would be pretty good fits for the roles…

(Hat tip)