Here’s a special edition of the Weekly Ketchup, looking back at the biggest stories to come out of San Diego Comic-Con this year. Alphabetically, the movies covered include Ant-Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Dark Universe, Deadpool, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, a possible Iron Man 4, The Last of Us, Shazam, The Sinister Six, Skull Island, and Wonder Woman.
This year’s San Diego Comic-Con will not be one remembered for startling new announcements. Instead, this was a year for giving us our first glimpses at things we’ve known about for a while. It was also one of those years where most of the news actually happened before the Comic-Con doors even opened. One thing that did happen, however, which much of the world saw simultaneously, thanks to Facebook and Twitter, was our first glimpse of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The reactions varied, as reactions will, but common reactions concerned Gal Gadot’s new physique, the sword, the wedges, and the replacement of chocolate brown over the more traditional colors of red, gold, and blue. There was also this new look at Batman’s cowl, and a teaser trailer in which an armored Batman is confronted by Superman in Gotham City, which isn’t officially online yet (keyword: yet). We also learned this week that screenwriter Chris Terrio, who wrote Argo and cowrote Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, has started work on Justice League. And finally, Guillermo del Toro talked at SDCC about how his Dark Universe project fits in with Warner Bros’ superhero movies, which is that it doesn’t at all, but is instead like the Arrow TV show, in that it is a separate world and continuity. When (and if) it eventually happens, GDT’s Dark Universe will feature John Constantine, Deadman, The Demon, Swamp Thing, and Zatanna.
If the 2014 edition of San Diego Comic-Con had a whiff of disappointment surrounding it, it’s because so many of the big events didn’t really contain that many new announcements. Marvel really only announced one new project at SDCC, and that was Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the existence of which, even 5 days before the first movie is released, has already become something of a presumption. Marvel Studios will release Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on July 28, 2017. That announcement was the cap of a week of release date talk. First, we heard of six new release dates for mystery movies on July 8, 2016 (probably Doctor Strange), May 5, 2017 (probably another new film), July 28, 2017 (Guardians of the Galaxy 2), November 3, 2017, May 4, 2018, July 6, 2018, November 2, 2018, and May 3, 2019. That gives us a pattern of two Marvel movies a year up through 2016, and then in 2017 and 2018, three movies a year. Marvel’s Kevin Feige talked this week about the plan of doing one sequel, and one new film, each year, but what he didn’t say is what that will be like when there’s three movies a year instead of just two.
At the actual Marvel event on Saturday at SDCC, about 70% of the attention was on next year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Leading up to the event, Marvel released a series of eight concept art posters depicting each of the team members fighting a horde of Ultron robots. Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor were joined by new members Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and in the background of Quicksilver’s poster, we can see a yellow cloaked figure floating in the sky, who is almost certainly the android Vision (also a member of the Avengers in the comics). At the panel itself, the audience was treated to a teaser which showed the Avengers being attacked by Ultron (and his army of Ultrons). Marvel also brought along props, which included this, which we won’t spoil by saying what it is, except to say that this plot development might lead to the introduction of Black Panther, and his nation of Wakanda, in a later film. Speaking of later films, Robert Downey Jr. teased this week that he remains open to the idea of returning for a fourth Iron Man solo movie.
The Marvel panel also spent a good bit of time on Ant-Man, which was obviously for many fans a time for damage control, following the loss of fan favorite director Edgar Wright. There was an Ant-Man concept art poster, and a preview of footage that showed Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, guided by Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, in an action scene on a roof. It was also confirmed that Evangeline Lilly is playing “a” Ms Van Dyne, but not Janet Van Dyne (AKA The Wasp in the comics), but instead, will be “Hope Van Dyne,” Hank Pym’s daughter (which doesn’t mean she couldn’t also be the movie’s version of the Wasp, of course). Corey Stoll was also confirmed to be playing the villain, the Yellowjacket (again, this was something we basically already knew). Scheduling conflicts (following Wright’s departure) also are forcing Patrick Wilson to leave the film. Two other actors (Matt Gerald and Kevin Weisman) have also departed Ant-Man, but in their cases, it’s because of the script rewrites. As for Edgar Wright, we also learned this week how he’s filling his time post-Ant-Man. First, Wright will proceed with directing Baby Driver, which has been described as a “collision of crime, action, music and sound,” which he originally signed to direct for Focus Features back in 2008. Farther down the road, Edgar Wright has also signed with Sony Pictures to direct their giant insect movie Grasshopper Jungle. Yes, that’s right, Edgar Wright has gone from a movie about an ant-sized-man to a movie about a man-sized praying mantis. Go figure.
Going into San Diego Comic-Con this year, the leading guesses were that Marvel would reveal who has been cast as Doctor Strange, which might be the movie coming in 2016 after Captain America 3. As it turned out, we didn’t get that news after all, but just before, a story broke online that the new top contender for the role is now Joaquin Phoenix, who is at a career high following last year’s Her, and remains one of the most acclaimed actors who hasn’t yet ever dabbled with the superhero genre. Doctor Strange will be directed by Scott Derrickson of Sinister, and the sequel to that movie (without Derrickson’s direction) was announced this week for August 21, 2015.
In the midst of all of the big, Big, BIG superhero events and such at San Diego Comic-Con, one of the less high profile events this year was the Screen Gems panel. Their revelation this year was all about the movie adaptation of the post-apocalyptic hit video game The Last of Us. Although nothing is signed yet, the current front runner to play the female lead is Maisie Williams, who audiences know best, surely, for playing Arya Stark on HBO’s Game of Thrones. The Last of Us is being produced by Sam Raimi, and frequent collaborator Bruce Campbell is also expected to take a role in the film.
Marvel Studios wasn’t the only superhero factory that didn’t deliver some of the announcements that people were expecting. Particularly, for DC and WB, fans were primed to expect something about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson by Johnson himself, while doing various promotions for this weekend’s Hercules (which got trounced at the box office, by the way, by Black Widow, sort of, and Lucy). Basically, Dwayne Johnson teased that there would be an announcement very soon from him and DC Comics, and his use of the phrase “just say the word” seemed to suggest he was talking about the character called Captain Marvel, who in movie titles, has to be called Shazam (because Marvel own the rights to the title Captain Marvel). So, all that happened, and we still didn’t get the big Shazam announcement we expected (but it’s still not quite a “Rotten Idea” to cast Dwayne Johnson as Captain Marvel; just disappointing not to actually get that announcement).
One sure way to set your hot new property up for a disappointing revelation at San Diego Comic-Con is for the displayed teaser to at first be confused for another project that fans are much more (currently) excited about. Let’s put some pieces together, for example. Universal Pictures + Tropical Jungle Island + Monsters + Upcoming Movie = Jurassic World, right? That’s at least what many SDCC attendees seemed to be thinking. What they got instead was the world’s first glimpse at the King Kong origin story Skull Island, which is scheduled for November 4, 2016. A side story to all of this that seemed to go unnoticed by many SDCC journalists is that we now know that the “new franchise entry” for November, 2016 that we’ve previously been teased about turned out to be Skull Island, and not, as some guessed, Universal’s long-in-development Namor: The Sub-Mariner movie. Along with Fantastic Four, X-Men, and The Amazing Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner remains one of those properties that Marvel itself doesn’t currently control. If Universal is releasing Skull Island in 2016 instead, Marvel might now be close to getting one of their original superstars (two years before Aquaman) back within their cinematic universe. In other monster movie news, it was also confirmed at Comic-Con that Warner Bros now has the rights to include Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah in future movies, including possibly (but not necessarily) in Godzilla 2.
Up until this week, the presumption was that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 was going to come out in 2016, introducing the super villain sextet The Sinister Six, who would then get their own spinoff movie. This week, we learned that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 now won’t be released until the summer of 2018 and that instead, it’s The Sinister Six that Sony Pictures is releasing on June 10, 2016. The summer of 2018 had been when Sony Pictures was going to release The Amazing Spider-Man 4, but that movie is also pushed back. And we still don’t know when the other super villain spinoff, Venom, might be released. We’re calling these pushbacks a “Rotten Idea” because we (well, this writer) were/was just starting to really like the reboot Spidey.
20th Century Fox, and their various superhero properties, were a no-show at San Diego Comic-Con this year. What we instead got online were two different sneak glimpses at Fox projects, and the resulting impact is decidedly Rotten for both, but for very different reasons. First off, let’s talk about The Fantastic Four. Well, someone should, because the studio certainly isn’t, following months of continued bad buzz (most recently, it was Kate Mara talking about how the movie’s not based on comic books, and Michael B. Jordan saying they’re just kids who had an accident). Well, anyway, here’s a very unofficial first glimpse at The Thing in The Fantastic Four, and he sort of looks like a clinically depressed rock monster from The NeverEnding Story. Now, onto better glimpses, which are “Rotten” because it’s something we probably will never ever actually get to see as a real movie. We speak, of course, about the previously-in-development Deadpool solo movie starring Ryan Reynolds. 20th Century Fox keeps taking down the video, so we’ll just link to a YouTube search page for you to find one that still works. That footage was computer animated in 2011, so it’s three years old, but it pretty much nails the chatterbox “Merc with a Mouth” that is Deadpool. That video sort of plays like a cross between The Matrix Reloaded and The Mask, but still… it’s Deadpool. And that might be all we ever see of it until Deadpool eventually gets a spinoff movie following a reintroduction in X-Force, and that means it’ll happen, when? In 2020 (or later)?
For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS via Facebook.
