Wanted, the movie based on the miniseries by Mark Millar, is supposed to start filming this month in Prague. (That’s in the Czech Republic, knuckleheads.) You might have heard of this, as Angelina Jolie was recently cast, and Morgan Freeman also stars in it. Obviously, neither of them are the title character – a gumpy white guy that finds out his father was a supervillain-type assassin and gets trained to fill his shoes. This is James McAvoy‘s role. It’s a fairly messed up book, burdened with one of the lamest last pages I’ve ever encountered (depending on your interpretation, it’s either Millar laughing at you for buying the book, or telling you to go out and be like the character). Oddly enough, it sounds like the film adaptation is removing most (if not all) of the superhero/supervillain aspects – perhaps the most endearing aspect of the story.

Anyway, all of that was to bring you up to speed, so you have some semblance of context for the little piece of concept art Bazelevs has treated us to. In their words, New American project of Timur Bekmambetov with the working title “Wanted@ is in progress. For right now the revisualization for the future feature is being made. CG specialists develop “art” and camera moves, objects, characters interaction, shots composing, animation – in a word, it is already seen now how the future featyre will look like. This work is being done for ‘Universal Studios”.

Ah, translations.

The latest Lying In The Gutters article (the popular comics-related rumor column that’s right far more often than not) has a little segment, all the way near the end, titled “ROBOTS IN DIS GUISE” where Rich Johnston has this to report:

“Transformers 2” is being prepped for 2009, as is a new cartoon series to spin off the upcoming movie.

The reason given to licensors as to why the robots look so different in the film is so that hardcore fans will stay loyal and keep buying the old toys, which they’re relaunching, even if they hate the new movie.

Licensing has explicitly stated that companies doing merchandising have to avoid doing anything too similar to the original Transformers line, so as not to mix the two separate and profitable properties.

That last comment is interesting, in that the Transformers Movie and original Transformers are being viewed as separate lines.

Also, gotta love the second statement about “hardcore fans.” Partly because of the businesslike flippancy, partly because of the accuracy.

Legendary Superman director Richard Donner recently teamed up with Geoff Johns to write a Superman story in Action comics – a story that came is still coming out at a glacial Civil War-like pace. This summer, Donner and Johns are teaming up again, to put out a 5-issue sequel to another nostalgia-ridden film property that Donner directed – The Goonies. The story picks up only a few years later for the characters, with the story centering on Sloth’s disappearance … on the exact same day those evil genius Fratelli brothers escaped from prison. Expect the book to be finished sometime around spring, 2012. (I kid, I kid.)

Wizard has the full story here.

JustJared is playing host to a few of the first pictures to leak from the Iron Man set.
We see Robert Downey Jr wearing a swank tuxedo, taking direction from Jon Favreau, locking lips with Gwyneth Paltrow, and then Gwyneth caught in what might be a scream or a yawn.
I’m going to go with yawn since these aren’t action scenes, just some kind of dinner party. Still, its the first good look at Downey in full Tony Stark mode, and thats kinda cool.

Two new television commercials for Transformers appeared online today.

The first, came from IGN. I’ve provided a Youtube mirror above. You can download it if you choose here. This spot contains new footage of Prime, Frenzy, Ironhide, Starscream, Jon Voight, and Megatron. Also of note is original Transformers narrator Victor Caroli voicing the ID at the end.

The second appeared on alternate reality site SectorSeven.org. Access it by using this link and double-clicking the red hard drive icon in the top left corner. You’ll get a different 30 second spot with Bumblebee, Bernie Mac, and Starscream. Keep an eye on the car lot for a yellow bug that isn’t Bumblebee.

EDIT- the second ad has been put on Youtube, click on for the embeded video. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Remember that recently released “final” trailer? Well, turns out it wasn’t so final after all. Less than a week later, they’ve released a new international trailer. It’s mostly recycled footage from previous stuff, but there’s a couple brief villain-centric scenes that haven’t been shown before. Check it out, in all its Windows Media Player streaming glory, in flavors hi-res, med-res, and lo-lo-lo-res. This is great, because what we really need right now is four hundred trailers for the film. Splice them together, and you almost won’t have to go to the movie.

Keep on after the jump for new wide images, Venom design notes, and why China gets the movie before North America. (Huh. So much for my trailer-splicing plan – looks like Chinese bootlegs will be the way to go.)
[Read the rest of this entry…]

A third Mortal Kombat movie has been “in the works” for quite some time now, and has had numerous delays and setbacks, and even more rumors thrown about. It’s seems, however, that the boys at IGN have recieved some honest reports as to the current status of the franchise movie production, as well as what changes are being made.

” It seems you can forget about seeing Mortal Kombat III. Instead, the whole franchise will reportedly be getting the reboot treatment, a la Casino Royale and Batman Begins.” It appears that the previous script that had been planned out for the movie has been scrapped, and new drafts are being re-written, along with advisement from franchise head Ed Boon.

The whole article can be read here.

Before this, the 3rd movie held promise by stating that it was only going to skip over the horribly concocted second movie, Annihilation. However, this little bit of news makes it seem as though they will skip both movies, and start from scratch. It does interest me that they are still trying to get Christopher Lambert and Robin Shou, actors from the original movie, to reprise their respective roles. As for how they handle “revamping” the movie plans is anyone’s guess, and it will be interesting to see what the storyline will involve should this come to pass.

As a massive promotion for The Simpsons Movie this summer, 7-11 has agreed to full convert 11 of its stores in the US into replicas of the infamous Kwik-E-Mart.

MTV Reports a 7-11 spokesperson refused to confirm or deny, but apparently it was revealed in a company event last week. The stores will take on the appearance of Kwik-E-Mart, serve Squishies and other popular Simpsons food. I can only pray this happens and I can get a Duff Beer. Or an appearance from Duff Man!

Thanks Robbie!