As summer draws to a close and people start to wonder just how it is that Ant-Man wasn't the disappointment they'd expected it to be (and that Fantastic Four totally was), it's time to turn our attention to the future, and the movies awaiting us: superheroes punching each other! Thieves thieving! And the director of Mad Max: Fury Road doing a superhero movie...? Here, as ever, are the highlights of the last seven days' worth of superhero movie news.
Despite the best attempts of Marvel Studios, fans are now able to start working out who's on what side for next year's Captain America: Civil War: Falcon and Ant-Man are on Captain America's side, based on the post-credit sequence from Ant-Man, and now Jeremy Renner has accidentally confirmed a long-standing fan rumor during an appearance at a convention:
Well, if Hawkeye's on Cap's side, then that means Black Widow has to be on Iron Man's, seeing as we saw them fight in the D23 footage. Now all we need to know is which side the new Avengers are on. Like, Iron Man really needs some back-up, right? (Oh, and in case you're interested, the movie finished principal photography last week.)
Why this is super: Finally, fans can start setting up their action figures in the appropriate alignments ahead of the movie—well, the action figures they do have, given the well-reported problems that Marvel's movies seem to have with female heroes not getting action figures.
The soon-to-launch new Blade comic book won't focus on the vampire-hunting hero fans are familiar with, but his previously unrevealed daughter... and according to anonymous sources inside Marvel, the same will be true of the future Blade movie, which is apparently under discussion with Wesley Snipes, if this rumor is to be believed. (Snipes is 53 years old, so the idea of him having a teenage vampire slayer of a daughter isn't outside the realm of possibility.)
Why this is super: Just because Marvel has parted ways with Joss Whedon doesn't mean that it has to say goodbye to Whedon's ideas, it seems; Buffy caught the zeitgeist in the 1990s, so perhaps it's time for a revival of the teenage empowerment fantasy of girls killing sexual predators (sorry, I mean vampires)?
There's a couple of competing rumors about Henry Cavill's second solo Superman movie floating around, one of which is potentially very good news, and the other—well, let's file it under Not Very Good News at All. The good news is that Mad Max director George Miller is in line to direct the follow-up to Man of Steel... except that there's also a rumor suggesting that, while Miller might direct a DC movie, it won't be Man of Steel 2 because solo Superman movies are on hold right now.
Why this is super: If the Miller rumor turns out to be true, that would be amazing; after Fury Road, the idea of him doing any superhero movie is exciting, never mind one that could really benefit from his obvious joy of spectacle and color (no offense, Zack Snyder). That said, if Superman really is getting sidelined on the big screen, that's not a great sign for the future of the DC franchise as a whole.
It appears we now know who will steal the heart of Channing Tatum's cajun thief, with the news that Blue Is the Warmest Color and Spectre star Lea Seydoux has been offered the role of Belladonna Boudreaux, head of the assassin's guild and the hero's childhood sweetheart. She beat out competition including *Mad Max: Fury Road'*s Abbey Lee and Rebecca Ferguson of Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation to get the nod.
Why this is super: Seydoux is an amazing actress, but even more than that we now have a little more of a clue what Gambit might be about ... or, at least, which other characters it'll feature. Bad news for all those X-Fans who doubtlessly hoped that Rogue would show up as the love interest, but who knows? Maybe we'll get a soap operatic triangle on screen as well as in the comic books!
Now that Fantastic Four has become a byword for "superhero movie disaster," Max Landis has opened up about what he would've done with the property. "Avengers had just come out, and I wanted to present Fox's superhero team so that any one of them could beat all of the Avengers, and any one of them could be the villain of an Avengers movie," he told The Daily Beast. "I thought, what a cool idea, that these four friends have accidentally become gods." Elsewhere in his plans: a good guy Doctor Doom (going evil would be saved for the third movie, he said) and an "indestructible" Reed Richards. Since when was being stretchy a code for being indestructible?
Why this is super: OK, in theory, it sounds better than what we got onscreen, but ... well, even the Josh Trank movie sounds better when described than what you get onscreen. File under "unusual oddity," probably.
