Fan Rants

Well it looks like Marvel has found their director for the upcoming Avengers film, Joss Whedon! I can just hear all the Buffy fans and Browncoats yipping in glee right about now.

Deadline New York reports that Marvel Studios is in final negotiations with Joss to direct the biggest Superhero film of all time. The film is going to be fast tracked for release May of 2012. Right now we are expecting Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and maybe the Hulk (Edward Norton).

This is an interesting choice, considering that Joss is better known for character creation and writing than he is for directing. But he has had some great success with the Marvel line over the last few years, in particularly the X-Men franchise with The Astonishing X-Men.

Frankly I was hoping he would take on the Runaways movie (not the Joan Jett biopic) coming from Marvel next year.  He was one of the writers for the second volume of this excellent Marvel comics series and definitely his forte with young characters. But I am quite happy to see him taking the lead on this diverse property and wish him the best on this film.

Okay…maybe not so much Wolverine 2, but the rest are going to rock our socks off.

First up we have the Avengers movie hitting theaters May 4, 2012. This will be the grand experiment, bringing together the Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk and Thor franchises together. Sounds like a lot of characters on the big screen, and a lot of ego’s on set.

Next we have Star Trek 2 (or is that Star Trek XII?), taking the coveted July 4th weekend spot with a June 29th release date. This was stated by Paramount Pictures last week. We know from previous news reports that JJ Abrams is working feverishly to get the script completed so he can work on his next project, Mission Impossible IV.

Finally we have the sequel to Wolverine coming Summer of 2012. In an interview last week at the People Choice awards, Hugh Jackman stated that the second film would start filming a year to a year and a half from now. I doubt that they will put the release to close to the Avengers, but at the same time you may want to capitalize on the super-hero fans as much as possible.

Whew…that is a lot of genre for one summer. The fan boys are going to have to get better summer jobs to pay for all those movies!