Loki’s second season feels like the MCU making a valiant attempt at getting its multiverse together.
Andrew Webster was a big fan of the black-and-white Disney Plus special when it came out last year, and on October 20th, it’s getting a color version on the streaming service.
According to director Michael Giacchino, the new color version will “pay homage” to the vibrant color in horror movies from Hammer. Should be a fun treat for Halloween.
In yet another sign that the workers behind some of Hollywood’s biggest movies are ready to fight to be paid what they’re owed, Marvel Studios’ VFX artists have unanimously voted in favor of forming a union under the IATSE.
For the most part, Loki’s first season saw the Asgardian god of mischief fending for himself while bopping from one universe to another. But the show’s latest trailer makes it seem like Loki, Sylvie, Mobius, and the rest of the TVA gang are going to be spending a lot more time together as they face off against Kang the Conqueror.
Marvel’s new running app — Marvel Move — is now available. It’s made in partnership with Six to Start, or the folks behind Zombies, Run! Basically, you get to listen to audio stories featuring Marvel heroes (and you) as you run. It’s sort of like a mix between a podcast and an interactive game.
I haven’t gotten a chance to try it out for myself yet, but I’ll probably check out the 5K Asgard training with Thor and Loki. I’m curious to see how well it works — especially since Zombies, Run! is how I started running a decade ago. If you want to learn more, I got a chance to speak with Adrian Hon, Six to Start’s CEO and co-founder, back when the app was announced.
Or maybe you’ve skipped a few. Either way, there’s an upcoming coffee table book from Disney / Marvel and DK Publishing to catch you up: Marvel Studios The Marvel Cinematic Universe An Official Timeline.
As we move through Phase 5 and onto Phase 6, the book promises “exclusive infographics, illuminating timelines, and amazing movie stills.” It ships October 24th from Amazon in both hardcover ($45) or Kindle editions ($19.99), Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or Books-A-Million.
Note: If you buy something from these links, we might get affiliate revenue.
and wondered how an unlicensed two hour film could exist when even Disney had to negotiate with Sony to use the character in films. Sony, Disney, and Marvel are all very protective of the character so it’s a surprise to see this film still live. It’s also super unusual to see a fan film of this scope outside of the Star Trek fan film community, especially as the last time a Star Trek fan film attempted a project of this high a production quality level Paramount sued the creator.
Spider-Man: Lotus’s other major problem is it was funded by a non-profit more than two years ago and immediately faced challenges after the VFX team quit due to racist remarks previously made, separately, by the lead actor and the director.
[Yahoo Entertainment]
In a move highlighted by Hollywood’s ongoing strikes and reports of unsustainable working conditions during the production of Across the Spider-Verse, a supermajority of the more than 50 people in Marvel Studios’ visual effects crews signed cards saying they want to be represented by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).
Vulture reports they’re seeking an election as soon as August 21st.
For almost half a century, workers in the visual effects industry have been denied the same protections and benefits their coworkers and crewmates have relied upon since the beginning of the Hollywood film industry. This is a historic first step for VFX workers coming together with a collective voice demanding respect for the work we do.
The AMPTP’s refusal to meet the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild where they are is why Hollywood’s double labor strike is still on, and the double strike is part of why Sony took Beyond the Spider-Verse off its schedule of movies set to premiere next year.
There’s still no word on when Beyond the Spider-Verse will hit theaters. But in the meantime, Sony and IGN have shared the first 10 minutes of Across the Spider-Verse — presumably to tide folks over.
With no movement on resolving Hollywood’s strikes by actors and writers, the third animated Spider-Man movie, Beyond the Spider-Verse is going from March 29th, 2024 (a date now filled by the sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife) to entirely unscheduled.
Gran Turismo will have a “sneak peek” launch on its previously scheduled August 11th date, but plans for more showings have been pushed back to the 25th.
Kraven the Hunter was set for October 6th and has been pushed back to August 30th, 2024, while Venom 3 now has a release date of July 12th, 2024, and fellow Spider-Man spinoff Madame Web moved up two days to February 16th.
With its sixth episode — “Home” — the first season of Disney Plus’ Secret Invasion has come to a rather anticlimactic end that put Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury right back where he was when the series began.
In the end, it really felt like Marvel didn’t know what it wanted to say with its story about Earth being surreptitiously invaded by hostile aliens. Coincidentally, Apple’s Invasion seems have a pretty clear idea about what it wants to do with a similar premise in its upcoming second season.
When the X-Men animated series theme song started playing in Disney Plus’ Ms. Marvel series, it was obvious that Something Big™ was going on with the only Inhuman still bopping around the MCU. When Ms. Marvel recently died quite suddenly and unceremoniously in Marvel’s comics, it seemed as if that Something Big™ was finally coming to a head, and now that brings us here.
Noted comics nerd and Ms. Marvel actress Iman Vellani’s penning a new Ms. Marvel comic, and — shocker — she’s becoming a mutant.
Secret Invasion’s AI-generated opening credits aren’t Marvel’s best, but they do feel like a very telling sign of where the studio and the larger entertainment industry are at right now.
The entire point of Marvel’s Secret Invasion series is to tap into people’s deep, existisitential anxieties about being replaced and destroyed by hostile adversaries. That makes the studio’s choice to create the show’s opening credits sequence with AI-generated art make a certain amount of sense.
But it’s hard to deny how bad these optics are for Marvel especially at a time when traditional artists are increasingly sounding the alarm about the threat AI-generated art poses to their livelihoods.
Samuel L. Jackson and Olivia Colman shine in Marvel’s new Disney Plus show, which feels more like a souped-up Agents of SHIELD TV event than a proper spy thriller.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts took first place at the box office this weekend with a $60.5 million opening across 3,678 theaters, according to Variety. Following it was Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, at $55.4 million from 4,332 theaters.
But Variety pointing out the Transformers movie series is 16 years old was something I... wasn’t prepared to think about.
With the next MCU series set for a Disney Plus debut on June 21st, the marketing for Secret Invasion is winding up, but with a spy twist this time. Instead of just dropping yet another trailer, it’s stored on this dedicated site that requests a password (RSD3PX5N7S), which is conveniently listed in the tweet.
Figuring out which characters are Skrulls in hiding will hopefully be a little harder than that.
While most of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s creatives were seasoned professionals, Preston Mutanga, the genius behind the movie’s brief foray into a stop-motion world full of Lego characters, is a Canadian teen — the same who recreated the movie’s trailer:
“We found out that it was a 14-year-old kid who made it and we were like, ‘This looks incredibly sophisticated for a nonadult, nonprofessional to have made,” [Across the Spider-Verse writer/producer Chris] Miller said on a video call. “It blew us all away, including some of the best animators in the world.”
[The New York Times]
That’s the new name for the franchise’s fourth installment, which was previously called Captain America: New World Order. The upcoming flick is part of Phase 5 of the MCU, and is set to hit theaters on May 3rd, 2024, starring Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, and Shira Haas.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse deepens the mythos of Miles Morales by turning one of the ugliest parts of Spider-Man’s fandom into a canonical conundrum.
Sony’s Across the Spider-Verse isn’t just a breathtaking work of art — it’s a seminal piece of Spider-Man storytelling that rightfully establishes Miles Morales as this generation’s definitive webhead. Across the Spider-Verse’s trailers alone have been tremendous, but check out our review to read more about what makes the movie work so, so well.
At Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s LA premiere this week, producer Amy Pascal teased that Miles Morales is definitely making his live-action debut in the near future, and Sony’s already working on another Spider-Man starring Tom Holland:
“We’re in the process, but the writers strike, nobody is working during the strike. We’re all being supporters and whenever they get themselves together, we’ll get started.”
Sony’s Into the Spider-Verse sequel is a bigger, bolder, more ambitious film than its predecessor — and a powerful deconstruction of Marvel’s Spider-Man mythos.
