As with each year at the SDCC, news is flowing out about upcoming plans, events and merchandise. Due to the sheer volume of data, I’m just going to cover the toy news from the Preview night (yesterday) and Day 1 (today).

I will be covering news for:

• The 7th Kingdom (FANtastic Exclusives)
• Minimates (Marvel)
• Marvel Legends (Main line and supplemental lines)

So if you are interested in any of these, continue on below!

More coming tomorrow!
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Everyone should know by now (because we already told you) that Katie Holmes is too busy making babies and bad career moves to reprise her role from Batman Begins in the upcoming sequel, The Dark Knight. Taking up the mantle of Rachel Dawes will be the excellent Maggie Gyllenhaal who, having recently seen her in the glorious Stranger Than Fiction, should do an excellent job in the role.

After watching the awesomely amazing Batman Begins I was completely under the impression that Katie Holmes‘s character Rachel Dawes would not be returning in the next movie. Not for contractual reasons or anything like, that but rather simply because they seemed to insinuate that her relationship with Bruce as we had known it was not possible anymore, and that she was moving on with her life without him. For more on this see the last 5 minutes of Batman Begins.

Well as various sources are reporting Katie Holmes was offered 2 million dollars to reprise the role and turned it down, presumably to star in an intellectually devoid comedy starring Queen Latifa, and on top of that the studio is still looking to cast someone else as the character as Rachel Dawes.

It’s nearly impossible to tell where fact starts and speculation begins in all this. The fact that Katie was offered 2 million to star in the Batman Begins sequel Dark Knight, and turned the role down due to “scheduling conflicts” seems all we can be sure of. The question of whether her doing this retarded Queen Latifa movie is the source of her conflict could be mainly speculation as could the talk of there still being a desire to cast someone else as Rachel Dawes instead of simply working around the charcter not being in the film, as there is no reason for a sequel not to be able to work if she weren’t returning.

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It has been seven long years since The Rentals have made even the slightest noise.

Now they’re coming back.

Matt Sharp left Weezer after Pinkerton to focus entirely on his project The Rentals. The first release Return Of The Rentals was a modest success, with the hit single “Friends Of P” and while the follow up Seven More Minutes didn’t make much of a splash, I was certainly a fan.

The Rentals.com has updated that the band WILL be playing 2 shows in California and 2 shows in Japan this July, with a world tour to follow. Pitchfork also spoke to Matt while preparing the tour, and he announced that while the lineup has changed since SMM, Rachel Haden (formerly of that dog.) would be back in the fold. You can also check out their myspace page to get more music.
Apparently the credit for the return goes to a new remix of the Tegan and Sara song “Walking With A Ghost.”  Matt Sharp became such a fan of T&S that he recruited former Rentals member and current SNL cast Maya Rudolph to cover “Not Tonight.”

The Rentals are recording new material now and a new album should be due in 2007.

Press Release after the jump

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