'Avengers 2' in 2015; '47 Ronin' delayed again

Marvel Studios and Disney have set a May 1, 2015 release date for The Avengers 2. This date comes after the studios signed on Joss Whedon to return as writer/director last week. Whedon’s new deal also will have him develop other projects for Marvel and ABC Studios. Whether this will be an Avenger’s themed drama ABC is developing is unknown, though it seems logical to assume Whedon will have his hands in it. The network is mum on what the show would be like, though it’s not hard to guess that it could be set in the same universe, just with different heroes. ABC Studios is also developing a new Hulk series with Guillermo del Torro.  

The list of big budget films delayed is growing longer, as Universal Pictures is delaying the Keanu Reeves thriller 47 Ronin again. Originally scheduled to open this Christmas, the London based film was pushed to February 2013 due to the need for some pick-up shots and additional work on the visual effects. But it those shots could not be done due to the Olympics in London. So this forced the second delay, with Universal saying the film will open Christmas 2013. The studio is claiming they need only an additional week of reshoots, however other reports –unconfirmed of course- are stating the film will need more, thus the lengthy delay. According to The Hollywood Reporter, first-time director Carl Erik Rinsch has allegedly not done a satisfactory job with a key battle sequence at the film's end. As a result the reshoots will deal with that sequence and additional material to bolster Reeves' role. This delay had a collateral damage on the rest of Universal’s film slate for 2013, with the Melissa McCarthy-Jason Bateman comedy Identity Thief opening three months earlier in Ronin's old Feb 8th release slot, while Richard Curtis' About Time is taking over the May 10th slot that Identity was occupying. Jurassic Park in 3D has moved up three months from July 19th to April 5th, while dates have been announced for Kick Ass 2 on June 28th, R.I.P.D. on July 19th and 2 Guns on August 16th.

In an unusual move, Disney has stopped production on an untitled stop-motion animated feature, which they had previously scheduled for October 2013 that was being helmed by Coraline director Henry Selick. According to Variety, sources within said the film, which had been in production since last summer, was not at the point it needed to be to meet the 2013 release date. It seems instead of shifting the date (as it seems to be customary these days), Disney made the decision to halt production all together. Still, Selick can shop the material to another distributor, mostly because; Disney had started no promotional material on the film yet. Selick is still attached to helm the stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, which Disney is producing. 

As expected, 20^th Century Fox will lose their rights to Daredevil, which will revert back to Marvel and Disney this August. This action comes after months and months of issues at Fox on how to proceed with this franchise, as well as The Fantastic Four franchise, which they controlled. Both were scheduled to revert back to Marvel this year if films were not in active production. David Slade was originally slated to helm a reboot, but was forced to drop out due to his commitment to the NBC series Hannibal, and even though they had a potential story – the “Born Again” storyline which screenwriter Joe Carnahan was basing the reboot on- but once Slade dropped out, there was not enough time to get something started. As some have noted, with the franchise reverting back to Marvel Studios and Disney, the darker storylines of the comic book and movies via through Fox, would probably lose favor now that Disney is releasing them. Fantastic Four is in active production and Fox will release it in 2014.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure 3, which has a script penned by series creators Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson is getting closer to production as Galaxy Quest director Dean Parsiot has signed on to helm the film. According to Keanu Reeves, the story revolves around the boys who’ve been “crushed by the responsibility of having to write the greatest song ever written and to change the world. And they haven't done it. So everybody is kind of like: "Where is the song?" The guys have just drifted off into esoteric and lost their rock. And we go on this expedition, go into the future to find out if we wrote the song, and one future "us" refuses to tell us, and another future "us" blames us for their lives because we didn't write the song, so they're living this terrible life. In one version we're in jail; in another we're at some kind of highway motel and they hate us.”

Back in early June, Universal made unofficial movement on doing a sequel to the moderately successful  Snow White and the Huntsman. And while both Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth had options for two more films, a direct sequel and a prequel. it was rumored then that the studio wanted to do the prequel more, mostly because that follows Hemsworth Huntsman character –some thought going in with the idea that Hemsworth’s hammer is continuing to rise, while Stewart’s reign is near an end. Since early June, when this was first reported, a well-publicized affair between Stewart and the married Rupert Sanders (who helmed the film) broke. This appears to have damped Universal’s high, but it also may have been a blessing for them to move forward with Hemsworth as the Huntsman. While there is no word if Sanders would be asked to come back, it is known now that Universal paid-out screenwriter David Koepp’s contract, as he was expected to return. This could also give Universal a reason to drop Stewart and, maybe, Sanders as well. With Hemsworth not available to film anything until July of next year, this will give the studio plenty of time to find a writer.

Former Doctor Who and Torchwood actor John Barrowman has nabbed a recurring role on The CW’s upcoming fall superhero series Arrow, playing what is described as the “Well Dressed Man.”

Former Buffy actor Danny Strong –who recurred as Jonathan Levinson on the show during its five year run on the WB before becoming part of The Trio, seasons six’s Big Bad- continues to his second career as a writer, selling his first pilot to CBS. The drama is inspired by the father-and-daughter defense attorneys Murray and Stacey Richman. It will center on a fictionalized version of the Richmans’ Bronx firm. The series is produced through Robert DeNiro’s production company, Tribeca Films. Strong is also penning the adaptation of Dan Brown’s The Last Symbol and also wrote the screenplay for the upcoming film The Butler from Oscar nominated director Lee Daniels. 

In Memoriam: 

While science fiction writer Harry Harrison never had the a high profile career like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark or Ray Bradbury, he none the less is still a legend who helped define the decades that made science fiction one the best genre’s for social commentary. Harrison died on August 15 of undisclosed causes at the age of 87. Most might be unaware that his 1966 novel, Make Room! Make Room! Became the 1973 thriller Soylent Green, a dystopian film that starred Charleston Heston. 

"He believed science fiction was important, that it caused people to think about our world and what it could become," Tor Books' publisher Tom Doherty wrote in a blog post. 

That novel and film was about population that has exploded since the turn of the 20^th Century. And while the novel was set in 1999, the books themes resonate today as they did when the book was released 46 years ago: there are too many people, and not enough resources. As pointed out by one of the characters in the book: 

“I’ll tell you what changed. Modern medicine arrived. Everything had a cure. Malaria was wiped out along with all the other diseases that had been killing people young and keeping the population down. Death control arrived. Old people lived longer. More babies lived who would have died, and now they grow up into old people who live longer still. People are still being fed into the world just as fast — they’re just not being taken out of it at the same rate. Three are born for every two that die. So the population doubles and doubles — and keeps on doubling at a quicker rate all the time. We got a plague of people, a disease of people infecting the world. We got more people who are living longer. Less people have to be born, that’s the answer. We got death control — we got to match it with birth control."

Still, Harrison was not all doom and gloom, and his Stainless Steel Rat series and Bill, The Galactic Hero series proved that he had a wicked sense of humor with those satirical novels. Those books were a parody really of the typical space operas of the day, and he brought a knowing, very subversive, and anti-military, anti-authority and anti-violence tone to them (the Bill series was really a parody of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Trooper).

Also passing is veteran character William Windom,who died August 16th of congestive heart failure at the age of 88. The actor, well known for many guest-star performances during the 60s, 70s, 80s and early 1990's, made a memorable performance in the 1967 Star Trek episode The Doomsday Machine. There he played the tortured Commodore Decker who goes up against a giant planet killer. Much like Ricardo Montalban's role as Khan, Windom excelled in role that could have been too over the top, but his careful, very moving acting choices made him well remembered. So much so, that when Star Trek made the leap to the big screen, Stephen Collins played the son of Decker in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Windom returned to playing the Commodore again in the fan web series Star Trek: Phase II some 40 years later. He was also a regular on the long-running CBS series Murder, She Wrote.