Jason Todd may not be too worried about what his nether regions look like in costume but actor Andrew Garfield certainly gave it a lot of thought when he took on the role of Spider-Man in Marvel’s latest film.

It seems with great package comes great responsibility when talking about how to deal with the male crotch in superhero film. Entertainment Weekly (who were the ones who brought the actor’s parts up at Comic-Con) writes, “When asked if there were long conversations about whether to err on the side of being too Ken-doll androgynous vs. too bulbously revealing (especially since the film is in 3-D!), Garfield laughed and blushed.”

“Um, yeah, there are long discussions about this stuff,” Garfield said. “There has to be because it’s got to be handled with sensitivity. It has to be non-offensive, which takes some tools.”

Garfield told THR that he and director Marc Webb were cautious about this. ”I don’t think it should be the main attraction of the costume.” he said. “I don’t think it should be what people are focusing on.”

Besides dealing with his Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Wang, Garfield wanted to focus on how to actually move in the costume. For this, he studied of Muhammad Ali and soccer star Ronaldo, as well as the 2008 documentary Man on Wire. “The non-fiction account of tight-rope walker/daredevil Philippe Petit, who snuck up to the top of New York’s World Trade Center in 1974 and crossed on a rope from one building to the other,” wrote THR.

“Man on Wire was something I wanted to capture in playing Spider-Man,” said Garfield. “The feeling that it gave me of this human being giving something so spectacular and hopeful and magical to a mass of people for nothing other than generosity.”

The Amazing Spider-Man (and his Spider-Wang) swing into theaters July 3, 2012.

I’m usually one to avoid spoilers if I can help it but for some reason I click on anything and everything The Dark Knight Rises related lately. This video is a behind-the-scenes look at a fight between Christian Bale’s Batman and Tom Hardy’s Bane, rehearsal and shooting, so if want to go into the film fresh, don’t watch.  (more…)

GK Films has picked up the rights to Image Comics’ The Vault by Sam Sarkar and Garrie Gastony, the first issue of which, just hit stores last week.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “The underwater sci-fi story centers on a group of divers who, off the coast of Nov Scotia, uncover a sarcophagus with unusual remains and inadvertently unleash an ancient evil.” They also mention that Sarkar and Gastonny previously created the supernatural Western graphic novel Calberfor Radical Publishing.

Johnny Depp and his production company, Infinite Nihil’s, president Christi Dembrowski will produce the adaptation along with GK’s Graham King and Tim Headington.

Anyone pick this up last week? It’s apparently only a three issue series so it will be interested to see how it’s adapted.

We may have little, shy of a teaser trailer and some production shots, from The Amazing Spider-Man, due in theaters in 2012, but the sequel is already underway, with a release date announced by Sony Pictures today.

May 2, 2014, less than two years after the July 3, 2012 release date of the first film, is the tentative release for the sequel.

Now that we’ve looked 3 years in the future, let’s all take a step back and let the first Marc Webb directed, Andrew Garfield starring film come out first, shall we?

Now that the first image of British actor Henry Cavill as Superman has been released (and dissected by the internet), the star can share his own thoughts on the famous costume and the work it involves.

“They just put it on, I turned around and look in the mirror and you can’t really play it cool – you sort of guffaw and laugh. I thought ‘OK, holy hell, this is real, it’s not a joke anymore. This is it…you’re doing it, you’re right in the middle of it,’” Cavill told TotalFilm.com. He also said wearing the costume is “extremely cool” and, “There’s no other feeling like it.”

Being in the iconic suit requires a certain degree of physical fitness to say the least and the actor, who also stars in the upcoming Immortals, has had to stay quite toned for a while thanks to the back-to-back roles. Speaking to Newsarama a few months ago, Cavill said, “Biggest challenge on [Immortals] was maintaining the physical shape because it was extraordinary difficult with the hours we had and like I said, fourteen hours minimum with a half hour lunch and you can’t eat that much and you’re in every day. There’s no time to sit back and relax and settle and then have your recovery day and have to go back in. It was nonstop brutal.”

Since this was before filming started on Man of Steel, he also looked to the future, “I think on Superman it will be slightly different because I’ve approached it with the experience of Immortals and I’ve said, ‘Look, guys, I’m going to need recovery time and I’m going to need this, I’m going to need that, if possible, please, please.’”

For his role as Superman, Cavill told TotalFilm, “I’m on 5000 calories a day… You’ve got to eat protein first, then a little bit of carbs…you’ve gotta keep your hunger levels going. I’m training two and a half hours a day, pushing my body beyond its normal limits, putting on a lot of muscle mass and just making myself look like Superman.”

When speaking to Newsarama about taking on such a famous character Cavill said, “I think the most difficult thing with Superman is going to be making everyone…doing a true justice to the role while reimagining it.” The actor couldn’t give any plot details at that time or now to TotalFilm but did say that he’s focusing on “being as true as I can be to the original character and who the character is.”

The fact that a British man was going to play an American superhero ruffled a few feathers but Cavill told TotalFilm, “I’m very proud to be British and playing an iconic American superhero…it means I’m doing something right somewhere.” When speaking to Newsarama he said, “Superman is, I think these days he’s such a universal idea. And yes, he was raised in America as a character but I don’t think the Brits see it any different, they see him as the coolest, biggest and best superhero out there.”

Man Of Steel is set to hit theaters in June 14, 2013.

Entertainment Weekly has the exclusive, actor Laurence Fishburne has been cast as Perry White in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.

Needless to say, this is going to be a hot button topic. “White has traditionally been a hard-charging, old fashioned newspaperman, who relies on his ace reporters, Clark and Lois, to get the big scoop,” said EW. The news comes less than a day after Marvel announced their new, non-traditional casting for Ultimate Spider-Man in the comics (Read that spoiler here).

EW writes, “The casting resolves the question of what Laurence would be up to following his departure this May from CBS’ long-running CSI after just over two seasons.” White has previously been played by Jackie Cooper, Frank Langella and Lane Smith just to name a few. Fishburne joins actors Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe and Julia Ormond already cast in the new Superman film, Man of Steel, which starts shooting in the fall and is scheduled for a June 14, 2013 release.

So Superman fans, how does this casting sit with you? Can you see Perry White as anything but a graying, white man? I’m kind of liking this idea.

Does the date February 16, 2007 bring back any fond memories for you? Wrangling up a group of friends, heading to the cinema, sitting down with popcorn in hand, and watching an opening night screening of Ghost Rider? Well, we’ve got your plans for the five-year anniversary of that auspicious occasion: Deadline reports that sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance has an official release date of February 17, 2012, a half-decade since the debut of the original film, almost to the day. I actually think that date was set for a while, but now it’s officially official. Nicolas Cage is returning as the title character, but the rest of the cast and crew are pretty much all new.

There aren’t a lot of promotional images out there for the movie yet, but here’s a bike prop that was on display at Comic-Con:

Cully Hamner compares the opening of RED the comic (which he illustrated, from a Warren Ellis story) to RED the movie:

The most overt thing that survived the translation was the opening scene featuring Bruce Willis’ retired agent character, Frank Moses (Paul Moses in the comic). Now, the beats of the sequence survive: Moses is alone and lonely, marking time in his retirement, when he is suddenly attacked by what’s called a “wet team”—assassins who expect to get bloody. Moses dispatches them like the professional killer he’s always been, gathers supplies, and escapes into the night to…

What, exactly? In our comic, it’s simply to exact revenge, which Moses does with cold efficiency before finally committing what is essentially suicide. In the movie, it’s to protect the woman he loves, reassemble his old team, and discover the reason for the attack. These are wildly different results from what is essentially the same scene.

But let’s look at that opening scene again. As I said, the beats are all still there, but the subtext is very different.

It’s interesting to me to see creators talk about movies based on their work that end up so different from what they’d originally created; this is a (too) short piece, but worth taking a look at – Now, if only we could get a series of these for movies like A History of Violence, Whiteout and so on…

Marvel Studios are on a speeding bullet train it seems. Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger have done well at the box office and footage from The Avengers seems to indicate the trend will last. Now it looks as if Marvel is turning their gaze to the Sorcerer Supreme – Doctor Strange.

According to the website Twitch, the writing team of Joshua Oppenheimer and Thomas Donnelly have turned in a Doctor Strange script and Marvel is going forward with the property. “Marvel has drafted a short list of directors to approach on the title and is forwarding the current script to each to try and sign someone up to ‘oversee continued development,’” writes Twitch.

Oppenheimer and Donnelly previously worked on the Conan reboot, soon to hit theaters, Dylan Dog and Cowboys and Aliens. A good chunk of Marvel’s main hero properties have been utilized at this point and while there’s been a great deal of science-fiction involved with those properties, fantasy for the most part has been steered clear of. Was Doctor Strange really the next natural choice or would it have been a bolder move for Marvel to give one of their heroines a solo shot?

This early in the game nothing is certain but there is one bit of information that may lead us to believe this Doctor Strange movie will happen, Strange’s Orb of Agamotto was one of the artifacts seen in Odin’s vault in Thor. With Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 scheduled for release in 2013 it seems unlikely we’d see this one for a while.

The Internet is bursting at the seams with pictures of Batman (Christian Bale) and Bane (Tom Hardy) fighting it out in an outdoor shoot of The Dark Knight Rises over the weekend, taking place at the movie’s current location of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — specifically the Mellon Institute building, subbing for Gotham on this occasion.

As you can tell, there’s plenty of clear looks of Hardy as Bane (click on any image to enlarge it):

We’ve got a few more photos after the jump, and if you want to check out dozens of them (including a couple who apparently just got married across the street and got to check up the Tumbler up close), click on over to Getty Images. The Dark Knight Rises is in theaters on July 20, 2012.

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New Jersey native Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts comic strip has been picked up by 20th Century Fox to be made into a feature film.

The Hollywood Reporter says McDonnell and his brother Robert will write the script with Patrick also serving as executive producer. If you aren’t familiar, Mutts is a daily syndicated comic strip that began in 1994 and runs in newspapers across the country. It’s about a dog and cat duo, Earl and Mooch, and their daily adventures that occasionally feature their elderly owners or other animals (plus Little Pink Socks!). McDonnell also champions many animal-related welfare causes like adoption and endangered species. There’s even Animal Friendly license plates with the Mutts characters here in NJ.

“Fox has had success in the comics-to-movie genre before,” writes THR, “The studio made two films based on the popular Garfield comic strip that grossed nearly $350 million combined worldwide. The Mutts project was brought in by Fox Animation executive Ralph Millero.”

Here’s  hoping the film is made with classic animation, which would better compliment McDonnell’s style, rather than the Garfield CGI route. Regardless, this is awesome news for me, I love Mutts and it’s nice to see a fellow New Jersyite get the attention he so deserves.

Good news for Marvel: Opening a superhero movie during Comic-Con doesn’t turn out to be a bad idea at all – The first midnight screenings of Captain America: The First Avenger made $4 million last night, which (as Deadline Hollywood points out) is more than Thor, X-Men: First Class and Green Lantern managed for their midnight debuts. So much for so for those suggesting that a superhero movie slump is around the corner.

Harry Potter is on a roll. Not content with finally vanquishing He Who Shall Not Be Named in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, JK Rowling’s boy wizard yesterday also defeated Darth Vader, as the Potter movie franchise overtook Star Wars to become the most successful movie franchise of all time.

According to Box Office Mojo, by Wednesday the Potter series had grossed a total of $2.223 billion, beating out Star Wars‘ $2.218 billion. The two franchises are the only two movie series to have passed the $2 billion mark, although both Batman and James Bond would get there once adjusted for inflation (Although, considering the latter has had 22 movies to date, that’s not necessarily such an impressive feat for Britain’s most famous secret agent).

The final Potter is continuing to dominate the box office, becoming the fastest-grossing entry in the series, and having broken The Dark Knight‘s record for the highest four-day opening in cinema history.

Keep looking up in the sky – but not for awhile. Variety is reporting that Warner Bros. has moved the release date of Man of Steel, the next Superman movie, from an unscheduled December 2012 date to summer 2013: June 14th, 2013, to be exact.

This is potentially good news for the movie, to be directed by Watchmen‘s Zack Snyder from a script by The Dark Knight‘s David Goyer (That latter movie’s director, Christopher Nolan, is acting as executive producer on MoS), as it seemingly makes the movie Warners’ big summer tentpole of the year, suggesting that the execs are feeling confident about what they’ve seen so far. It also means that it’ll be going up against Disney/Pixar’s Monsters University (the sequel to Monsters, Inc.) and the Ryan Reynolds-starring adaptation of Dark Horse’s RIPD, both already announced for summer 2013 releases. It’ll be interesting to see if it’ll be the only DC superhero movie to hit screens that summer, considering both Green Lantern 2 and The Flash are in development as we speak…

After showing up and disappearing in short order yesterday, the first trailer for 2012′s Amazing Spider-Man looks to be released on board via Movie-List and here for good. Watch below:

While we won’t have the video embedded for you here (sorry, but it’s disappearing just as quickly as it shows up), the Amazing Spider-Man teaser that is likely to premiere at the SDCC panel for the movie later this week has leaked online.

The big focal points for the teaser are a slightly darker tone to the story, Peter being a bit more of a loner by choice, and that crazy POV sequence at the end. Whether the movie itself will ever show us what it looks like being inside the Spider-Man mask, the teaser nailed the effect, and has people talking.

The teaser can currently be found on What Would Tyler Durden Do, but no guarantees, folks. When the real-deal gets released later this week, we’ll have it here for you asap.

Perhaps you’ve seen a bootleg version of this, quickly removed without a trace after Warner Bros. released the hounds on YouTube pirates. But hey: this is the official, above-board teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, the last installment of the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman trilogy. Watch below now, wish that summer 2012 wasn’t so far away later:

The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine, and is scheduled for release on July 20, 2012.

This is a teaser trailer for 2012′s The Avengers. Watch at your own risk — as I viewed the clip, all I could think to myself was how cool it would be if I saw it for the first time in a theater, instead of a shaky fancam YouTube clip — and read on after the jump for some more potential fun-ruining details. (Pro tip: only click “read the rest of the entry” if you want to deprive yourself of an awesome surprise.)

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The Boy Wizard overtook the Dark Knight over the weekend to become the highest grossing weekend film opening of all time with $168.8 million dollars in ticket sales in the North America alone. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 made a whopping $476 million worldwide.

Deathly Hallows Part 2′s $168.8 million easily overtook the previous record holder, 2008′s The Dark Knight’s $158.4 million, over the weekend. It also beat Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides from earlier this year which at the time held the biggest debut at the international box office when it made $262 million.

Warner Bros. Pictures President of Domestic Distribution, Dan Fellman said in a statement, “These numbers are amazing, but they are only part of the story. It is impossible to quantify how thrilled and grateful we all are that both critics and audiences — especially loyal Harry Potter fans — continue to support the film. This is the culmination of an extraordinary decade, and a reflection of the hard work and dedication of many, many people on both sides of the camera, beginning with the brilliant J.K. Rowling, as well as producer David Heyman. We applaud them all.”

President of International Distribution, Veronika Kwan-Rubinek said, “Harry Potter is truly a cultural phenomenon the world over. Whether in German, French, Japanese, Russian, or any language, international audiences have embraced the Harry Potter films over the years, with the powerful finale punctuating just how special the property is.”

The fellow Warner Bros. franchises shared the screen over the weekend as well. The first teaser for The Dark Knight Rises played before Deathly Hallows Part 2.

Archaia’s forthcoming graphic novel, Rust: Visitor in the Field, has been acquired by 20th Century Fox to be adapted into a film.

The book, set to be released this September, was written and illustrated by Royden Lepp. From Archaia: “Rust is a high-octane adventure set in the prairie lands of an unknown time. Life on the Taylor family farm was difficult enough before Jet Jones crashes into the barn, chased by a giant decommissioned war robot! Oldest son Roman Taylor struggles to keep his family’s small farm afloat as the area heals from a devastating world war. While the rest of his family may not trust the mysterious boy with the jetpack, Roman believes the secrets of Jet’s past may be the key to their survival.”

Deadline reports writer Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) will handle script duties while Simon Kinberg (X-Men: First Class) and Archaia’s own Editor-In-Chief Stephen Christy will produce. Some very nice news for Archaia to walk into San Diego Comic-Con with next week to be sure. Congrats to them!