Wednesday, February 18
After twittering online that Kenneth Branagh "gets" Thor, Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada went on the record about the Thor movie meetings at the New York Comic-Con and talked about the "faithful" adaptation that Branagh is planning:
[Branagh] has immersed himself in [the comics]... He was talking about characters and villains that even I was going, like, who was that?, y'know. But if you're a Thor-head, you're going to go, oh yeah, of course... So it was wonderful to hear this stuff. He wasn't just concerned about Thor, but he also understood going in, from the beginning - because we established very early on... Well, at the end of the Iron Man movie, but very early on [in the process], that there's going to be other movies that become part of this tapestry. This is essentially our Star Wars, our universe is our Star Wars, and he understands that his Thor movie is one of the legs of this table that will interplay with an Iron Man movie down the road, or The Avengers movie down the road. Whatever is going to happen is part of a shared universe.
Thor is still without an actor to play the lead role. While Daniel Craig and Kevin McKidd have been mentioned as candidates, fans are petitioning for relative unknown James Preston Rogers, who played a Viking in Outlander, for a time was training to be a professional wrestler, and does have a resemblance to the thunder god.
Next Showing: Thor opens July 16, 2010
Posted 2/18/2009 by Ryan
Related: Daniel Craig | Kevin McKidd | Kenneth Branagh | Thor | Outlander
Thursday, January 22
Outlander, a Vikings vs. alien movie 18 years in the making, opens in select theaters in the U.S. this Friday. Although the story is clearly a reworking of the Beowulf legend, it went through some major identity crises on its way to the big screen. Io9 lays out the long twisted saga of its making, as the Beowulf references got toned down, and more emphasis was placed on creating an engaging vision of the Viking world at some remove from horn-helmed Asterix stereotypes. Designing just the right alien monster was a challenge as well, and filmmakers were looking for a definite contrast to H.R. Giger's alien. "We had to thread a needle where it looks like an alien, but it could actually have a presence in the Viking world," and the Vikings could mistake it for a dragon. What they came up with was a bioluminescent but not entirely unsympathetic monster, with a chip on its shoulder and a rampage in mind. Check out the difficult-to-find trailer here
Posted 1/22/2009 by reelz
Related: Outlander