Author: Simon Andrews

It’s been a funny old year for DC Studios. But then in a sense, it was always going to be. The studio was finally going head to head with their arch-rivals over at Marvel after years of mapping out their answer to the MCU, and having repeatedly avoided any direct summer-blockbuster confrontation. The selection of ‘Suicide Squad’ as a follow-up to ‘BvS’ raised some eyebrows, and then the critical reaction to Zack Snyder’s creative vision of the DCCU itself caused a whole shitstorm of controversy. Love it, or loathe it, there’s no denying that BvS has proven one of the…

The sketchy boundaries that separate Marvel’s TV and Movie productions are a constant frustration for fans. Whilst the two properties are clearly linked by the major events that take place within the MCU, only a small number of characters have been given the opportunity to cross the gap between the two environments, with studio politics reluctant to actually allow the two sets of characters inhabit the same space following the onscreen demise of Phil Coulson in ‘Avengers Assemble’. It seems that Easter eggs in the form of TV reports and newspaper articles is perfectly acceptable, but having Tony Stark chatting…

Filming has now officially commenced on ‘Thor:Ragnarok’, and Chris Hemsworth has released a set photo online showcasing a new updated version of Thor’s legendary hammer, Mjolnir. Well. Kind of… Hemsworth’s notorious for being an on-set joker, and the fact that Kiwi director Taika Waititi comes from a comedic background has probably only spurred him on. Whilst the picture is clearly a spoof, showing somebody holding an everyday household hammer, it’s the tagline added by Hemsworth that intrigues: #Thor3, expect big and little changes @taikawaititi A photo posted by Chris Hemsworth (@chrishemsworth) on Jul 6, 2016 at 1:46pm PDT Does this…

Amidst the unending tidal wave of this year’s Marvel and DC casting announcements, it’s entirely possible you might have missed a couple of slightly ‘off the wall’ ones that have come from the other studios, and herald the return of some properly ‘old-school’ superheroes. The first of these was that ‘Mr Franchise Viagra’ himself, Dwayne Johnson, has signed on to play Doc Savage AKA ‘The Man Of Bronze’. That’s a relatively straightforward decision. Johnson’s done more than his fair share of bare-chested heroics in his time, and his casting as an indestructible adventurer is all quite logical. The second, well,…

If there’s one thing that the comic-book industry loves, it’s the idea of an alternate universe. Both Marvel and DC have run some of their most successfully storylines on the back of the idea that there are an infinite number of parallel universes that neighbor our own, where Earth’s greatest and mightiest heroes are still in existence but differ slightly to their mainstream versions in a variety of intriguing and often somewhat controversial ways. Alongside this, Hollywood’s own history is littered with the stories of films that ‘might have been’ and actors who ‘nearly made it’, but not for the…

Everybody knows what a ‘Hero’ is, right? By their very nature, they’re people that do what’s right and proper, and in doing so they display ‘heroic’ traits. You know the kind of thing? Honesty. Idealism. Courage. Morality. Generic hero stuff. But the pages of comic books are also populated with another group of people that do what’s considered ‘the right thing’. Only these people aren’t quite as idealistic or virtuous as their heroic counterparts. More often than not, due to a variety of reasons, these protagonists are quite flawed in some way, maybe even displaying all the traits of somebody…

There’s any number of ingredients that come together to make each individual Marvel film a thing of brilliance. Movie after movie, in quick succession, the company has built an Expanded Universe which is simply like no other in the industry. It’s the benchmark. The one to aspire to. The reason that DC executives have trouble sleeping at night… The most obvious strengths in each of the movies are in the slick script treatments and the inspired casting decisions that come about at their outset. The franchise has an innate skill in creating acting pair-ups and performances that easily overshadow and…

You could be forgiven for not having heard of Scott Adkins, but the chances are you’ve probably already seen him on screen, and might not even realize it. Heralding from the West Midlands over in the UK, the fighter-turned-actor already has an impressive CV of work under his belt, and has gone on to notch up big budget appearances in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, ‘The Expendables 2’ ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ and more recently ‘Grimsby’. The imposing Midlander also famously screen-tested for the role of Batman, losing out to fellow Brit actor Christian Bale, but it’s his role as another superhero that…

Superhero Teams are a safer way for studios to take weaker or more outlandish characters from a franchise, and develop/test them to a point where a final decision can then be made on how to ultimately employ them in the larger vision for the project. The way teams have been used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a case in point. They took the non-powered members Black Widow and Hawkeye, who weren’t considered strong enough for a solo movie, and developed them over multiple pictures to a stage where they could now both support a solo project. They also took…

Why we all need to stop worrying about ‘Rogue One’… Well. That’s it then. The internet’s gone and decided. The first Star-Wars prequel, ‘Rogue One’, is officially doomed. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, and Disney ain’t happy about it…. Which is a little on the unexpected side, and certainly very different to any feedback that the project has been receiving up until this point. So what’s going on? Well, according to a number of online news sites, audience reactions to test screenings of the movie have been poor, which has lead to Disney ordering four weeks of reshoots. They…