It Latest News

There are few things more impressive in the horror genre than earning the approval of the King of Horror himself. Stephen King has seen a cut of Andres Muschietti's adaptation of It and gave it a thumbs up. Said King on his Facebook page:

Not a bad review of Mr. Muschietti. The rest of us will have to wait a few more months to watch the film. The second half of It - the one about the adult Losers Club - is said to start filming very soon. 

It Release Date

It will arrive on on September 8, 2017.

Producer Dan Lin confirmed to Collider that this film is the first installment in a planned two-parter. If this movie, which tells the story from the point of view of the Losers Club when they were kids, is successful, the plan is to make the second film about the Losers Club as adults and their final showdown with Pennywise.

It Rating

The It movie will be rated R, confirmed producer Dan Lin while speaking with Collider. Said the producer about how the film earned its R rating:

It is a rated-R movie. If you’re going to make a “Rated-R movie”, you have to fully embrace what it is, and you have to embrace the source material. It is a scary clown that’s trying to kill kids. So of course that’s going to be a rated-R movie. The kids are amazing. You very much get a Stand by Me vibe as far as their camaraderie and the way they joke with each other and that they really care for each other. They do have a scary crown that’s taken over the town of Derry, so it’s going to be rated R.

It Synopsis

Here's the official synopsis from WB:

When children begin to disappear in the town of Derry, Maine, a group of young kids is faced with their biggest fears when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.

It Cast

Bill Skarsgard (Hemlock Grove) will take over killer clown duties from Will Poulter (We're the Millers), who departed the project shortly after director Cary Fukunaga. 

Pennywise the Clown is one of the most terrifying and evil characters King has ever created. Taking the shape of a clown named Pennywise, it eats little children and manipulates them into doing his bidding. It's been around for centuries, returning every three decades to terrorize the town of Derry, Maine—one of King's favorite places to have everyone murdered. Let's hope Mr. Skarsgard can live up to Curry, King's original novel, and fan expectation. 

Skarsgard joins Jaeden Lieberher (Bill Denbrough), Jack Dylan Grazer (Eddie Kaspbrak), Wyatt Oleff (Stanley Uris), Chosen Jacobs (Mike Hanlon), Jeremy Ray Taylor (Ben Hanscom), Nicholas Hamilton (Henry Bowers), Owen Teague (Patrick Hockstetter), Sophia Lillis (Beverly Marsh), Steven Williams (Leroy Hanlon), Stephen Bogaert (Al Marsh), Jackson Robert Scott (Georgie), Pip Dwyer (Sharon Denbrough), Logan Thompson (Victor Criss), and Jake Sim (Belch Huggins).

Richard "Richie" Tozier will be played by Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard. The funny member of the Losers' Club with the scotch-taped glasses apparently got lost on July 4th. Young Tozier was played by Seth Green on the 1990 TV adaptation of It. Harry Anderson played him as an adult.  

Owen Teague, who plays the son of Ben Mendelsohn on Bloodline at Netflix, will play Patrick Hocksetter, one of the bullies who torment the Losers Club. Hocketter is a psycho who falls under the sway of the evil clown without even looking at the deadlights. His fridge is filled with animals he’s killed.

It Director & Writer

Andres Muschietti (Mama) is directing. He took over the struggling pre-production from True Detective season one's Cary Fukunaga. Gary Dauberman (Annabelle) has written the current screenplay adaptation of Stephen King's novel. 

It Photos

Barbara Muschietti has released a new picture of Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier. It's pretty retro and cool. Check it out:

Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise the Clown is preparing to terrorize the children of Derry in 2017. His version of Stephen King's infamous monster looks a bit less party-friendly than Tim Curry's version, in fact. Check out Pennywise hanging out in the sewers in this new photo from EW:

It has officially finished filming. A new picture to commemorate the end of filming appeard on producer Barbara Muschietti's Instagram. Check it out below:

EW revealed the first full look at Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise the Clown. As you might expect, the costume is quite terrifying, guarranteed to terrify a whole new generation of children. Check it out if you dare:

The costume was created by award-winning costume designer Janie Bryant (Mad Men). Says Bryant of the costume, "The costume definitely incorporates all these otherworldly past lives, if you will. He is definitely a clown from a different time," revealing that the costume takes inspiration from the Medieval, Renaissance, Elizabethan, and Victorian eras.

"There is almost a doll-like quality to the costume," Bryant says. "The pants being short, the high waistline of the jacket, and the fit of the costume is a very important element. It gives the character a child-like quality."

Child-like is not the word I would use...

Here's the first picture of the actors who will make up the Losers Club:

Here's the very first picture of Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise the Clown:

This article was written by someone who had not seen a single Game of Thrones season 7 spoiler, either via paparazzi photos or online rumors. So there are no spoilers here, just educated guesses based on the first six seasons.

Winter is here. The cool breeze that was first promised by Sean Bean during a cryptic teaser trailer oh, so many moons ago has finally blown across Westeros, and while Game of Thrones season 6 certainly brought an explosive conclusion to its fast-moving and exciting year, it is the quiet unknown that lingers in the mind after those closing credits. Varys promises Lady Olenna Tyrell that in the wars to come, there will be fire and blood to quench her thirst, and with that closing shot of dragons flying in a westward direction toward King’s Landing, it’s clear he’s not whistling “The Rains of Castamere.”

Game of Thrones season 7 is still a painful four months away, but even with that long gap, the pieces are finally falling into place, and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have a pretty clear table set for their series’ endgame. Also if their initial statements hold true, there are only 13 hours left to revel in this world before that final curtain, and certainly only seven installments in 2017.

Yet, be that as it may, the question remains of what will occur in those seven chapters. We have some ideas. Below is how we think the few remaining storylines that were not streamlined in a glorious emerald blaze above the Steps of Baelor will play out in a year’s time.

Cersei, Queen of the Three Kingdoms, Not Long May She Reign

The obvious place to start is with the new occupant of the Iron Throne. Cersei now has the rather uncomfortable looking chair that they all covet, yet none ever seem to reach with any seeming remnants of grace or humanity. Joffrey came into power through the duplicitous murder of his “father” and the contested challenges offered by Renly, Stannis, and even Ned Stark who intended to fight on Stannis’ behalf. Likewise, Joffrey’s predecessor took the Iron Throne through blood when he slaughtered Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident, and his successor proved to be a feckless little monarch that got Joff’s hand-me-downs following one hell of a wedding party.

But now that Tommen has elected to end his life and rest for all time by his wife’s side instead of spending one more day as his demonic mother’s pawn, a rather unique power vacuum has opened up in King’s Landing. And Cersei is not-so-convincingly filling it. More than love for her children, Cersei has always worshipped at the altar of political domination, and with no clear successor in place following the complete annihilation of the Baratheon line—and her own children—Cersei sits awkwardly in a chair that hasn’t looked so bleak since the days of the Mad King.

And it will be almost exactly like the Mad King that Cersei departs the Game of Thrones that she nicknamed.

At this precise moment in the series, Cersei is not Queen of the Seven Kingdoms despite what Qyburn said at her muted coronation about being “Protector of the Realm.” She couldn’t even protect her son from her own scheming when she left him alone to watch the smoking embers of his legacy drift from the ruins of Baelor all the way to the far side of Blackwater Bay. Cersei is a fool that created this threat of the High Sparrow to destroy Margaery, and in the process destroyed her own sanity, the mental well-being of her son, and finally the capital itself.

Now, Cersei is actually only the queen of three kingdoms: the Crownlands in which King’s Landing rests, the Westerlands where her family hails from, and the Stormlands which have lost the rule of both her late husband and his two now equally dead younger brothers. But Dorne has already murdered one of Cersei’s children, and now the queen has sent what’s left of House Tyrell into the arms of Ellaria Sand, whose combined fighting force likely already surpasses House Lannister’s 8,000 men.

Further, the Iron Islands have been in perpetual rebellion for years, and still nobody has put them down. The Riverlands are a chaotic mess since House Tully has been more or less shamed from existence, and the Freys (the one still super-loyal family to House Lannister) have lost their patriarch, as well as his two potential heirs that he’d groomed.

Oh, and Winterfell has a new King in the North. Again. Whose sister is one of Cersei’s most hated enemies.

The point is that the union of the Seven Kingdoms has collapsed, and Cersei’s ability to offer it a new center of gravity appears doomed. It is not even clear if she will have the fearful obedience of the King’s Landing smallfolk since she slaughtered their very popular equivalent to the Pope, as well as the much more beloved younger queen, in an attack that undoubtedly left thousands dead. Another way to put this is that the French rebelled for less than blowing up the Vatican.

No, Cersei remains unloved by all now, including her incestuous brother. And with Daenerys set to make landfall early next season, the Stranger’s embrace beckons for this queen. The tragedy for all is that she knows this deep down and will do everything to thwart it, including perhaps use the remaining wildfire to burn the capital to ash, just like the Mad King previously dreamed of doing.

Hence why I personally suspect that the end of season 7 (if not earlier) will feature Daenerys’ dragons and armies making short work of King’s Landing’s defenses, and the people rebelling in the street against their “Lord Protector.” Seven Hells, they might be doing that before then once Highgarden cuts off the food supply in retribution for slaughtering most of the Tyrells. In that moment, Cersei will attempt to repeat history and choose to burn the capital down. This will occur after five or more hours of Jaime Lannister witnessing his sister becoming the same murderous despot that Aerys II had been when he stabbed him in the back.

So too will he probably plunge his sword through Cersei’s heart. However, when Tyrion and Dany finally step foot in the throne room, excited to confront their conquered enemies, they will not find a leering Kingslayer mockingly sitting in the Iron Throne, but rather a dead one who killed himself by his own hand after reluctantly slaughtering the love of his life for the greater good. No one will remember why this happened, but maybe Tyrion will feel something resembling pity for his brother?

Daenerys Brings the Fire and Blood

Of course for this to occur, Dany will have her work cut out for her as she cuts a bloody path across the continent. Before “The Winds of Winter,” I wondered if she might land in the Iron Islands and set Yara up for life while just bypassing the whole Southron madness. But now that she has a firm pact signed with Dorne, and King’s Landing has gone to the pits, she will almost certainly be landing in either Dorne or the Reach. Granted, she could just land right on top of King’s Landing, and let her dragons and Iron Fleet do the fighting. But Daenerys is a conqueror and needs to form a battle strategy of her own.

Again, Dany now has the armies of Dorne and Highgarden at her disposal, plus her Dothraki horde who prefers fighting on horseback over a ship’s deck. Ergo, it makes the best sense to land in Oldtown (the Reach) or Sunspear (Dorne). From there, she can consolidate forces and lead a land-based siege against King’s Landing, which could play out satisfyingly over a handful of episodes. And with that kind of military might, it is a foregone conclusion that Cersei is doomed. It’s just a matter of whether Jaime’s merciful blade or Daenerys’ ravenous dragons reach her first.

Some Old Faces in Oldtown

Yet while on the subject of Oldtown, “The Winds of Winter” left Sam and Gilly in an awkward spot while waiting for the maesters’ bureaucracy to get sorted. Indeed, their final scene in season 6 felt like Terry Gilliam’s vision of paper pushing purgatory transposed into a whole new genre. Sam also got a nice signoff when he was allowed to play Belle to the Citadel’s Beast in that towering library.

Presumably, there is much knowledge, both ancient and new, tucked away in all those books. It even makes me wonder how Westeros is overall so uneducated with this kind of intellectual hub. I am starting to theorize that the maesters hoard knowledge instead of sharing it to enlighten the world. Whatever the case might be, I am fairly confident that there is a cure for greyscale located somewhere in that ivory tower. After all, Shireen was cured by somebody before it consumed her whole body as a baby.

For that reason, on top of finding out new ways to fight White Walkers, Sam could prove instrumental in offering a cure to Ser Jorah Mormont. His queen commanded him to find a cure somewhere in this world to his disease, and the Citadel of Oldtown is probably the most learned spot in all the land. They could even chat about Jorah’s long departed father.

The King in the North, and the Watchers in the Wings

Still, I imagine more than Jorah or Sam, it is the latter’s brother in black that many viewers are most anxious to return to in season 7. Aye, Jon Snow is now King in the North, which begs the question of why do they still call him Jon Snow? Jon Stark should suffice at this point if there is a crown on his head, methinks.

In any event, it was ever so satisfying to see Lady Mormont put all the grown men in Winterfell’s great hall to shame: she and her fighting 62 stood by Jon and Sansa’s side at the Battle of Winterfell while so many other northern houses stuck their heads in the snow. Now, she looks pleased as peach to crown Jon as King in the North, which will give him all the forces he needs to start building a truly massive army for fighting the White Walkers in the great war.

But showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss would like to sow the seeds of doubt with the stolen glances between Littlefinger and Sansa. This was doubly confirmed in the press with ominous words hinted at by Sophie Turner and Liam Cunningham in interviews following season 6’s closure.

This is a smoke screen of misdirection. I say this partially because I would be so thoroughly disappointed if the first two Starks to reunite betrayed each other. However, I also believe “The Winds of Winter” pretty resoundingly gave answers to both Starks’ allegiances. Sansa has become quite the paranoid young woman following a childhood ruined in King’s Landing and a family either murdered or scattered to the wind. I hesitate to use the word “betrayal,” but she has certainly done a great disservice to Jon by not telling him of either Littlefinger’s initial offer or of the Vale’s last minute assistance. Then again, it was her craftiness that allowed her and Petyr Baelish to take advantage of a trap that Jon Snow walked into (and he still would have even if he had a larger army behind him).

Both characters acknowledge this with Sansa being the first to insist that Jon Snow is a Stark. He tries to refuse their parents’ master bedroom and then tries to forsake ownership of Winterfell; he wants Sansa to take credit and become Wardeness of the North. She refuses that and looks genuinely happy for Jon as he is declared King in the North. Before that moment, Littlefinger tries to plant a dangerous idea into the She-Wolf’s head, stating that she is Ned and Cat’s trueborn heir; Jon is a motherless bastard.

This is because Littlefinger wants Sansa for himself, and he wants them to rule on high from King’s Landing. Ignoring the fact that Baelish is oblivious that Daenerys is about to turn the order of the Southron Kingdoms upside down—which along with the White Walkers will make Littlefinger’s schemes obsolete by the end of season 7—Sansa herself has no interest in returning to King’s Landing. The capital ruined her life.

Much service will be paid to Littlefinger trying to turn Sansa against Jon Snow in season 7, which was hinted at in the finale. Baelish needs Jon out of the way so that Sansa can be declared Queen in the North. When that happens, Littlefinger could marry her and call himself king, which would then lead to another war for the Iron Throne. And if there were no dragons or White Walkers on the horizon, he’d have a pretty good shot at dethroning Cersei. Unfortunately for the Master of Treachery, there are those things.

Plus Sansa will never marry him.

Thus when push comes to shove, and the parentage of Jon Snow is revealed (which will give him a claim in both the North and South for any manner of thrones), Littlefinger will test Sansa’s allegiance against her brother. And hopefully, he’ll lose his head in the process.

Arya Finds Her Pack

Yet, if I am optimistically predicting that two Starks will stand united in their ancestral home (especially with an Army of the Dead approaching), I doubt another will even see Winterfell in season 7. More than any other family member, Arya might have suffered the most of the living Stark children. And she has definitely hardened the most as a result.

When we met the youngest Stark sister, she yearned to learn “water dancing” and fence with the boys. It’s a far cry from the rather deadened young woman whose eyes only come alive with something approximating ecstasy when she is murdering her foes. Admittedly, I was also delighted at the sight of Walder Frey’s life draining from his face. However, these kind of actions will continue to take a toll on a girl that for two seasons almost became “No One.”

Arya claimed to Jaqen that she is going home, but I imagine that she already knows she never can. Not really. She will eventually wind up in Winterfell but not until the last possible moment when the hour is late and the living’s dominion over the dead will be in check. Or in other words, season 8.

In the meantime, I find it highly plausible that Arya does become reunited with her last father of sorts, Sandor Clegane. As previously seen, the Hound and the Brotherhood Without Banners are headed to the North in order to fight in the wars to come, and Arya is looking for a wolf pack in the same Riverlands.

Despite growing disillusioned with the Brotherhood’s cause, she and the Hound might actually be elated to see one another again. If so, just please throw in a chance encounter with a long abandoned direwolf named Nymeria, and Arya should be on the rebound in season 7 as she and her band of outlaws merrily kill their way to Winterfell.

Bran Stark Breaks Down Barriers

One Stark that I do think will return home next year, however, is the one who can reveal Jon Snow’s parentage much to Littlefinger’s chagrin. Bran Stark’s ability to command history, prophecy, and animals will be crucial in the war against the Night King, and for that to happen he’ll need to get back to Winterfell. Once Jon Snow knows that he is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark—for which Meera’s father should also be on hand at Winterfell to confirm—the entire power dynamics in both the North and South will shift.

But first, Bran Stark will have to get to Winterfell, and in doing so, he will likely precipitate the great war in the process. This was the horrible, world-ending event foreshadowed by Benjen Stark when he said he was not allowed to cross the Wall. It is built not just of ice but also by old magic that keeps the White Walkers at bay. Alas that Bran and Meera did not feel the need to tell Benjen that just as he was cursed by White Walker magic, so too has Bran been similarly touched.

The scar on Bran’s arm is what undid the ancient magic that protected the Three-Eyed Raven at the great heart tree, and that cursed arm will be what allows the Night’s King to finally cross the Wall that has kept him out of the vast majority of Westeros for millennia.

When Bran crosses the Wall, this apocalypse may not happen overnight but it will allow the Army of the Dead to pay a visit to Castle Black in a future season 7 episode. Thus their collective Watch will end forevermore.

Dany, Jon, and the Dead

All of this leads to the obvious question: When and how will “A Song of Ice and Fire” be played? The literary title of the entire George R.R. Martin saga obviously pertains to the stories of Jon Snow (ice) and Daenerys Targaryen (fire). Also, her dragons versus the White Walkers is as inevitable as the falling sheets of frost descending upon Winterfell.

I suspect that this question will be primarily left to season 8. While a crowned Jon Stark might have his first battle with the White Walkers in season 7, Daenerys will likely stay in the South, saving their fateful meeting for the very final season.

As for whenever that introduction should occur, we are still left to also wonder if it shall be as friend or foe. The most obviously fan-pleasing outcome would be for Daenerys and Jon Snow to marry. Technically, she is his aunt but that would have been cool in actual medieval times, and it certainly would be acceptable in a land where Targaryen siblings frequently wedded. Together, theirs is the song of Ice and Fire that will save the world from the Long Night.

The breadcrumbs were present in “The Winds of Winter” since Daenerys said that she plans to conquer Westeros partially through marriage, and Tyrion Lannister would probably be keen to suggest a marriage to Jon Stark even before knowing of the Targaryen angle since Tyrion was a friend to Jon and has a soft spot for the First Family of the North.

And that is exactly why I don’t think it’ll happen. Or at least that will not be the ending if wedding bells do indeed ring. Conceivably, season 7 could end with Jon and Dany in a dire situation with the spreading of zombies, thereby choosing to align their Houses and even their beds. But the friction between them is inevitable. If the series actually ended with the two most popular living characters, at least excluding Tyrion and Arya, marrying in a big happy ceremony, it would ring false. Too J.R.R. Tolkien and not enough George R.R. Martin.

Personally, I expect, for one reason or another, Daenerys and Jon Stark to go to war by the middle of season 8. Perhaps they’ll clash before joining forces against the White Walkers—thus leaving an uneasy alliance impossible to end in marriage—or maybe it will be after the messiest political divorce in television history. It just seems inauthentic for this show to give viewers the equivalent of a happily ever after. I do not see Jon Snow ever being content in King’s Landing. He’s got too much of Ned in him. Nor do I think Daenerys even necessarily wants to be married.

Besides, what use was building up Bran’s warging abilities for seven years if he doesn’t use them to fly as a dragon? And why would he have to commandeer a dragon if Dany and Jon are always on the same side?

A more likely scenario for season 8 would be Jon and Daenerys forming a shaky alliance against the White Walkers, and after it is over a détente between North and South being reached because Bran disarms Dany’s dragons. Daenerys will rule the Five Kingdoms to the South, lest she decides to welch on Yara and keep the Iron Islands, and the North will be allowed to self-govern. Jon Stark will be remembered as the King Who Didn’t Kneel.

If he marries someone, I wouldn’t put it past this show for it to be his technical cousin, Sansa Stark. Albeit, that theory is mostly based on the fact that in the original outline for “A Song of Ice and Fire,” George R.R. Martin envisioned Jon Snow marrying Arya Stark (whose age was undetermined in the pitch, so she might have been closer to Sansa in years). And it would certainly leave viewers feeling conflicted and probably a little queasy.

Now that is a George R.R. Martin kind of ending.

But words are wind. We’ll find out for sure how all the pieces on the board fall over the next year and a half. Until then, valar morghulis.

This article was originally published on June 27, 2016.

While there's still been no official word on who is playing Cable, another major piece of Deadpool's early history has finally fallen into place: Domino.

Ryan Reynolds, who has made himself the #1 source for official Deadpool 2news in the universe, announced that Atlanta's Zazie Beetz has landed the role. In true Ryan Reynolds fashion, he did it on social media...

Domino is an assassin for hire, and founding member of X-Force, who first appeared in the very same comic that first introduced Deadpool, New Mutants #98. With an X-Force movie set to follow Deadpool 2, we can see where this is going.

Surely, Cable casting news can't be far behind...

Deadpool 2 Trailer

By this point, it's no secret that Logan doesn't have a post-credits scene. Instead, it has kind of a pre-credits scene, which is basically a wacky teaser for Deadpool 2. It's not quite a trailer, but it's 100% legit, stars Ryan Reynolds, and was directed by David Leitch. This won't appear in the movie, but there's definitely a touch of what you'll see in it here in terms of tone.

And by "tone" we mean "exactly what you expect/want out of a Deadpool movie." There's some nice symmetry to letting Ryan Reynolds drop this one before 20th Century Fox, since he's apparently the person responsible for the test footage leak that finally got this movie the greenlight in the first place a few years back. He continues to "deny" that.

Watch it here. It's pretty great. ALSO it has come to our attention that mobile users are having trouble seeing the video, so you can click here to watch it if it isn't coming up. Sorry about that.

A couple of things worth noting here:

1. You can see the word "Hope" scrawled on that phone booth. This could be a joke, considering the Superman: The Movie theme is playing, that Superman's "S" is "a symbol of hope."

However, it probably refers to Hope Summers, who is Cable's adopted daughter and holy moley does this get too confusing to get into right here.

2. You can also see "Nathan Summers coming soon!" written on there. In other words, that's Cable, and it's no secret whatsoever that Cable is in this movie.

As for who is actually playing Cable? Well, that's kind of an ongoing saga... 

Well, according to the character's creator, Rob Liefeld (who also co-created Deadpool himself...and who is admittedly a little biased), there are lots of folks lining up for the role.

That's a bold statement. But it does seem to be true.

The latest in the increasingly long list of names linked to the part is Stranger Things' David Harbour, who has reportedly screen tested for the role already. I've reached out to Mr. Harbour's representatives to see if there's any other confirmation we can get, but as of now, haven't heard anything. He'd be a great choice, though, wouldn't he?

It's worth noting that Mr. Liefeld has his own ideas of who he thinks should play his second most famous creation, and he appealed to none other than Russel Crowe on Twitter. Mr. Crowe even took the time to respond...

Is he just incredulous that Mr. Liefeld asked? Or is he implying he already read for the part? Or maybe he's had his fill with superhero stuff after his rather cool turn as Jor-El in Man of Steel. Crowe would certainly look the part of Cable, though, and he could play off of Reynolds' manic Deadpool energy nicely.

And what does any of this have to do with this image of Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds clowning around with none other than Pierce Brosnan last month? Probably nothing.

But holy moley, wouldn't Pierce Brosnan be absolutely incredible as Cable? Imagine his cool playing off of Ryan Reynolds antics as Wade Wilson. This is probably nothing, but as Mr. Liefeld pointed out, lots of leading men types want this part, so...

Anyway, don't expect this to turn into an X-Force movie or anything like that.

"We were like the athlete who guarantees victory before the game," Deadpool 2 co-writer Paul Wernick joked in an interview with Variety. "It’s a world that’s so rich and we always thought Cable should be in the sequel. There was always debate whether to put him in the original, and it felt like we needed to set up Deadpool and create his world first, and then bring those characters into his world in the next one."

But make no mistake, the focus is going to remain firmly on the Merc With a Mouth. "It’ll be populated with a lot of characters, but it is still Deadpool’s movie," Rhett Reese said. "We’re pushing forward very hard. I think by every account we will shoot it this year, and we’re on our multiple draft now. It’s taken different twists and turns, but it’s really coalescing, and we’re very, very excited."

As for that "lots of characters" thing, it does indeed include Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. "I think we can say, yeah, they'll be in the sequel," Rhett Reese told Collider. "Yeah, they'll at least make an appearance," Paul Wernick added.

So where does that leave the question on everybody's mind...when the hell will we actually see this movie?

Deadpool 2 Release Date

20th Century Fox has two dates on its 2018 calendar reserved for Marvel/X-Men related properties: March 2nd and June 29th. If Deadpool 2 does indeed go into production in May as has been speculated, then June 29th seems more likely. But June 29 doesn't seem like prime real estate for an R-rated movie, while March 2nd is closer to when the original thrived.

We'll let you know as soon as any of this is locked up.

This article contains Logan spoilers.

James Mangold’s Logan was a bittersweet experience for many moviegoers. On the one hand, it was a strong farewell to Hugh Jackman’s interpretation of the Wolverine, a character he’s been playing for the better part of two decades. On the other, it also means no more Wolverine, period. Well kind of. Because what likely surprised many folks was just how good Logan’s pint-sized heir, Laura Kinney/X-23 (Dafne Keen), was in the film. Only 11-years-old during production and primarily either mute or speaking in brief bouts of Spanish, she nevertheless was always fiercely vocal in her performance.

Logan also leaves the door open for more X-23 goodness down the road, which is something that we were very curious to talk about with both Mangold and Keen during a pleasant sit-down with the pair last month. The director and his wee leading lady expressed sincere interest in doing an X-23 movie, albeit Ms. Keen (now circling the world weary age of only 12) proved to be often as selective in her use of words as Laura, which only enhanced the charming dynamic between the two.

“Yeah, I’m wide open to that,” Mangold says on the subject of an X-23 movie. “I think we could have a great time. The first thing is, always, you need a script, you must have a good script.” He then adds while turning to Dafne, “You game for it, you open?”

She smiles with an affirmative nod, “Yeah.”

Of course, while there is no script, one imagines that there are some storytelling ideas already bouncing around Mangold’s head. After all, he made a superhero Western with Logan and made a kind of clawed samurai film with 2013’s The Wolverine. However, Mangold seemed to signal he’d toy around with the idea of continuing the Western motif for X-23’s future adventures.

“I don’t think you have to keep changing genre,” Mangold says. “I think the key is—I mean I don’t have an answer because I don’t have a story yet, but I think you give good examples in both The Wolverine and Logan in finding genre, but samurai films and Westerns are honestly very similar. They have different props, with swords versus guns, but the sense of honor, the sense of economy in the stories are similar. I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is just don’t make a superhero movie [that plays like a] ‘superhero movie.’”

Still, I ask if he has ideas for what an X-23 movie would be like. The director without missing a beat leans forward and smiles, “I always have ideas.”

During the interview, however, we were able to discuss the many striking decisions the filmmakers made that led to him and Keen sitting at that table. As we detailed here, Mangold consciously made some potent choices to turn X-23 not only into a child (she’s a teenager in the comics) but also a young half-Mexican girl searching for a better life beyond the U.S. Previously, Mangold had told me he was aware of the political powder keg this touched upon, but now in a follow-up, he commented on the thought process that led up to that.

“I think [writer] Scott Frank and I, when we were writing, we landed on—first we moved the script to the Texas border,” Mangold recalls. “At first when we were playing the script, Laura would speak from the beginning, and then we realized, ‘Oh, that’s just going to be too cute. There’s only this snappy banter from the beginning.’ And then even when we had her kind of quiet, we felt like, ‘We need it to go somewhere.’ So then suddenly Scott was like, ‘Why don’t we just make her half-Mexican, a Hispanic kid, so even when she starts to talk, you’re still going to have two people who can’t completely understand each other all the time.

“In a sense, I think that’s what makes the relationship so charming and at the same time it doesn’t seem so cute. You [don’t] just go into suddenly standard sassy, precocious child dialogue.”

But when Keen is finally able to unload, it is quite a powerful shock. The young actress, who hails from Spain and comes from an acting family, was able to visibly channel X-23’s anger with nary a word. And when she finally does speak, it is in an explosion of fiery, cascading Spanish—she even gets to hit Hugh Jackman fairly hard in the face while doing it.

When bringing up the scene, she appears modest about it, but her director agrees that she hit Jackman “pretty hard.” Repeatedly.

“I think that was a startling day for a lot of the crew, because I think Daf arrived on-set, she was doing her scenes, and everyone thought she was really cool and doing great, and then suddenly that scene, I remember turning to Trevor [Loomis], he was our focus puller, and suddenly our script supervisor Sheila [Waldron] was like, ‘Oh my God.’ And everyone—because not everyone in the crew had been through the whole reading process with Daf and knew just how ready she was to leap into talking and letting him have it. She’s saying some pretty nasty things in Spanish.”

At this point, Dafne interjects that her favorite lines from the sequence apparently got lost on the editing room floor.

“You cut them out or something,” she says with a hint of disappointment. Her director is surprised, asking, “Did we cut out the worst words?” Dafne nods affirmatively again, “Yeah.”

Of course, the most moving moment for Laura is one of the few times she speaks English. While overcoming incredible personal sorrow, she pauses to recite Alan Ladd’s final lines of dialogue from Shane. It’s a movie that Mangold and I had discussed at length about influencing Logan. So of course, I felt compelled to ask Dafne if her director had encouraged her to watch the film in preparation for Logan. Curiously, she revealed that she and her family sought out both Shane and Mangold’s Walk the Line while she was auditioning for the film.

“I remember in the casting that I decided to watch Shane one morning,” Keen says with a slight and formal English affectation to her cadence. She then volunteers to the surprise of her director, “And we watched Walk the Line in the car going to the airport.” Apparently, he was unaware she had viewed his 2005 biopic on Johnny Cash.

When we both asked what she thought of each film, she said with equal politeness, “I liked them. They were fun.”

Mangold erupts in laughter, “Very diplomatic of you.”

Logan is in theaters now.

The making of Wonder Woman has been a longtime coming for Patty Jenkins. Even though it’s already been about two years since she first signed on to the superhero epic, which will see Gal Gadot lasso World War I German foes into defeat on June 2, she’s been thinking about the film ever since 2004—when she first pitched writing and directing Princess Diana’s adventure to Warner Bros. following her Oscar winning film, Monster.

She is very reflective on this when she sits down with myself and eight other journalists in a London screening room, several floors below the post-production editing suite that hopes to hit the reset button on the DCEU’s tone. Indeed, moments earlier Geoff Johns, an executive producer and writer on the film, had told us that Jenkins is doing for the Diana character what Richard Donner did for Superman, but it’s Jenkins’ own passion that is most convincing. She has thought for ages about just what decade a Wonder Woman movie should be set, never mind how she’ll handle meeting Steve Trevor (Chris Pine).

Following the first several scenes that were screened for us—which included the sight of Danny Huston’s villainous Erich Ludendorff “regaining his strength” from a gas that allows him to crush a 1918 metal gun like it’s made of putty—we were able to discuss that scene and so, so much more over 45 minutes. Below is most of the conversation we had with Jenkins. I personally only asked four of the questions, but the friendly chat enjoyed too many great insights to leave it at that.

This could potentially dive into spoiler territory, but are we supposed to take away from this that Danny Huston is Ares?

This whole thing is really interesting to me, because I don’t think we set out to be super mysterious with who the villain is, but it’s kind of funny it’s turned into what it’s turned into. So now I don’t want to comment about it, but there’s definitely, you know, good fun characters. [Laughs]

… I have very mixed feelings about all of this, because on the one hand, it’s interesting there have been not-real and real spoilers talking about various things, and honestly the only thing I can say to you guys is until you’re inside one of these movies, you cannot believe how absolutely not-real some of them are. [Laughs]

I’m sure you guys know, because you’ve been around it so many times, but when we watch some of these stories take off, [it’s] ‘oh my God, one person says they know one person who knows one person who speculated one thing,’ and then it gets picked up and travels like wildfire. It’s been shocking to watch how those things progress.

So this is about a third of the way through the movie?

Yeah, it’s typical first act, second act break, you know? It’s like the first act is really her origin, it’s where she came from and who she is. That’s what’s been so super-fun about this. You look at who she goes on to be in the world in the future, and seeing this person from a child on to becoming an adult and the hero that she is in this film, and watching their whole origin and storyline.

Can I ask you about your journey on getting this film made? I know you pitched this story like 10 years ago.

It’s funny, it wasn’t quite that I pitched it, it’s I had been making superhero short films, hilariously, because I went on to see a door open to write and direct Monster, and I was like, ‘Oh great, I’ll do that.’ And then suddenly, I was a super dark director. But people who knew me growing up were like, ‘Of course you’re making Wonder Woman.’ That’s the irony; the irony is it’s much more shocking that I made Monster than it was that I made that.

As soon as I made that film, because I don’t love all superhero films, but I love a great one. So my first meeting with Warner Brothers was in 2004. They said, ‘Hey, so we’re interested. We want to meet you and what do you want to do?’ And I was like, ‘Wonder Woman! I want to do Wonder Woman.’ And since then I came in every year to have a meeting about it at some point.

And then interestingly, and it’s funny because my mom sent me the script and I’ve got it framed somewhere, but I have copy of a submission to me, ‘Patty, we’d love for you to think about writing and directing Wonder Woman. And I was pregnant when I got it. [Laughs] It was like 2008, and I was like, I can’t now, now’s not the time to do it.

So it went on its own various journeys, and I kept going into meetings on it, and talking about it, and different ideas. So when this came back around, I’ve been around the block now. And I almost did Thor, and saw how that went. That story turned into something I didn’t feel like I was the right director for. You just start to have respect for things need to have the right director for the right thing.

So when it first came back around, it wasn’t finding its place in the universe, so it was more speculative. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. I’ve always wanted to do Wonder Woman, but now it’s complicated, because now it’s in a whole other thing. It’s just not me coming in and doing it. But they went on their journey, and then it turned out that they found themselves wanting to do exactly what I’ve been wanting to do for all those years, which is just a straight up origin story. Just a freed up, just an origin story and be very straightforward about it.

“And so then they came back to me, and said, ‘We want to do the origin story, and I said, ‘So do I! Let’s go!’ [Laughs] So it’s been interesting, because it was both a sudden thing, but also an easy sudden thing, because I’ve been talking about it and thinking about it… [My assistant] and I have pulled photos for this movie and put together visual presentations on how it would be done like many times. So it was like boom. I know exactly how I want to do this movie.

For me, as a woman watching this film, there’s a context under which, over the last 10 years or 20 years, a lot has changed for women with the rise of digital media, and the feminist movement has reached a new age with social media as well, and the representation of women. So you’re watching it with a different set of eyes, so I was wondering whether there were any changes that informed how true to the character you wanted to be, and how you as a woman in Hollywood as well, you’re one in a minority of role models.

Oh, thank you. It did change, but interestingly it changed in a slightly different way. I went into it saying, ‘She’s my Superman.’ Like she can’t be dark or angry or nasty, and I kept seeing female heroes had to be some alt-character. They just couldn’t be the main lead. They had to be made more interesting somehow. I was like, ‘No, no, no, not here. She’s just got to be Wonder Woman. She’s Wonder Woman. I love Wonder Woman, let her be, you know?’

The thing that surprised me is that I came in naively thinking, let’s make that. But there was more fear in the world at every studio about doing that kind of thing. Just a belief only boys liked action movies, and boys didn’t like female characters, so what do you do to address that? And that’s what changed. Things like Hunger Games started to show something else was possible, so I think the way I always wanted to do it became possible.

You know I grew up in a bit of a feminist fantasy with a single mom, and was totally shielded in a way from the idea that I couldn’t do something or that there couldn’t be something. So I think it’s been more of an education for me. Why can’t everyone see that it doesn’t matter if it’s a dog or a woman, or a person from another country or wherever, it’s about the story you’re telling.

You’ve told universal stories about different things. So I think people are more nervous about that than they are starting to be now. It’s ironic that you could make an animated movie about a dog being a universal character, but God forbid it be a human being who wasn’t a [man].

It’s funny the way she says, ‘I’m the man who can.’

It’s funny, because if you just replace that line with a different reading, I don’t like it as much. Because the one I like is the one where she’s completely oblivious. ‘I’m the man who can!” which is what it sounds like before. Now it sounds a tiny bit more strident. Like, ‘I’m the man!’ She has no feminist agenda at all, and it never occurred to her that anybody would be—that is what made her being or having any kind of feminist storyline at all, which you just can’t avoid, is her total obliviousness.

And that’s something I cared a lot about, which is she can never be lecturing and she can never be scolding, because she just walks out, ‘What’s going on? Why would this be happening? I’ve grown up in a land—why are you acting like that? I’m going to take my clothing off, what’s the problem?’

Which is just such a funnier way of looking at it and talking about it. ‘That’s absurd! Why wouldn’t I fight?’ So anyway, we had fun with that part of it.

Could you talk about the changes from 2004?

It changed every time, I think, because I had a couple versions that were modern day, and you find someone who is the long lost great-great grandchild of this Wonder Woman, or great-grandchild or whatever. And you’re like, ‘Oh, there was this story in the ‘60s about this person who was Wonder Woman,’ so you’re referencing Lynda Carter more and kind of saying there was this superhero Wonder Woman who walked the earth and did all these things, and then as the story starts to progress, ‘She’s like, yeah, my grandmother and whatever’ and then poom, some woman comes along and you’re like, ‘Oh that’s her!’ She’s just immortal, she went into hiding all this time.

“So all these various ways of does it have to be the original origin story or do we jump to modern times? I didn’t want to do her origin story in modern times. So it was like it was depending on which way it could be done. If it was about making it a modern movie.

Thor is fine to go into modern times, because people don’t really associate him with the ‘70s or the ‘60s. But she kind of is associated [with that era]. We know about Thor too, but I didn’t want to start with that story now.

When did you start focusing on a World War I backdrop for the story?

That was a decision that I actually stepped into. When I had always talked to them before, it was always assumed it was World War II, and then when I came into the project, the studio and Zack [Snyder] and everybody had decided, ‘Oh, let’s look at World War I.’ And I ended up loving it, because ‘Wow, that’s really interesting, because we’ve already seen so many World War II movies, and it’s such a well-known story.’

Whereas if you’re looking at a god with a belief system coming into man’s world, World War I was the first time we had mechanized war, we started bombing people from afar, that it was a world without any kind of pride or system of what was honorable and what wasn’t.

They’ve always been shooting people from afar, but they didn’t have the technology to do it in the same way. And so it became a cool thing just to explore a different period of time and to tell a story you haven’t seen before. And who’s the bad guy was much more gray in World War I, which made it interesting, because they’re not just straight up villains, an obvious villain. She ends up being able to question, ‘Well, what’s going on here? Why are you firing that gun? Aren’t you on the good side?’ So the complicated nature of that was really fascinating, of her observation.

 How has the character of Steve Trevor changed through your various versions and also how difficult was he of a character to get right, because I imagine you don’t necessarily want him to be a damsel in distress character?

He is actually very difficult, but also very easy in a way. So he hasn’t changed not at all since I’ve ever be interested [in this movie]. I didn’t want him to be a damsel in distress. I didn’t want to make an issue out of it, I didn’t want to make a feminist statement with him. I wanted the guy who you wanted [her] to be with, who you wanted to be with, and who’s also trying to do something else at the same time. And I wanted to live up to that emotionally myself.

Who’s the guy who’s like ‘okay, cool,’ but they could still be like, ‘That’s a little intimidating.’ But they could also help you when you need help or love you or support you or whatever. And so since the beginning, I’ve cared about hitting that same target that anybody would want to hit for your love interest, which is make him someone I am in love with, who believes me and helps me where I have weakness. And the vulnerability of that relationship meant everything to me, and I would say it all the time throughout the movie to other people. ‘You would never do that to Superman, you would never do that to Lois Lane.’

Like if we would ever have this, ‘Well, she can’t need his help.’ I’m like, so if Superman was like, ‘Fuck you Lois, man!’ How satisfying would that be to anybody? They have to need each other. It has to be a love story; everybody has to be stronger or more powerful. We just have to make it work in that sort of way, and we can’t overthink what he means if she needs him for a second or if she knows more than her in this way, and she knows more than him in another, because she’s a superhero. Don’t worry about her.

So I think Superman is a great parallel for her. You wouldn’t do it to Gwen Stacy, you wouldn’t do it to anybody. So it’s important that all of those people have their people in the world who believe in them and love them and help them, yet understand their lives are complicated.

You mention Gwen Stacy, and you’ve obviously had history with Marvel and DC. What do you think is the most striking difference between the two universes in your experience?

I think there’s been a tonal—I think Marvel sometimes goes for more fun, and DC goes to make a more serious film. But I think there’s shades of gray in all of it, like I think Doctor Strange was a more serious film, and I think this is more of a lighter film. And I don’t think Suicide Squad was particularly un-light. They’re all over the place. I think there may be slightly more consistency in the tone of Marvel films recently, but I don’t think that will always stay the way.

I love them both, I will never stop being grateful for wanting me to do their movie, you know? That’s not an obvious choice, and I met them, and we hit it off and had great conversations about it, and at the time it seemed like they could go a lot of different ways, and they wanted to go the way I wanted to go. And then things shifted, and they decided they needed to go another way to fit into their universe, and it was not something that I found myself suited for. And so it was a much more peaceful departure, but I’ve always had fond memories of them, and I respect what they do.

Could you talk about the pressure? You’re coming into the biggest genre that’s going on right now, there’s so many filmmakers who’ve come and gone off these projects. Could you talk about what that experience has been like for you and fitting into a wider universe?

It’s funny, there are two different realities going on. The one reality is the idea of getting to make a movie like the movies that impacted me as a child is my life’s dream, you know? Like it’s my life’s dream to make a great film. To make a masterpiece in my lifetime would be my life’s dream. And so you never will; you’ll never end up feeling like you did, so each time I’ve ever worked on something or thought about something or made something, you’re already aiming so high for yourself. You’re like, ‘This could be it!’  It’s so hard to make a film. This could be it, and it’s not.

So on the one hand, almost nothing changed. My relationship to this movie is still ‘am I the right director?’ Okay. ‘Can I do it?’ Okay. ‘Can I make it great? Oh my God, are we getting close? Oh my God, don’t let it get messed up! Oh Jesus!’ It’s like the same ride in a way, but certainly I flip back out to this intense focus of what this movie means and what does it stand for, and I was very aware of that with Thor where I was like, ‘Mmm.’ If I’m not confident that I’m the best person for this movie, and I’m not confident I can make a good movie out of this, this is politically a big step backwards for women directing blockbusters. [Laughs]

So you do have to be very aware the whole time that these people need something great, and do I believe I can aim for great with them, and that we have a chance?

You have to be aware of what their needs are too, but in this case, [it’s] slightly less intense, because I believe in a great Wonder Woman. I don’t have an alt-agenda. I believe in a great Wonder Woman origin story. I do. So all of those conversations become better, but yeah, it’s definitely an interesting life experience, fascinating all the time to do it. ‘Wow, this is wild how much it matters and how much it matters to a lot of people, and girding yourself to the fact.’ Like girding my son that ‘somebody is going to say everything. Someone’s going to hate it; someone’s going to like it; someone’s going to think it should be this way or that way.’ And you hope for the best and you hope for all of those things, but you also have to know that you’re stepping into a very intense world where she belongs to a lot of people, and you have a lot of people to please.

How was it working with Geoff Johns?

Geoff and I are really close. Super-close. So since my first meeting ever, years and years and years ago, I pitched, it was before I did it, I pitched in a room, and I pitched a storyline and Geoff Johns’ eyes lit up, and he said, ‘That’s what Dick Donner did for Superman.’ And he and I were like, ‘Ding!’ [Laughs]

So he and I have become super close, we have very similar goals for this movie, and I love him and his work, and I’m so grateful that he’s around.

Obviously Richard Donner’s Superman was a major influence, but were there other types of genres or maybe war films that you were drawing upon for this setting and time period?

I ended up being very ‘Superman meets Casablanca.’ It came up a lot, and Indiana Jones. It was those three films where I was like, ‘It’s a classic film. We are making a classic film.’ We care about humor, we care about epic, we care about heroism, we care about arc and story, and make it elegant. Go for it, don’t hold back and be more interesting with ‘shazang!’ Just try for that pocket all the time.

It was really those three films with the kind of war hero, who Steve Trevor is: Indiana Jones or Rick from Casablanca meets Wonder Woman? It’s like, I’m in for that story, and that’s a great Steve Trevor. So that was sort of our way of doing it.

Can you talk about Etta Candy’s relationship with Diana since they have that close bond in the comics?

There’s been a lot of different versions of Etta, and this is the version who works for Steve, obviously, because she’s in a man’s world. So she becomes like the humorous woman who’s completely entrenched in this specific time period of the world where it is sexist and it all those things, but she’s got a great sense of humor and a great way of handling and navigating all of that. So it’s kind of the spirit of Etta Candy.

Is Wonder Woman’s [Hans Zimmer] theme going to show up?

Yeah, it’s going to show up, but it’s an interesting thing. It’s a great theme, but it is a very specific theme, so it’s not the kind of thing you could ladle all over a little girl [Laughs] or a naïve person. So it has its own journey. I see the entire movie as the creation of both the character and the theme. But it’s not the easiest thing to just throw all over the place.

How did you define your action style for this, because that’s not something we’ve seen a lot of in your prior work? So I’m very curious what your influences were of what the action would be in this film.

There wasn’t one particular thing, I think it was a lot of different things. Like I said, what made it like everything else, what made it simple and very difficult is like any dramatic scene, if you’re really tethered in your point-of-view, then you know how to tell a story. I’m with her going across that battlefield and I’m telling the story of that, and that I know how to do.

So this one was not difficult because I’m doing it like I would any scene. And you need what adds up to making it exciting is the shots of the story. Someone is shooting and someone is running. You’re always going to look for the greatest shot you can find when you’re standing there. ‘Oh, looking straight down, that’s pretty cool and helps to tell the story.’ So there’s no influence on something like this, you’re just living up to a scene and how to really be there emotionally.

And then when it came to deploying different tricks and moves, I don’t even know where to start and end, because we would look at hundreds of things for every scene, and how like, ‘Okay cool. How should we go about this to get the feeling that we’re looking for?’ To really see her in action for the first time or in the beach battle to be, again, I was in her point-of-view for the the beach battle where you’re watching and like, ‘Woah, what is going on?’ Someone is seeing a battle for the first time, which is different than if your question is who is going to win.

If your question is, ‘Woah, warfare!’ that’s a different approach than ‘who’s going to win, who’s going to win?!’ And you’re going to shoot it differently and approach it and how to get those shots, and what those shots are. You look at all different kinds of influences. But I mean that’s the interesting thing I cared about from telling this story from completely inside her point-of-view for the most part.

What was your inspiration for your Themyscira?

My Themyscira? The same as Steve Trevor. I want it to feel like what that should feel like now. So Steve Trevor, I want him to make me fall in love with him like a guy that I don’t feel sorry for. And Themyscira, so much of what classic Themyscira is, is selling exotic magic. But a lot of it is dated, like the Roman columns. We’ve all been all over the world much more now. Is it that hitting the same tone?

So what is taking that same classic thing but making it feel like what Themyscira should feel like? Where you say, ‘Woah, that looks almost real but it’s so magical, I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.’ So that was it. I was like taking the many things from the lores, different influences but always marching toward someplace you’re desperate to go that feels absolutely real.

Nowadays with a half dozen (or more!) cape-and-cowl movies being released each year, it’s easy to take for granted what filmmakers like Richard Donner and Tim Burton did for the superhero genre. Prior to their decade-apart DC superhero epics, the form was largely viewed by the mainstream as stuff meant to distract the little ones and shut-ins. This seemed especially true for Batman.

But if Donner made people believe a man could fly, Burton made them believe he could also be psychotic enough to dress up like a bat and beat up crazed clowns. Batman was more than a hit movie in 1989; it was a pop culture phenomenon that could be felt on every T-shirt, poster, and trading card being hawked that summer. As the film that buried the Adam West image of the Caped Crusader, Batman proved to a global audience that the story of Bruce Wayne could be one filled with brooding trauma and fanciful daydreams that crept into our nightmares. It out-grossed Ghostbusters II and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that summer, and went on to be the highest grossing film of all-time up to that point with over $400 million worldwide.

It's no surprise then that Warner Bros. fast-tracked a sequel (putting Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian on permanent vacation), and the dream team of Tim Burton and Michael Keaton were back for more with 1992’s Batman Returns. That movie was a saturating force in pop culture as well, appearing on lunchboxes, backpacks, and, of course, McDonald’s Happy Meals. It also grossed an undeniably profitable $266 million in worldwide box office receipts. Nevertheless, the hue of Batman’s signal in the sky experienced substantial and immediate changes.

Within the relatively short span of three years, which marked the distance between Batman Returns and Batman Forever, the series not only underwent a facelift, but had a full-on reboot before the word even existed in Hollywood lexicon. Michael Keaton became Val Kilmer, the Art Deco hellscape that was Anton Furst and Bo Welch’s Gotham City became an Andy Warhol inspired Las Vegas party on steroids, and Tim Burton’s tearful angst for the mythology’s rotating cast of freaks turned into Joel Schumacher‘s “toyetic” Happy Meal generator.

In fact, if it weren’t for the inclusions of Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth and Pat Hingle as the perpetually underused Commissioner Gordon, there would be nothing to connect Batman Forever with the two films that came before it. And that is exactly the way Warner Bros. wanted it.

Watch Batman Forever on Amazon

Tim Burton’s Batman 3never happened because of the reaction to Batman Returns, which was swift and brutal throughout the press.

The screenwriter of Batman Returns, Daniel Waters said he was aware of the potential backlash immediately. As a subversive voice who made his bones on the cult classic dark comedy about teen murder and suicide, Heathers, Waters was one of the driving forces that turned the sequel into a near fable about the sameness of freaks, be they cats or bats. And when recalling the first time he saw the movie with an average audience (for the 2005 documentary Shadow of the Bat – Part 4: Dark Side of the Knight), Waters said, “It’s great. The lights are coming up after Batman Returns, and it’s like kids crying, people acting like they’ve been punched in the stomach, and like they’ve been mugged. Part of me relished that reaction, and part of me to this day is like, ‘Oops.’”

For the same documentary, director Burton also seemed bemused and baffled by the mixed reactions 13 years later. Says Burton, “One person would come in and go, ‘This is so much lighter than the first movie.’ And then the next person would come in and go, ‘Oh, this is so much darker than the first movie.’ And it’s like, light and dark are opposites! But it was 50 percent passionately one way and 50 percent the other.”

The most infamous fallout from this bitter buzz came on the merchandizing side of Batman Returns, which like the box office took a noticeable hit. But the financials were the least of it when the PR for WB’s bat-shaped golden calf became factored in. And it started with those damn Happy Meals.

Batman Returns opened on June 19, 1992 and before the Fourth of July weekend, The Los Angeles Times was famously publishing angry letters over the content of the film and its connection to McDonald’s. One angry letter dated June 27, 1992 said, “Violence-loving adults may enjoy this film. But why on Earth is McDonald’s pushing this exploitative movie through the sales of its so-called ‘Happy Meals?’ Has McDonald’s no conscience?”

Putting such irony over faith in an international corporate conglomerate responsible for the McNugget aside for a moment, the backlash to the Happy Meals soon spanned all major media outlets.

An Entertainment Weekly article published in July of that year quoted the Dove Foundation, a Michigan-based nonsectarian Christian organization, as saying, “Parents…trust McDonald’s. So why is McDonald’s promoting a movie to little kids that’s filled with gratuitous graphic violence?”

The most humorous thing about this public relations nightmare was how both McDonald’s and Warner Bros. attempted to downplay the fiasco.

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McDonald’s spokeswoman Rebecca Caruso said, “The objective of the [Happy Meal] program was to allow young people to experience the fun of Batman the character. It was not designed to promote attendance at the movie. It was certainly not our intent to confuse parents or disappoint children.”

Riiiight.

A Warner Bros. press release one-upped that by stating that the promotion is tied to the then-53-year-old character and not Batman Returns. “We were careful not to provide actual toys from the movie,” the statement read.

Judge for yourself by watching some of the vintage 1992 McDonald’s commercials for Batman Returns by clicking right here. Also, savor the following line for the Batman Returns themed cups: “With five Frisbee Bat-disc lids straight from the movie.”

For whatever it’s worth, McDonald’s did not pull the Happy Meal line early despite recent internet rumors, and maintained them until Sept. 7, 1992. However, discomfort over this reaction may have led to McDonald’s reportedly asking Steven Spielberg to tone down the most violent sequences of the following summer’s Jurassic Park in time for fast food tie-in deals.

Many years later for the aforementioned 2005 Shadows of the Bat documentary, scripter Sam Hamm, whose own screenplay for Batman Returns got thrown out for Waters’ work, graciously defended the movie from aggrieved parents. “The movie itself, apart from being a merchandizing machine, apart from all the toys sales it was supposed to generate, the movie itself was never presented as a child-friendly movie. And so, I just think it’s a mistake of perception. I think the parents who complained just got it wrong, but there was no attempt to deceive anyone.”

Be that as it may, it did not mean heads weren’t ready to roll at Warner Bros. As early as late July 1992, WB executives were allowing themselves to be anonymously quoted as unhappy with the diminished box office performance of Batman Returns, which cost $45 million more to make than the 1989 film (that cost $35 million unto itself).

“It’s too dark [and] it’s not a lot of fun,” one WB suit lamented to Entertainment Weekly. Meanwhile, smelling blood in the water, a rival studio chief said to the magazine, “If you bring back Burton and Keaton, you’re stuck with their vision. You can’t expect Honey, I Shrunk the Batman.”

Obviously, for any Batman fan over eight-years-old, it’s fabulous to hear what the industry perception of the character was even after Tim Burton’s two brooding flirtations with German Expressionism in gaudy costumes.

Initially Tim Burton was still expected to return to what was being called “Batman III” in the trades. There were even reports that Robin Williams was expected to play the Riddler for Burton’s third Batman film (more on that in a moment), as well as a return for Michelle Pfeiffer in her iconic role as Catwoman. However, all of these rumors should be taken with a grain of salt since Burton never made it to the scripting stage for Batman 3.

In the Shadows of the Batdocumentary, Burton recollected his exit from the franchise.

“I remember toying with the idea of doing another one. And I remember going into Warner Bros. and having a meeting. And I’m going, ‘I could do this or we could do that.’ And they go like, ‘Tim, don’t you want to do a smaller movie now? Just something that’s more [you]?’ About half an hour into the meeting, I go, ‘You don’t want me to make another one, do you?’ And they go, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no!’ And I just said, ‘No, I know you!’ So, we just stopped it right there.”

And with Tim Burton out, Warner Bros. was free to tap Joel Schumacher to helm the next Batman movie with the understanding that it would be much more toy (and Happy Meal) friendly. For the children and their parents. Of course.

However, Michael Keaton did not leave immediately with Tim Burton. Indeed, he was slated to return to what became Batman Forever rather late into its 1994 production. And yes, Robin Williams, who was famously shafted by WB when they used him as a negotiating chip against Jack Nicholson for the role of the Joker in the 1989 film, was in line to play the Riddler going into 1994. According to a 1995 Variety article, Williams dithered too long after the role was offered, and rising star Jim Carrey (coming off Ace Ventura and The Mask) “stepped into the role.” It has never been clarified if Williams disliked the script and direction Schumacher was developing or if Carrey and his agent pulled one over on the legendary actor, but quite honestly, Mr. Williams’ legacy probably benefitted from it.

Also of note for not appearing in Batman Forever were actors Billy Dee Williams and Marlon Wayans. Williams had famously been cast as Harvey Dent in the original 1989 Batman film with the expectation to play Dent’s twisted and tragic alter-ego, Two-Face, in a later installment. On the 2005 DVD edition of Batman, Williams said, “I really wanted desperately to obviously do Two-Face… I wanted to see what I could do with it. It would have been different from Tommy Lee’s. I’ve got my own kind of madness.”

This led to an internet rumor that Williams was paid for the part in Batman Forever due to his 1988 contract. Williams has recently denied this. Comicbook.com quoted Williams from a Nashville Comic Con in 2013 as saying, “You only get paid if you do the movie. I had a two-picture deal with Star Wars. They paid me for that. But I only had a one-picture deal for Batman.”

However, Wayans did get paid for not appearing in Batman Forever. Having originally been cast by Burton to appear as Robin in Batman Returns, Wayans was cut from an already crowded film. However, when Schumacher came in for the third Batman movie, the decision came down for Robin to be played by Chris O’Donnell, despite Wayans already having a two-picture deal. In 2009, Wayans told io9, “I still get residual checks. Tim Burton didn’t wind up doing three, Joel Schumacher did it and he had a different vision for who Robin was. So, he hired Chris O’Donnell.” And like that, there coincidentally were no more major parts played by African Americans in the Batman franchise.

Keaton, meanwhile, famously threw the movie into upheaval when he departed Batman Forever less than a year before its release. In a July 1994 Entertainment Weekly article, an “insider” said, “He wanted $15 million. He wanted a chunk of the gross, he wanted a chunk of merchandizing.” While possible, this seems like typical studio tactics of throwing shade on an individual during a messy break-up. Keaton’s producing partner, Harry Colomby, countered, “Money was never the issue. Not doing this movie means he probably gave up $30 million based on his back-end deal.”

According to EW, Keaton was unhappy that Schumacher replaced his pal Tim Burton. Further, “[After one meeting with Schumacher] Michael was not feeling confident.” He reportedly disliked that his input about making it more of Batman’s story (as opposed to the villains’) had been ignored, and that he was not consulted once during the script writing.

During his appearance on a 2013 WTF Podcast with comedian Marc Maron, Keaton maintained his position nearly 20 years later. “The guy who’s doing them now, Chris Nolan, he’s so talented, it’s crazy,” Keaton said. “[Christian Bale] is so talented. It’s so good….You look at where he went, which is exactly what I wanted to do when I was having meetings about the third one. I said, ‘You want to see how this guy started. We’ve got a chance here to fix whatever we kind of maybe went off. This could be brilliant!’” Keaton added that after Burton left and Schumacher came aboard, “I could see that was going south.”

After Keaton departed, Rene Russo, who was cast only one week prior to Keaton’s exit, was replaced with Nicole Kidman in the role of Dr. Chase Meridian, because she was perceived as too old to be Val Kilmer’s love interest.

The rest, as they say, is history. But perhaps it was for the best? A third Tim Burton Batman movie could, in theory, have starred Robin Williams in a role just as depraved as Jack Nicholson’s Joker and Danny DeVito’s Penguin, and opposite a returning Pfeiffer who’s so puuurfect for the part of Catwoman that I couldn’t resist the pun. Maybe Keaton would have had more to do, as well.

Then again, if not for Batman Forever’s successor, the infamous Batman & Robin mega-flop, the series would not have so embarrassingly and spectacularly imploded. Ergo, there might not have been something brilliant but dormant for Christopher Nolan to reboot in 2005 into the masterful The Dark Knight Trilogy. In that sense, it may have been for the best. But it never hurts to wonder in lieu of a neon-backlit Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones doing a Benny Hill routine.

This article first ran in September of 2014. 

Just in time for the nationwide premiere of Kong: Skull Island, Legendary Comics has announced a new 4-part comic book series based on the film called Skull Island: The Birth of Kong. The series will sandwich the events of the film as both a prequel and a sequel.

A quick synopsis from the official press release:

"The series tells the story of a secret team of Monarch operatives returning to Skull Island to discover the truth behind Kong and the island he is born to protect. In doing so, they unlock an ancient history of monster conflict, witness the primal war between Kong and an otherworldly ecosystem of deadly new creatures, and finally reveal how this lonely god became the last of his kind."

Written by Arvid Nelson (Rex Mundi), and draw by Zid (Son of Merlin), Skull Island will be a dive into the deeper mysteries of the titular place and of the MonsterVerse of King Kong. 

The first issue of Skull Island: The Birth of Kong is expected to be available in print and on Comixology on April 5, 2017. 

Kong: Skull Island is playing in theaters now.

With each passing year, the number of superhero stories flooding into theaters seems to quintuple. There are more team-up movies, crossover television events, and just an excess of all around masked altruism. It’s reaching the point where one can feel as if they’re being buried alive under six feet of capes and computer generated rubble. Luckily, Logan is not one of those movies. Despite featuring the rugged grimace that started this 21st century genre craze, or maybe because of it, Hugh Jackman’s swan song to the claws is a stripped down and bitter affair.

How marvelous.

It turns out that like the quieter, more deconstructionist Westerns that heralded a reflective temperament following the indulgences of 1950s Oaters, Logan seeks to carve out a fairly intimate character study about an aged do-gooder in a country for no old mutants. And the film wildly succeeds at its goals with bloody verve. Seriously, there is so much blood. More miraculous still, though, is that Logan is also without question the best superhero movie in years, and certainly the most ambitious one since Christopher Nolan hung up the cape.

The film makes no illusions about its Western influences. Taking a page out of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, as well as perhaps Sam Peckinpah’s own story of American legends aging gracelessly in ignominious gore in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Logan opens on a grim and sparse future. It’s the year 2029, and even though there is still no wall built along the Mexican border, things remain fairly apocalyptic for mutantkind.

There have been no new mutants born in the last 25 years, causing a graying and bearded Logan to suggest maybe they were just God’s mistake. Worse, his mentor and hero Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) has developed dementia, which forces him to go into hiding since the U.S. government has classified his deteriorating brain as a WMD. Xavier wastes away waiting to die—and angrily dropping F-bombs like it’s a David Mamet play—in a capsized water tower south of the border. Logan meanwhile works part-time as a limousine driver, hoping to save enough money to buy himself and Xavier a boat so they can spend their remaining days at sea.

Yep, after 200 years, Logan’s mutant genes are also failing him. He can still heal from gunshots or stab wounds, but it takes a very long (and painful) time. Thus two old men waiting to expire will suddenly see their lives turned upside down when a Mexico City nurse (Elizabeth Rodriguez) smuggles a young girl across the border. That girl is named Laura Kinney (Dafne Keen), and it’s fair to say she’s a blood relation to Logan. After all, she shares his healing factor, adamantium claws, and a mighty prickly disposition.

She’s also the first new mutant Charles or Logan have seen in decades. Hence, like Children of Men, she is the future they must protect. But they’d best hurry, because government bad men led by a cheerfully malicious Boyd Holbrook, a bounty hunter with a mechanical hand, want her head something fierce.

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The more utilitarian and economical Logan is in its American frontier simplicity, the more subtly impressive director James Mangold’s film reveals itself. Mangold and co-writers Michael Green and Scott Frank wallow in an affinity for Western iconography. But it is more than the sub-genre trappings that play in the film’s favor. Rather, unlike so many recent blockbusters that put on a small polish of “espionage” or “mystical fantasy” sheen to an otherwise turgid formula, Logan escapes most of its clichés while basking in practical stunts, old fashioned photography, and a kind of defiantly over-the-top grit.

Indeed, Logan is incredibly violent. Almost excessively so in moments where either the titular anti-hero or his pint-sized protégé ferociously maul their enemies like they’re Leonardo DiCaprio on a bear hunt. But while the picture relishes its R-rating too much at times, it also marks a refreshing re-think of superhero action. These are legends whose lives have been glamorized in comic books, just as the dime novel turned Congressman David Crockett into a raccoon-capped “Davy.” Still, the twinkle of myth remains here; you can see it in Hugh Jackman’s eye.

As an actor who’s played a superhero longer than any performer, Jackman continues to hold onto a passion that has long left most of his contemporaries. And unlike other haphazard X-Men movies from the past, Logan meets that commitment in its better moments, such as when a hero called the Wolverine must say some words of sorrow, and they just will not come. But it’s all there on Jackman’s marred face.

Stewart is also well utilized; he and Jackman started this franchise together nearly 20 years ago. And in what will likely be the last installment for each, there is a palpable camaraderie, like two grizzled stage actors who’ve been sharing and fighting for the spotlight over their entire careers. Stewart has played Charles Xavier so many times that he can elicit boundless empathy in his sleep. But getting to play that same sweetness in a dying mind that cannot remember which of his friends are alive or dead, or where he is, brings a renewed poignancy to his final bow.

Dafne Keen is where much of the film’s lightness comes from. Undoubtedly destined to be the crowd-pleasing favorite when the movie opens, her Laura is often quiet and remote, but she is every bit as feral and cantankerous as the old man, adding the right amount of youthful counterbalance. She also holds her own against Jackman while swearing in Spanish, which is its own kind of achievement.

Still, Logan is not flawless. While Holbrook is fairly fun as a slimy bad man who seems like a slightly more exaggerated, comic book version of Ben Foster’s fiend in Mangold’s straight ahead Western, 3:10 to Yuma, Holbrook’s Donald Pierce is never actually that intimidating. And Richard E. Grant, always a welcome presence, is primarily wasted as the film’s other villain, the mad scientist who created Laura and who is decidedly British—and did I mention mad?

Their third act secret weapon also represents more of a need for a physical threat as opposed to the ingenious storytelling twist one imagines the filmmakers were attempting. Nevertheless, even in these later missteps, the film still features some of its best elements, such as images of contracted government players chasing the half-Mexican Laura across woodlands like she’s one of the supposed boogeymen that ICE is currently being unleashed on. Just as Bryan Singer used the fears stoked during the Bush years against members of the LGBTQ community as parables in his early X-Men films, Logan is a compelling update of those undergirding themes, leading to splendidly uncomfortable results.

In the end, Logan achieves its goal of saying goodbye to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in a brutally earnest way. By the closing credits, audiences will feel like they’ve lost something. And yet, what they have gained is a superhero movie worth remembering.

Logan is in theaters now. This review was first published on Feb. 17, 2017.

This article contains nothing but Logan spoilers. Don't read unless you've seen the movie!

Logan is barely what you would consider a superhero movie, and it's one of the very select few in recent years that has decided to throw most of the things you ordinarily associate with this genre right out the window. But that doesn't mean it isn't still steeped in Marvel and X-Men lore, and there are lots of neat things, both comic related and otherwise, floating around in the margins that are still worth pointing out.

So, here's how this works. We've got everything we found here, but there's probably a bunch of stuff we missed. You can call 'em out in the comments, or yell at Mike on Twitter, and if it checks out, we'll update this piece!

We'll start with the source material.

Old Man Logan

Logan is very (and we mean very) loosely based on Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's "Old Man Logan" story, which ran in the main Wolverinecomic between 2008-2009. "Old Man Logan" was never intended to be Logan's "real" future, but rather a kind of alternate reality where the creative team got to have a little fun with the Marvel Universe.

And make no mistake, that comic was heavily set in the Marvel Universe. Really, the only thing it has in common with this movie is the fact that it features Logan (as an "old man") and a road trip. In the comic, Logan's traveling partner isn't Professor Xavier, but Hawkeye, and the villains include the descendants of Bruce Banner as inbred Hulk-like gang members. The USA is a Marvel dystopia divided up among the Hulks, Red Skull, a new Kingpin, and others, because all the heroes died decades back.

Now, you can say there's a similarity to the death of nearly all the superheroes and the fact that the X-Men in this movie are dead/disbanded and no new mutants are being born, and you'd be right to do it. 

Revealed in snippets, it appears that the remaining X-Men were killed by Xavier having a seizure. While the Logan film only resembles Old Man Logan in the most skeletal sense, this reveal appears to be a twist on how things went down in the comic. In the comic, Wolverine killed off the X-Men single-handed due to a mental attack (via Spider-Man baddie Mysterio), which led to him being spiritually defeated. Instead, the film uses that concept as a red herring, showing that Xavier killed off the X-Men single-handedly due to a mental attack.

But that's pretty much where the similarities to the source material end, though. And trust us, Logan is a far more nuanced story than the comic.

Caliban

- Caliban was created by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum, first showing up in Uncanny X-Men #148 back in 1981. A mutant with the power to track other mutants, he was one of the founding members of the Morlocks and was essentially their living Cerebro. Like in Logan, Caliban switched from villain to redemptive hero, as he was part of Apocalypse’s thrall on two occasions (Horseman of Death and later Horseman of Pestilence). His father named after the character from Shakespeare’s Tempest, monstrously referencing the character’s freakish nature. Caliban was never part of the Reavers in the comics, though in the House of M universe, he helped track down mutants for the Marauders.

This doesn't appear to be the same version of the character that we met in X-Men: Apocalypse, which would raise some timeline/continuity questions if any of that made any sense in this franchise in the first place.

X-23

- Laura, or X-23, first appeared on the rather underrated X-Men: Evolution animated series and then made her comic book debut in NYX, an unremarkable mutant comic from the early 2000s, as a teenaged prostitute with claws who didn't talk much. She didn't really come into her own until the X-23 limited series, which we'll get to in a minute.

Also note that you can spot "X-23" on Laura's medical sheet.

- While this might be a little bit of a stretch, "Gabriella Lopez" may not seem like a comic book connection, but in the comics, there's another X-23 clone running around named (you guessed it) "Gabby."

Zander Rice

- Dr. Zander Rice was introduced in X-23 #1 (2005) by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Billy Tan. His film depiction is pretty faithful as he was the one in charge of Laura’s creation and his father was involved in Wolverine’s Weapon X experiments. Before he could make more clones and market them to the highest bidder, X-23 killed him.

- Transigen doesn’t seem to have a Marvel parallel, but you can see that it's tied to Alkali, which played so heavily in X2: X-Men United. 

Who is X-24?

- X-24, the mindless clone of Wolverine, is cosmetically made to resemble Liev Schreiber’s version of Sabretooth from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Mentally, he’s more like Sabretooth from the first X-Men film. If you’re messing around a with an evil Wolverine, might as well press on the parallels. 

Not that we want to bring up too many memories of that movie, but why not just use Schreiber's Sabretooth here? The problems of that movie are well documented, but he wasn't one of them. This could have been a nice way to wrap things up and give a good actor a little redemption for a part he kind of got screwed on.

Although, I have to say...Trevor in the comics makes a good case that X-24 could almost be a callback to forgotten Wolverine android Albert, who first appeared way the hell back in Wolverine #37 in 1991. Albert was indeed created by Mr. Donald Pierce (who we'll get to in a minute), and that's pretty much where the similarities end. But nevertheless, there is some precedent for Wolvie fighting himself in one form or another.

Donald Pierce and The Reavers

OK, so...Pierce and friends are considerably more flamboyant in the comics, but the basic mission here is the same. They've been annoying the hell out of Marvel's mutants since Uncanny X-Men #230.

- Donald Pierce even uses the slur “mutie” which hasn’t been deployed all that often in the course of this franchise. It ties in with the “border” parallels with our own troubled times.

- Before the final battle, one of the Reavers is shown standing up from inside a jeep with only his top half being visible. This is a nice visual nod to Bonebreaker, the most iconic member of the Reavers in the comics, whose bottom half is completely replaced with tank treads. Also, duh...he's listed in the credits as Bonebreaker!

Also noted in the credits is the guy with the machine gun for a forearm, another Reaver known as Pretty Boy.

The New Mutants

No, not those New Mutants!

- We'll probably catch more of these names on another viewing (and if you did, please shout 'em out in the comments) but some of the names of the kids that Laura keeps repeating include: Rictor, Gideon, Bobby, Jamaica, Rebecca, and Delilah.

Rictor, of course is a regular member of X-Force and later X-Factor with the power to create tremors. The power sets of the other kids don't seem to line up with any names, but again, if we're wrong, please shout it out and we'll correct 'em.

Speaking of Rictor...Who is the voice on the other end of Rictor’s radio? M. Jason Bowling down in the comments thinks this could be an indirect allusion to Canadian mutant heroes Alpha Flight, but I still think the movie's border narrative is a little more straightforward and political.

Gideon was an X-Force villain, but something tells me that isn't where they're going with this one.

We never see any Sunspot like powers, do we? But "Bobby" could be Roberto da Costa. (ahem, more "new mutants")

Someone there sure has similar powers to Nature Girl, too.

What About Those Comics?

We wrote about those in more detail here, but the "vintage" X-Men comics you see in the movie aren't even real X-Men comics! They're new art by Joe Quesada and Dan Panosian.

For the record, we don't agree with Mr. Logan's assessment of superhero stories as "ice cream for bedwetters" but we can see how he might feel that way. Perhaps more important is the implication that this particular future might not even be the actual future of the X-Men movie franchise. It's almost like a subtle acknowledgment that the franchise's timeline and continuity are something of a mess. Either way, nothing changes the fact that Logan is an excellent movie.

Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't some cool things about them...

One of the covers of the in-universe X-Men comic shows Sauron. Created by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams in X-Men #59 (1969), Sauron is a man who mutated into a pterodactyl-like energy vampire and has been a regular threat to the team. While Sauron has yet to appear in an X-Men movie in the flesh, his real name Karl Lykos did appear when Mystique was searching through some computer files back in X-Men 2.

One of the other fake X-Men comics shows a fastball special. What's a fastball special? We're glad you asked...

That, my friends, is a fastball special.

Is Logan Really Dead?

We're going to go out on a limb here and say yes. At the very least, it's extraordinarily unlikely we'll ever see Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman play these roles ever again. While no bankable piece of intellectual property is likely to languish in a studio's filing cabinet for too long, the Jackman/Stewart era is over, and director James Mangold explained his reasoning for this to us here.

But again, don't be surprised if we end up with a new, younger Logan in future X-Men movies. After all, do you have any idea how many times he has died in the comics? Hint: it's a frakkin' lot.

Miscellaneous Mutations and Unanswered Questions

- Logan and Xavier briefly discuss an incident at the Statue of Liberty, which Logan says was a long, long time ago. The Statue of Liberty is where the climax to the first X-Men movie took place, back in 2000.

- The adamantium bullet that Logan carries around with him may be a holdover from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, where those things were thrown around quite a bit. Then again, we don't talk about that movie these days, right?

- You can see Wolvie's samurai sword from The Wolverine hanging up in an early scene, too.

- Donald Pierce brings up Freddy Krueger, the clawed star of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. The similarities between Krueger and Wolverine were jokingly brought up in the first Transformers movie, too.

- Logan and Xavier's watertower hideout is owned by “A multi-national smelting company based in Shanghai.” For real, they couldn't have said "based in Madripoor" for a little additional comic authenticity? Movie ruined! (not really, this movie is amazing)

- One of the other doctors at Transigen is named Henry McGee. Not to be confused with X-Man Henry McCoy or annoying reporter from The Incredible Hulk TV series, Jack McGee.

- Xavier and Laura watch the film Shane, which came out in 1953. Based on the novel by Jack Schaefer, it tells the story of a weary and grizzled gunslinger who finds himself playing hero while seeing himself as nothing more than a relic of a bygone era. Sound familiar?

- The Grant-Lee Phillips song playing in the bar is called "Find My Way"and it's pretty great and the lyrics are definitely appropriate for poor ol' Wolvie in this movie.

- Speaking of music, there’s a Dr. Acula poster in the son’s room. I don't know why this band is referenced in a movie that takes place 20-something years in the future, but they do indeed exist.

- Is it my imagination or did I spot a copy of The Once & Future King on the bookshelf in that house, too? That book was a recurring theme in X2: X-Men United.

- Is there any precedent from the comics for Xavier being into botany? I feel like it's worth noting that the plants he's tending are the only lush plant life we see until we get to “Eden” later in the film.

- In the cemetery scene, I couldn't help but notice prominent names on the headstones were Peters (as in Parker? haha!) and Rogers (as in Captain America?!?! not really). OK, it's a stretch, but it was in our notes.

- Pretty sure there's a Wilhelm scream during that chase.

So, what did we miss? Shout out your X-finds in the comments and if it checks out, we'll update this article! You can also hit Mike up directly on Twitter right here, or if you'd rather talk to Gavin about X-Men stuff, you can find him here!

DC Entertainment/Vertigo's next post-Preacher adaptation for television, Scalped has finished up casting for its pilot on WGN America and added a respected filmmaker as a producer to boot. 

Gil Birmingham (Twlight, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Irene Bedard (the voice of Pocahontas), and Chaske Spencer (also Twilight) join the previously announced Alex Meraz and Lily Gladstone as part of the cast. 

Birmingham will play Chief Lincoln Red Crow, a Lakota elder involved in pretty much every aspect of life on the reservation. Meraz will portray Dashiell "Dash" Bad Horse, an anti-hero whose return to the reservation kickstarts the events of the story. Gladstone will be Carol Red Crow, the chief's daughter. Bedard will be Gina Bad Horse, a legendary activist. And Spencer will be portraying Sheriff Falls Down.

Native American film producer Sterlin Harjo has also joined the project as an executive producer. He will lend his expertise to the creative team already in place led by writer/director Doug Jung.

Scalped is being billed as a modern day crime drama that takes place on a Native American Indian reservation. It will be based on the enormously well-received Vertigo comic from Jason Aaron and illustrated by R.M. Guera. The series is 60 issues in and takes place on the fictional Prairie Rose Indian Reservation in South Dakota as members of the Oglala Lakota tribe grapple with issues of crime, poverty and politics on the reservation. 

WGN America has committed to only a pilot for the time being, with IMDB even listing the project as a "TV Movie." But should the pilot get a full series order, it would be the first TV series in history with a predominantly Native American cast. 

20th Century Fox has a Marvel superhero movie schedule that’s quite nearly as busy as Marvel Studios’ for the next few years. Even with the failure of the FantasticFour, they've got enough X-Men characters to keep everyone neck deep in mutants until further notice. The studio recently added 2 new "Untitled Marvel Movie" dates to their calendar, and removed the one that had previously been scheduled for October 6th, 2017, which everyone previously assumed was Gambit, but that remains a troubled production. 

Deadpool was a runaway success for the studio in 2016, and Logan looks like it's going to follow in that movie's edgy footsteps. New Mutants and Deadpool 2 are about to go into production, with X-Men: Supernova to follow shortly after. 

Watch X-Men movies on Amazon

But as for the other dates on the X-Men movie schedule? That's when things get a little tricky. We've done our best to sort everything out for you, but most of those dates don't have movies tied to them and vice versa. Let's give it a shot anyway.

Oh, and none of this takes into account the fact that we're getting a new X-Men TV series on Fox this fall.

March 2, 2018

Most likely suspect: Deadpool 2

We have to mention Deadpool 2 here because it has been confirmed that this one is happening with the same creative team that made the first one such a good time...minus the director. Whoops. Drew Goddard is helping out with the script, too, which is a good thing. And it's going into production within the next month or so.

That means there's a chance Deadpool 2 could be finished in time and this March release date could yield similar box office results for another R-rated superhero outing.

Watch Deadpool on Amazon

But still, that's a fast turnaround. Don't be surprised if this date falls off the Marvel/Fox schedule entirely.

Now, here's where we get into even more uncharted territory. There are currently THREE unclaimed slots on Fox's calendar, which they've reserved for Marvel movies. The dates in question are...

June 29, 2018

November 2, 2018

February 14, 2019

While it's possible that one of those 2018 dates could end up being the Deadpool 2release, it's equally likely reserved for one of these other upcoming X-Men projects.

The New Mutants

Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) is directing the New Mutants movie. Boone will also co-write the film with Knate Gawley, Scott Neustadter, and Michael H. Weber. This is probably going into production shortly after Deadpool 2, so one of those later 2018 dates seems more likely.   

The New Mutants were the first of Marvel's X-Men spinoffs in the comics, dealing with a younger crop of gifted youngsters as the core X-Men cast expanded and aged. Danielle Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Sunspot, Cannonball, Magik, and Warlock will all be part of the team, making for a more racially diverse cast than we've seen in most X-Men movies so far.

Learn more about the New Mutants right here!

X-Men: Supernova

Little is known about this at the moment, but it's due to begin production in Montreal later this year. This would be the proper X-Men 7that New Mutants most certainly is not. Simon Kinberg is probably going to direct this one. After Deadpool and New Mutants, this is the closest to production.

The obvious speculation here is that we'll finally get a version of the Dark Phoenix Saga done properly this time around. We've written extensively about why that's a good idea right here.

Gambit

With Logan marking the last time Hugh Jackman will play Wolverine, the X-Men films are bound to find themselves in dire need of a new heroic "face of the franchise" some time in the next five years, and Channing Tatum as Gambit might just be the answer.

A proven box-office draw like Tatum playing a sly, shady X-Man might be the way to go. Gambit's complex backstory should provide ample fodder for a solo movie, which will apparently focus less on traditional superheroics and more on his background as a thief. Everyone loves Deadpool, but clearly he (the character, not Ryan Reynolds) doesn't have the leading man looks of a Channing Tatum. Lea Seydoux will likely play opposite Tatum as Bella Donna.

Of course, the big problem here is that Gambit recently lost director Doug Liman, and there is continual chatter that they haven't even gotten the script right yet. Not to mention the fact that they keep moving this troubled project off various release dates. We're sure it will happen eventually, but whether it still involves Liman, Tatum, or Seydoux when it does is another story.

X-Force

Jeff Wadlow’s early X-Force draft was met with vocal approval from X-Force co-creator, Rob Liefeld. The above concept art comes from that era of the film's development. The problem is, it doesn't look like Mr. Wadlow is still involved in this one, but Joe Carnahan just came on board to write a script, and that guy knows action movies. The X-Force movie would also feature another potential Wolverine “replacement” with Cable, another charismatic good guy who operates close to the edge.

We're going to first meet Cable in Deadpool 2, so you have to figure that we won't see X-Force until after that movie comes out. It's possible that X-Force could essentially focus as Deadpool 3 if they decide to pursue the same tone. Don't expect this one until at least 2019.

What do you think? What else do you think can make it onto the X-Men movie calendar? Let us know!

A Wrinkle in Time, the much-anticipated feature film adaptaion of the beloved Madeline L'Engle novel, has wrapped principle photography and director Ava DuVernay has shared a bunch of photos to commemorate the occasion. 

Are you excited yet? Here's everything else we know about the A Wrinkle in Time film so far...

A Wrinkle in Time Cast

A Wrinkle in Time has found its Meg Murry! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Storm Reid, who made her feature film debut in 12 Years a Slave, will play the lead role in the film adapation of the beloved Madeline L'Engle book.

Reid is a relative newcomer to Hollywood, but has already built an impressive resume.  In addition to 12 Years a Slave, Reid has also booked some television roles and the lead role in American Girl: Lea to the Rescue. She also appeared in Sleight, a sci-fi drama that made waves at Sundance.

Reid is the latest addition to a majority non-white cast, with the production also reportedly looking for a non-white actor to play the major role of Calvin O'Keefe, Meg's classmate and fellow adventurer. 

A Wrinkle in Time has cast three talented actresses in major roles...

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling are in talks to star as Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who, respectively. They will join Oprah Winfrey, who has been cast as Mrs. Which in the feature film. In the book, Which, Whatsit, and Who help Meg and Charles travel across the galaxy to find their missing father. The central roles of Meg and Charles have yet to be cast.

Deadline reports that Chris Pine has joined the cast as Mr. Murry. The Star Trek alum (who we'll see as Steve Trevor in next summer's Wonder Woman) plays the husband of Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Meg Murry and Charles Wallace's mother, Dr. Murry, in the adaptation of the beloved Madeline L'Engle novel. Dr. Murry is a scientist who, along with her husband, comes with the notion of the wrinkle in time. When the book begins, she is anxious over the disappearance of her husband.

Mbatha, who most recently appeared in Free State of Jones, but previously held the recurring role of Martha's sister on Doctor Who and gained critical praise in the lead role in Belle, will also voice Plumette in the much-anticipated live-action Beauty and the Beast movie coming out next year.

A Wrinkle in Time Movie Story

For those unfamiliar with the 1963 children's book (if those people do, in fact, exist), A Wrinkle in Time tells the story of Meg Murry and her little brother Charles Wallace as they travel through space and cross dimensions to find their missing scientist father with the help of a mysterious Tesseract. Oh yeah, and there's a kid named Calvin there, too. The book is the first in a larger series.

A Wrinkle in Time Movie Director

Disney secured Selma director Ava DuVernay to direct its upcoming movie adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, according to Deadline, back in February.

DuVernay is best known for her direction of Selma, the Oscar-winning film depicting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic civil rights march. The film drew both critical and viewer praise, and all on a relatively small budget of $20 million. 

A Wrinkle in Time isn't the only exciting project DuVernay has on the table. She's also being courted by Amblin to direct Intelligent Life, a science fiction story about a U.N. worker trained to represent mankind in the event of an encounter with alien life. The script is from Jurassic World director/writer Colin Trevorrow. DuVernay is also currently working on original drama series Queen Sugar for the OWN network.

DuVernay's involvement with the project is not only a win for A Wrinkle in Time fans waiting for a worthwhile adaptation, but a boon for behind-the-camera diversity in Hollywood — especially when it comes to relatively big bidget projects. A Wrinkle in Time will mark the first time in history a black female director will direct a film with a budget of $100 million. It's about time.

A Wrinkle in Time Movie Writer

If DuVernay's involvement weren't enough to get you excited about this adaptation, there's also the fact that A Wrinkle in Time's screenplay was penned by Jennifer Lee, aka the writer and co-director of Frozen. Could this be the A Wrinkle in Time adaptation we've all been waiting for?

A Wrinkle in Time Movie Release Date

A Wrinkle in Time is scheduled for an April 6th, 2018 release date, so mark your calendars!

More information as we get it.

Sony Pictures is officially moving ahead with a The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sequel, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, slated to hit theaters October 5, 2018.

The new film in Millenium series will be helmed by in-demand director Fede Alvarez, who directed surprised hit Don’t Breathe. Skipping over the next two books in the series The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, The Girl in the Spider’s Web will serve as a soft reboot of the franchise. Rooney Mara, who portrayed heroine Lisbeth Salander, and Daniel Craig, who played journalist Mikael Blomkvist will not return to the roles. Whereas the other books in the series have all been adapted for film in Sweden, Spider’s Nest will be the first to begin with an English adaptation.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is the fourth book in the series and the first not penned by Stieg Larsson, who died of a heart attack in 2004. Writer David Lagercrantz took over for Larsson and released the novel in 2015. Steven Knight, Fede Alvarez, Jay Basu adapted the book for the screen. Scott Rudin, Søren Stærmose, Ole Søndberg, Amy Pascal, Elizabeth Cantillon, Eli Bush, and Berna Levin will produce; the executive producers are Anni Faurbye Fernandez, Line Winther Skyum Funch, Johannes Jensen, and Tattoo director David Fincher.

The announcement of the release date was delivered at the London Book Fair in tandem with a celebration for the upcoming fifth Millennium book, written by Lagercrantz.

“In all of contemporary literature, Lisbeth Salander is completely sui generis – probably one of the greatest female literary characters of all time in my view. Modern punk defiance personified, she is unforgettable in every incarnation, truly one of the most compelling characters we’ve seen in recent years,” said Sanford Panitch, president of Columbia Pictures. “David Lagercrantz’s brilliant work in continuing this remarkable series honors Stieg Larsson’s masterpiece. We at Sony are so honored to be part of this series with Yellowbird, and we’re so excited to be making an original film of The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Fede Alvarez is the perfect choice to direct. Fede is an amazing director with a unique vision of the world. In particular, his talent and skill in creating psychological intensity will bring Lisbeth Salander back into popular movie culture with a roar.”

(Source: Variety)

Netflix Marvel series Iron Fist arrives this week under attack from a proverbial gang of ninjas that’s taken form as a wide spectrum of rough reviews. While that phalanx of feedback was only based on six episodes released to critics out of its thirteen total, it nevertheless signals dampened momentum for the anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe small screen street level series. However, in his response to the critics, star Finn Jones attempts to reframe the approach that viewers should have going into the show’s Friday premiere.

Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Jones offers an interesting response to Iron Fist detractors. Jones, who fills the title role of a long-lost heir-turned master of mystical martial arts, addresses its structural criticism (as reflected in our own review) and the tangential narrative that the show – rooted in Eastern-themed mystical martial arts – made a whitewashed casting choice in selecting him. Resembling last year's backlash in response to Tilda Swinton’s Doctor Strange role as the Ancient One (traditionally an elderly Chinese man), the whitewashing narrative is central to the excoriating Iron Fist appraisals of several outlets. However, Jones believes that critics have missed the point of the comic book material, explaining:

“Well, I think there’s multiple factors. What I will say is these shows are not made for critics, they are first and foremost made for the fans.”

Incidentally, Iron Fist is finding itself with sparse support amongst critics, many of whom do fall into the “fan” classification. The general consensus of the criticism (avoiding details or spoilers) is that the series suffers from ponderous pacing issues; something that’s compounded by its purported inability to flesh out the backstory and motivations of Jones’s character Danny Rand/Iron Fist. In that respect, Jones – possibly addressing the whitewashing issue – believes that the series is best viewed when divorced of political and cultural trifles. As Jones continues:

“I also think some of the reviews we saw were seeing the show through a very specific lens, and I think when the fans of the Marvel Netflix world and fans of the comic books view the show through the lens of just wanting to enjoy a superhero show, then they will really enjoy what they see.”

Of course, to echo sentiments expressed in our review, Netflix’s Marvel television shows are specially structured for the binge experience and do tend to take tonal detours as they arrive around the midpoint, recently exemplified by the shocking, series-altering mid-series developments of last fall’s Luke Cage. Indeed, the bulk of the action and drama in Iron Fist Season 1 may very well reside in the back half, which could put the first half into a better light, warts notwithstanding.

One would think this is the case, since the show offers the final heroic puzzle piece for this summer’s hyped crossover event in which Jones’s Iron Fist joins fellow Netflix Marvel television stars such as Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage on The Defenders. While stuck in an untenable position of preemptively defending the embattled series in which he is the promoted centerpiece, Jones – perhaps towing “the line” – claims that the series has great things to offer, stating:

“I think it’s a fantastic show which is really fun and I think it stands up there with the other Defenders’ shows without a doubt.”

Iron Fist will arrive hoping to ultimately prove its aggregate worth when the entirety of Season 1 makes its debut on Netflix on Friday, March 17.

There has been talk of Man of Steel 2 since the first film was released, before it morphed into Batman v Superman.  Officially, a solo Superman movie remains noticeably absent from the DC Films schedule, but then again, The Batman solo movie doesn't have a release date either, and we know that's happening. With Superman's next big screen outing in Justice League arriving in November of 2017, and with that film's sequel recently losing its release date, it makes sense that the studio would start looking for the next big screen adventure for one of their most recognizable heroes.

Over the last year there have been indications that Man of Steel 2 is still very much a possibility, not the least of which being some quotes from Henry Cavill's agent, Danny Garcia, late last year. “[Cavill and I have] been in a five-month period of time where he’s re-strategizing, acquiring property [for his production company Promethean], he’s filming [Justice League] now, he’s in development for the Superman standalone… he’s beginning to expand that world,” Garcia told Newsweek in September. 

It's still pretty early in the process, though. As far as we know, no writer has been hired. George Miller's name was once rumored as a potential director, but he later nixed that talk. The latest intriguing piece of news comes from Collider, who report that Warner Bros. wants Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, X-Men: First Class) to direct. However, they caution that these are only "preliminary conversations" so don't get too excited yet.  

But Vaughn would certainly fit with the studio's ongoing quest to get distinctive directors to helm their top superhero properties. This June's Wonder Woman has Patty Jenkins behind the camera, next year's Aquaman has James Wan, and The Batman just hired Matt Reeves. He was considered all the way back in 2010 when what would become Man of Steel was starting to take shape, but unfortunately nothing came of those discussions. 

DC Films would do well to reconsider Superman as a solo property, especially in light of the critical reaction to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad. Both films came under fire for their dark, violent worldview, something that the first Man of Steel film also took some heat for. But with DC Entertainment president Geoff Johns also serving as the co-chair of DC Films, and DC Comics currently working to rehabilitate their superhero line (with Superman undergoing a particular return to form), a more hopeful Superman movie might help with the mission statement of making the newly minted DC Extended Universe a little more heroic. The trailers for Wonder Woman appear to be signalling a shift towards more traditional superheroics, so maybe Man of Steel 2 can follow suit.

Keep in mind that there are several unclaimed dates on Warner Bros' DC schedule at the moment: July 27th, 2018 (which would make perfect sense for a Superman movie, but is far too close to be realistic), and June 14th and November 1, 2019 (both of which could work). Of course, many of the movies on this schedule could see their dates shift. 

I'll update this with more information as it becomes available. Maybe we'll finally get our big screen version of Brainiac, though.

Be excellent to each other. Those words were Abraham Lincoln's parting words to San Dimas High School in a now infamous history class presentation by Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan, but they also seem to be the driving mantra behind everything BOOM! Studios does. Over the past couple of years, BOOM! has done a masterful job of handling licensed comics -- their Big Trouble in Little China/Escape from New York crossover is a special kind of delight -- and the company has also brought iconic would-be rock and roll saviors Bill and Ted back to the printed page in 2014's Bill & Ted's Most Triumphant Return and last year's joyfully goofy Bill & Ted Go to Hell.

It seems that you can't keep a good pair down, as BOOM! has just announced a new ongoing title in the form of Bill & Ted Save the Universe, which sees the Wyld Stallyns getting their Guardians of the Galaxy on. We've got the exclusive scoop on this new comic, scheduled to hit stores on June 21st with a $3.99 cover price. Here's the synopsis:

The Wyld Stallyns are back, and this time they’re travelling across the whole universe! Bill and Ted have been kidnapped by a bodacious alien and are handed over to...their long-lost family?! Writer Brian Joines and artist Bachan (Bill & Ted Go To Hell) team up once more for an all-new Bill & Ted adventure.

And here's a look at the debut issue with art from Jughead's Derek Charm:

You've got to love the rogue's gallery of Bill and Ted characters featured here. As for the book itself, at its very core Bill & Ted have manipulated sci-fi concepts for comedic effect, so I'm excited to see how the pair will fare once they are thrust into a cosmic caper like the one this book promises. We'll have more news on Bill & Ted Save the Universe soon, and until then, as always, SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!

Benedict Cumberbatch, who played both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Strange, will play Tom Hazard, a 400 year old man who doesn’t look a day over 41, in the film adaptation of Matt Haig's upcoming novel How to Stop Time.

The film project will be produced under Cumberbatch's SunnyMarch banner along with StudioCanal.

 “We are delighted to be continuing our successful relationship with Matt Haig as well as build upon our long-running and dynamic partnership with SunnyMarch, Benedict Cumberbatch and Adam Ackland,” StudioCanal UK CEO Danny Perkins said in a statement. “This compelling novel will make for a powerful film that falls in line with StudioCanal’s ongoing commitment to British talent, storytelling and production. We look forward to bringing it to audiences around the world.”

How to Stop Time will be published by Canongate Books in July.

"The prospect of Benedict Cumberbatch playing Tom Hazard is a hugely exciting one and I could not be happier about working with Adam and Jamie, and to be reunited with StudioCanal," said adult and children's author Haig (A Boy Called Christmas, The Last Family in England, The Radleys) in a statement.

Cumberbatch, who is also executive producing the project, will next play Dr. Stephen Strange in the upcoming Marvel superhero movies Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War. The brilliant detective actor will also play the scientific genius Thomas Edison in The Current War.

SOURCE: VARIETY

Extending seemingly finished book series is all the rage these days (or has it always been the rage?). A month after Philip Pullman announced he would be writing another trilogy in his His Dark Materials universe, Rick Yancey announced he will be penning three new books in his The 5th Wave book series.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Penguin Young Readers will be publishing three more books in the alien invasion book series, following the best-selling installments The 5th Wave, The Infinite Sea, and The Last Star, the last of which was published in 2016. In total, the trilogy has sold more than 3 million copies. The 5th Wave even got a feature film adaptation starring Chloe Moretz in 2016.

For those who missed the books and the movie adaptation, The 5th Wave trilogy follows teen protagonist Cassie Sullivan in the months following an alien invasion on Earth. "The Others," as the alien race is known by the people of Earth, have colonized the planet in a series of waves. The first book starts when the fifth wave is underway, as Cassie searches for her five-year-old brother in a devestated world.

What will the upcoming trilogy be about, exactly? If you have read The Last Star, then you know that is a hard one to follow-up. Yancey said in a statement: "The fates of all the characters introduced in the first three books will be resolved. New characters, surprising twists, non-stop action, and the ultimate battle for the planet – all await fans as The 5th Wave roars on!"

Start speculating! The next installment in the 5th Wave series is slated for a spring 2018 release.

While we haven’t had a trailer yet for Thor: Ragnarok, the movie has plenty going for it in promotional material. For starters, Taika Waititi just directed one of 2016’s most charming films, Hunt for Wilderpeople, and he looks to be bringing his own off-center sensibility to the project with a cleanly sheared Chris Hemsworth. The film also features two new leading ladies with Cate Blanchett and Tessa Thompson. Yet, some still wonder… where is Natalie Portman as Jane Foster? After all, the last solo Thor movie ended with the God of Thunder choosing to live on Earth with her, as opposed to ruling on high in Asgard.

Well… the short answer is they broke up. And more precisely, Thor: Ragnarok could also be described as “Thor: Forgetting Jane Foster.” Marvel finally confirmed as much while chatting with EW. First Hemsworth himself basically described Thor in this film as enjoying his new swinging single. “He’s certainly enjoying being a drifter, being a solo cowboy out there.”

But Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige took it further, saying that with Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, he’ll meet an equal who is more on his wavelength than some eggheaded human with a finite lifespan. “We wanted Thor to encounter somebody that was near his equal and that his relationship with Jane may have evolved in unexpected ways in between The DarkWorld and Ragnarok, and we wanted to pit him against a character who was much more his equal and in many ways his superior,” Feige said.

This news is not exactly Asgard-shattering since Natalie Portman made it pretty clear last year that she was done with Marvel Studios movies. More precisely she said, “As far as I know, I’m done. I don’t know if maybe one day they’ll ask for an Avengers 7 or whatever, I have no idea. But as far as I know, I’m done.”

Not that Portman seems to be suffering from the Thor breakup. Instead of shooting Ragnarok, she earned an Oscar nomination for haunting work in 2016’s Jackie and just gave birth to a daughter last month. She also is circling Ridley Scott’s next movie.

Still, it is curious that all the love interests from Phase One of Marvel are not so ceremoniously being shown the door in Phase Three… off-screen. And who thought MCU movies only ever had happy endings?

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