Kicking off today’s roundup are some pictures gathered by The Media Club showing off the set of Captain America: The First Avenger taken in Bourne Woods in Farnham, Surrey. I’ve included two of the images directly above, but you can get all three in higher resolution right here.
Remaining with the superhero news angle, it seems like every other day there is a new cast member joining X-Men: First Class. Today, I have four more names to add to the list (well, three considering one is a replacement).
First, 10-year-old actress Morgan Lily (right) is on board as the younger version of Jennifer Lawrence’s (Winter’s Bone) Mystique. If you remember, Mystique (played by Rebecca Romijn) mentioned in Bryan Singer’s first X-Men movie she was afraid to go to school as a child, so it appears this scenario could be brought to fruition in First Class. You’ll probably remember Lily as John Cusack’s daughter from 2012 if you had the displeasure of enduring that cinematic test of attrition.
Additionally, January Jones (right), or perhaps as many now know her, Betty Draper from TV’s “Mad Men”, is stepping into the shoes of Emma Frost, a role previously assumed to have gone to Alice Eve (She’s Out of My League). This means Eve has now lost out on two superhero roles after Hayley Atwell secured the role of Peggy Carter in The First Avenger: Captain America in a casting decision reported to have been between Atwell, Eve and Keira Knightley.
And finally, Zoe Kravitz (Assassination of a High School President) has been cast as Angel and Bill Milner (Son of Rambow) will play a young Magneto as the adult version of the character will be portrayed by Michael Fassbender. With all that said, here is the massive casting breakdown for the film thus far, which is currently set for a June 3, 2011 release under the direction of Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass):
- James McAvoy – Professor Charles Xavier
- Michael Fassbender – Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto/li>
- Bill Milner – Young Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto
- Nicholas Hoult – Hank McCoy / Beast
- Caleb Landry Jones – Sean Cassidy / Banshee
- Lucas Till – Alex Summers / Havok
- Kevin Bacon – Sebastian Shaw (rumored)
- Jennifer Lawrence – Raven Darkholme / Mystique
- Morgan Lily – Young Raven Darkholme / Mystique
- Edi Gathegi РArmando Mu̱oz / Darwin
- Jason Flemyng – Azazel
- Oliver Platt – The Man in Black
- Rose Byrne – Moira MacTaggert
- January Jones – Emma Frost
- Zoe Kravitz – Angel
You got all that?
I reported a few weeks ago that Karl Urban (Star Trek) would be offered the lead in a new Judge Dredd movie. Well, rumors have proven to be true as producers Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich have confirmed just that through Empire. They’re shooting for a “very hard, R-rated, gritty, realistic” adaptation in the reboot with Vantage Point director Pete Travis at the helm. They also say their Dredd is not going to take off his helmet. As for Urban himself, he’ll next be seen hunting down Bruce Willis and company in the CIA action/comedy Red.
As reported here yesterday, Rooney Mara (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Social Network) is locked and loaded to play the lead in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Variety‘s Tatiana Siegel is reporting this move was not made without extensive argumentation and debate between Fincher and Columbia Pictures as the studio wasn’t convinced that Mara was perfect casting, but Fincher ultimately prevailed in getting his preferred choice to play the titular computer hacker.
Another item of note on the Dragon Tattoo front is that Columbia is in talks with Max on Sydow to play Henrik Vanger, the man who seeks out Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and Lisbeth Salander (Mara) to investigate the 40-year-old unsolved murder of his niece.
In the mood for some drama? You’ll love this next story as Sony is accusing the producers of Skyline (trailer to the right) of ripping off equipment and ideas from their similar-themed movie Battle: Los Angeles. Both movies focus on an alien version in – you guessed it – L.A., but Skyline is being made for just a fifth of the cost of the $100 million Sony blockbuster. Skyline‘s November 12, 2010 release date also precedes the Battle release by four months. The same company, Hydraulx, is producing Skyline and doing special effects for Battle but Hydraulx co-founder and Skyline co-director Greg Strause is of course denying Sony’s claims. Strause said Sony is making these claims in an attempt to force Hydraulx to delay the release date of Skyline until after the March 2011 launch date of their Battle and that Sony feels threatened by their ability to make movies at a fraction of the cost of a major studio blockbuster. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months. [The Wrap]
Speaking of big-budget alien invasions, Brooklyn Decker has joined the cast of Universal’s reported $200 million Battleship alongside the previously announced Taylor Kitsch (Wolverine), Alexander Skarsgard (“True Blood”), Rihanna and Tom Arnold. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model and budding actress was briefly considered to replace Megan Fox in Transformers 3 and will be seen in next year’s romantic comedy Just Go With It with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.
To wrap it up, here’s a pretty interesting quote from James Cameron, speaking to ComingSoon.net on his recent Blu-Ray remaster of Aliens as part of the Alien Anthology scheduled for an October 26 release:
“It’s spectacular. We went in and completely de-noised it, de-grained it, up-rezzed, color-corrected every frame, and it looks amazing. It looks better that it looked in the theaters originally. Because it was shot on a high-speed negative that was a new negative that didn’t pan out too well and got replaced the following year. So it’s pretty grainy. We got rid of all the grain. It’s sharper and clearer and more beautiful than it’s ever looked. And we did that to the long version, to the ‘director’s cut’ or the extended play.”
But Mr. Cameron… what if I like a little grain with my 1980s sci-fi? I guess I’m S.O.L. on this one.
