The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Benedict Cumberbatch has joined the case of Spider-Man 3 reprising his role as Doctor Strange. However, they’re not clear when he’ll shoot his Spider-Man 3 scenes as Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness will begin shooting soon in London, while the Spidey sequel is expected to shoot in stateside in Atlanta, Georgia.
This is a crossover that really shouldn’t surprise fans as the two Steve Ditko superheroes have been interacting with each other and teaming up against villains for many decades in the pages of Marvel Comics.
I seemingly predicted the crossover news back in 2016 with this cheeky tweet stating a crossover would happen in 2020, I also do lottery numbers on request.
SPIDER-MAN's Tom Holland might be joining DOCTOR STRANGE's Benedict Cumberbatch in THE CURRENT WAR..I smell a crossover in 2020 pic.twitter.com/EkPCuYd5mm
There has been plenty of rumblings of Spider-Man 3 tackling The Multiverse/Spider-Verse after the casting news of Jamie Foxx reprising the Electro role and the addition of Doctor Strange into the mix would certainly support that narrative. The problem becomes does Marvel go all-in with focusing on various Multiverse characters/cameos or are getting a superhero film focused on an actual plot.
As THR points out there still seems to be a scheduling issue with the two competing Marvel sequels will productions filming in two different countries at the same time. It is possible that they shoot scenes when there is a break in their schedules or do them at a later date once both films shoot most of their scenes.
I’m slightly curious if Spider-Man will now show up in the Doctor Strange sequel as that could be when theses Spider-Man 3 scenes are shot. This could be exactly how Marvel Studios finishes out the recent contract with Sony Pictures as they get one more film with Holland’s Spider-Man before it expires again.
What could be happening is that Spider-Man 3 is part one of this big Multiverse cinematic event with Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness being the final climax, possibly the final time we see Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the MCU.
It would also give Sam Raimi another hot at directing Spider-Man again.
Jon Watts returns to direct with a release date of December 17th, 2021 (subject to change).
With filming for Thor: Love & Thunder expected to begin around January-February at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, we haven’t really had much of an update on the project until now.
While speaking with Yahoo! Life, franchise actress Natalie Portman briefly suggested that we might indeed be seeing Jane Foster’s going through cancer treatment in the film just like her comic book counterpart.
PORTMAN: “I can’t tell you that much. I’m really excited. I’m starting to train, to get muscles. If there can be all these female superheroes, the more of them they are, the better it is. I’m trying to think — it’s based on the graphic novel of the Mighty Thor. She’s going through cancer treatment and is a superhero on the side.”
Portman could be simply relaying plot points about the Mighty Thor story, but I don’t really see Marvel removing that important element of the hero.
It was announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 that Natalie Portman would be playing Lady Thor in the film giving her a strong reason to come back for the sequel and possibly allows her to play the Marvel Comics heroine for many years.
Having a superhero that is undergoing cancer treatment or is a cancer survivor can be extremely powerful to kids with cancer or in remission. I can speak from direct experience that kids really looked up to Deadpool when they discovered he has cancer in that first film.
I’m sure Chadwick Boseman, the man, will also have a huge impact on kids as well as an example of strength. In the wake of the revelation that actor Chadwick Boseman was secretly undergoing cancer treatment during the film of multiple films including Black Panther, it’s not that hard to imagine that a fictional character could juggle superhero duties while fighting cancer.
I’m sure fans will have opinions on this but I think if handled properly it could be an extremely powerful and important part of Marvel’s new direction of representation.
Joining Portman in the Thor sequel will be fellow cast members Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, and Christian Bale, the latter reportedly playing a villain.
Thor: Love & Thunder is expected to be released on February 11th, 2022, unless there are further delays or shifts with the Marvel slate.
While we’re still waiting on an official announcement concerning the fate of Deadpool 3 at Marvel Studios, Cabble actor Josh Brolin spoke to cinematographer Roger Deakins on his podcast Team Deakins (spotted by The Playlist) about the differences between working on Deadpool 2 in juxtapose to working with Marvel/The Russo Brothers on Avengers Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
BROLIN: “Deadpool was hard. Even though it was funny, it was harder. That was more of a business transaction, it was more, ‘We need to make this like this,’ which I didn’t feel that way with Avengers.”
“[The Russo Brothers] would constantly go back and reference Scarface or Dog Day Afternoon. Whether or not it was a manipulation, they knew what to throw out there to bring it back into something inspired.”
Josh’s comments here are terribly off-base as the Deadpool sequel underwent specific reshoots because producers/studio felt certain scenes didn’t test well and it’s possible that set had less of a creative environment than with The Russo Brothers.
There have been rumblings of Marvel considering a return for Brolin’s Thanos but that remains only rumor at this point. It’ll be interesting if they do end up moving forward with new Deadpool movies that if they’ll keep Brolin in the Nathan Summers aka Cable role as the only official carry-over from the Fox era is Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson.
Before the merger, the plan at 20th Century was to tackle an X-Force movie from writer/director Drew Goddard before a third solo installment.
Ryan confirmed back in December 2019 that Deadpool 3 was indeed in development at Marvel Studios but we really haven’t a solid update since.
Deadline reports that Canadian newcomer Iman Vellani has been hired by Marvel Studios to play the role of Kamala Khan in their Disney+ series Ms. Marvel.
Kamala Khan is a Pakistani-American Muslim teenager living in New Jersey, a Carol Danvers super-fan that discovers she has superpowers. In the comics she is part of The Inhumans and eventually joins the Young Avengers.
The show directors are said to include Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and Meera Menon. Bisha K. Ali is also writing the series.
There had been rumblings that filming could begin as early as November in Atlanta. However, filming will be heavily reliant on where the United States and Georgia will be concerning the second wave of COVID-19.
The Ms. Marvel role will lead to Iman making the jump the movies and most likely will appear in stuff like Captain Marvel 2.
Back In May, Murphy’s Multiverse had speculated that young actress Erin Kellyman (Solo: A Star Wars Story, The Green Knight) had taken an undisclosed role in the Marvel Studios series The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. That has now been officially confirmed thanks to a recent set photo from Atlanta, Georgia as the Star Wars actress (her name obviously misspelled in the IG post) can be seen working with Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s George St-Pierre, as he reprises the Batroc The Leaper role in the series.
Could Erin be playing Batroc’s young assassin/mercenary daughter Marie?
Erin is likely most notable for her role as Star Wars character Enfys Nest in Solo: A Star Wars Story and has a role in A24’s Arthurian fantasy film The Green Knight which still hasn’t been given a new release date.
The Ronin reported back in mid-August that The Falcon & The Winter Soldier would see it’s release delayed until sometime in 2021 after many were adamant that it could still make a 2020 release despite having a fair amount of filming to do. The delay tidbit has seemingly been confirmed by Disney+ as they’ve excluded the series from their 2020 lineup promo material and the official website lists a TBA 2021 release.
Hopefully, they won’t delay the series too long as many folks are really looking forward to getting their hands on it after the recent news that Black Widow’s release date has been pushed to May.
We’ve been excited to see what Marvel does with the Fox properties now that they have the film rights to fully explore both a Fantastic Four and X-Men after the merger between Disney and 21st Century Fox led to the rights heading over to Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios.
Marvel seemingly hasn’t decided on the main actors for the Fantastic Four reboot. Despite some recent evidence, they are moving forward with a film via LLC information spotted by Muprhy’s Multiverse that Solve Everything Productions LLC just might be Marvel getting their reboot of Fantastic Four ready.
The recent news that they’ve cast Jonathan Majors in the role of supervillain Kang The Conqueror or Ant-Man 3 (unconfirmed by Majors or Marvel) could suggest if they indeed make the villain a future relative of Reed Richards, as in the comics, that we could be seeing a black version of the iconic character.
This has led fans to suggest people such as Tenet’s John David Washington after he got endorsed for the Green Lantern role by director Christopher Nolan.
While speaking with Nerd Reactor, they asked him about playing Richards and Washington seems really open to the idea.
NR: I think Marvel is going to do a new Fantastic Four movie, so, let’s pretend I’m Kevin Feige I come up to you ‘What to be part of the Fantastic Four, maybe, Reed Richards the main lead’. Would you do it’?
WASHINGTON: Wow, I’d say ‘Well, thank you for having me, thank you for taking this meeting where do I sign?”
You can watch that exchange below.
There had been a massive fan campaign online to see real-life married couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt in the roles of Mr. Fantastic and Sue Storm respectively. However, that doesn’t to seem have come together as fans had hoped it would.
Honestly, I as long as they make a compelling story that has audiences finally caring about the Fantastic Four it really doesn’t matter who they end up picking for the roles as long as the character development is there and they can act. I’m optimistic about Marvel handling these characters as I had zero interest in the last three films from 20th Century Fox.
Ever since Marvel Studios got rights to mutants and the X-Men we’ve all be heavily anticipating when that could happen it is starting to feel like we’re getting extremely close to at least an introduction to mutants in the Marvel Cinematic Universe very soon.
Kevin Feige has previously stated that Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff will “truly become the Scarlet Witch” in her solo series WandaVision and the recent trailer has seemingly confirmed certain elements we all assumed would be explored in the show after the cosmic orgainzation S.W.O.R.D. will be introduced which is directly from the pages of the X-Men comics with folks like Dr. Hank McCoy aka Beast among the team.
In the comics, Wanda and her brother Quicksilver are the children of X-Men villain Magneto an origin element that has never been used in the MCU incarnations as the studio had shared use with 20th Century Fox at the time of Avengers: Age of Ultron but weren’t allowed to reference mutants or X-Men. Their powers were explained by HYDRA’s human experiments with Loki’s staff to create metahumans.
Mutants are normally born with a mutant gene that leads to their superpowers.
It’s been assumed for a long time that series would be a version of House of M storyline, where Wanda creates a new reality, this would explain why a very dead Vision can father twins (Speed and Wiccan) and why we don’t see them outside of this suburban neighborhood.
There was seemingly a direct nod to the comic run in the new trailer with a shot of a wine bottle called Maison du Mepris (House of Contempt), which could be seen as House of M nod from certain perspectives.
I’m also thinking the wine bottle is a nod to the 1963 French New Wave film from director Jean-Luc Godard titled Le Mépris aka Contempt.
LE MEPRIS – A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife (Brigitte Bardot).
The reference might have a double meaning and indicate a future rift between Wanda/Vision with the “House of Contempt” becoming the one they’re stuck in leading to friction. It’s also worth noting we still don’t have any indication that the series will introduce any mutants and if Monica Rambeau lands her powers in the series we don’t know if she’ll have mutant status.
Then again, Wanda could manifest mutant properties in people across the globe these are comic book stories after all.
There are likely more casting and character surprises on the way.
Kathryn Hahn is rumored to be playing legit witch Agatha Harkness, but Marvel has yet to make this official. If she is indeed playing Harkness as the witch costume would suggest, this could connect the character to large events in the Marvel universe’s past including the sinking of the Kingdom of Atlantis. This event is referred to in the comics as The Great Cataclysm and has direct ties to the Eternals. One version has a Celestial and the Deviants causing it. Another one in the Ultimate Universe suggests that Agatha had something to do with the fate of Atlantis.
I wouldn’t be shocked if S.W.O.R.D. is involved because Mephisto has a part to play with what is going on with Wanda and Vision, a cosmic entity that happens to be Marvel’s version of the devil and could be pulling the strings as he likes to torture various heroes. However, I’m not entirely sure why S.W.O.R.D. is doing there unless they believe that whatever is happen is somehow alien related and it very well could be.
Chloe Zhoa’s Eternals seems like another perfect oppurtunity to give audiences a new version of the mutants via the mutant gene that inserted into humanity via Celesitials, who are a third offshoot of Eternals and Deviants. It is established in the comics Harkness has been on Earth for a long time and was kicking around during The Great Cataclysm, 20,000 years in the past and would have likely had run ins with Eternals and Celesitials given her age/powers in the comics.
Harkness given her age making her either mutant or an eternal herself wouldn’t be shocking. I don’t think it would take much of a leap to connect her to Kit Harington’s Dane Whitman aka Black Knight either given his connection sorcery and witchcraft.
An Atlantis connection via WandaVision or Eternals could help usher in mutants in another way beyond Scarlet Witch’s powers and The Multiverse.
It’s been established that Namor McKenzie aka The Sub-Mariner is the first mutant concerning Marvel’s publication history as he predates the X-Men as one of the very first legacy superheroes with mutant abilities and there was even a run in 2011 titled Namor: The First Mutant. That same year he joined the X-Men during events like Avengers vs X-Men and was recently seen in X-Men Red.
While they made sure to separate his mutant abilities like flying from his Atlantean power-set, there is a chance that Marvel alters that for the MCU version. In the 1960s, Professor Xavier and Magneto tried to recruit him into their various mutant factions and only recently has joined their ranks.
Namor is an extremely important crossover character with connections to the Fantastic Four, The Illuminati, and Agents of Atlas led by Randall Park’s Jimmy Woo with his cousin Namora on the team. He also teamed up with Hulk, Doctor Strange, Valkyrie, and others on the original version of The Defenders.
There had been some teases from director Scott Derrickson on Twitter that Namor could be part of his sequel Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, but that element hinted to may not have survived the development process or the final version that Sam Raimi makes. Then again, Harkness in WandaVision and Eternals both covering Atlantis could help establish Namor beforehand.
Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi is part of the Agents of Atlas which could be another entry point to introduce Atlantis, Namor, and Namora into the MCU. There are already unconfirmed rumors that Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings will include a mutant character.
It’s still pretty damn neat we’re getting the mutants in the Marvel Cinematic Universe even if we have to wait a couple more years before the main X-Men team gets a proper reboot. However, it’s still not cut-and-dry when we’ll start seeing recognizable mutant characters but I’m eager to find out.
While speaking with Forbes, Loki actress Gugu Mbatha Raw revealed that the cast of the Marvel Studios series have returned to work in Atlanta, Georgia to resume production and talked about what she’s been up to since the pandemic paused production earlier in the year.
MBATHA-RAW: “I was in the middle of filming when the pandemic happened, so I had a real break, I’ve been painting and reading. Like so many others, I was at home for a long time. Not to make light of the suffering going on, but in some ways, it has been an opportunity for me to get a fresh perspective on things. It is downtime that perhaps I might not have had, and now I’m thankful to be back to work. It’s been a journey for everyone, but it’s all for a greater reason and the greater good.”
“I’m obviously sworn to secrecy about everything to do with Loki, but it feels great to be back. Everyone is trying to do it as safely as possible under the circumstances, and it feels good. I’m excited. It’s a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to see it.”
The series will explore the Multiverse and is expected to help establish characters/plot points for upcoming films like Thor: The Dark World and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness.
The Falcon & The Winter Soldier has officially returned to Atlanta for filming as there are a bunch of set photos to prove it.
Loki is still expected to begin airing sometime in 2021.
It was announced yesterday by WarnerMedia that James Gunn would write an eight-episode Peacemaker series for HBO Max based on the DC Comics character played by John Cena, which will be first seen in The Suicide Squad.
Oh f*ck, it’s Peacemaker! HBO Max is set to explore the origins of the Peacemaker character, the master of weapons from the highly anticipated upcoming The Suicide Squad film, in the new Max Original action-adventure-comedy series Peacemaker. HBO Max has given a straight-to-series order of eight episodes for the first season of the show. John Cena will reprise his role from The Suicide Squad movie to star in the series, and the film’s acclaimed writer/director James Gunn will write all eight episodes of Peacemaker and will direct multiple episodes, including the first. Gunn and The Suicide Squad producer Peter Safran will serve as executive producers of the series, with Cena as co-executive producer. Based on characters from DC, Peacemaker will be produced by Gunn’s Troll Court Entertainment and The Safran Company in association with Warner Bros. Television. Peacemaker is scheduled to begin production in early 2021, prior to Gunn beginning work on the next Guardians of the Galaxy film.
James has responded to fan concerns on Twitter that Peacekeeper could lead to further delays to Guardians of The Galaxy 3 because he’s set to direct multiple episodes next year.
GUNN: “I’m doing Peacemaker in the time always allotted between The Suicide and Guardians of Galaxy Volume 3. Normally I would have been taking more of a break in this space but it’s Covid, I’m stuck at home, so I wrote a TV series.”
The Suicide Squad will be released on August 6th, 2021 and James wouldn’t likely be able to begin shooting the Guardians sequel until the promotional tour completes.
Ms. Marvel has finally landed a group of directors!
The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah, Oscar-winning short director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Saving Face, A Girl In The River: The Price of Forgiveness), and Meera Menon (The Walking Dead, The Punisher, Titans) will helm episodes of Marvel Studios’ new superhero series Ms. Marvel.
The Direct first reported that Bad Boys For Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah were in the mix for the Marvel Studios show.
The series will follow Pakistani-American teenager Kamala Khan living in New Jersey as she navigates newly acquired superpowers. She happens to be part of The Inhumans in the comic books and there have been plenty of speculation this could lead to a reboot of that wave of characters after a disastrous series run on ABC.
Kamala recently got a boost in the realm of pop-culture thanks to the new video game Marvel’s Avengers, which has her as a playable character and part of the game’s story.
This is excellent news as it seems like Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, and She-Hulk are all getting ready to go soon in Atlanta.
Hopefully, they’ll be able to announce who has been cast as Kamala very soon.
There is a good chance that we could see Kamala Khan join the ranks of Avengers/Young Avengers along with possibly making her big screen debut in stuff like Captain Marvel 2, given how attached the character is to Carol Danvers in the comics.
THE RONIN 