Amazing Spider-Man Sequel Has Its Harry Osborn

Dane Dehaan is the new Harry Osborn for The Amazing Spider-Man sequel, director Marc Webb tweeted.

Had he not essentially played Peter Parker's best pal with Daddy issues-turned-psycho-turned back to friend at the very end before dying, with shades of Akira's Tetsuo, in Josh Trank's excellent Chronicle, this would be good casting. It gets the part-time Leonardo DiCaprio doppelganger more coverage and maybe he can repeat the career second-wind (post web-slinger) as James Franco.

Throwing Harry, and Mary Jane Watson, don't forget, feels like more needless padding. What is this The Hobbit?!

The Peter/Gwen romance is still the focus and if Bleeding Cool is to be believed (and I do), she'll be in London. Flash Thompson begs for a bigger role and a comic-foil for Spidey. Unless J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle dynamic are back in the mix too. And if Harry is around, and with Norman Osborn having a boogeyman presence in The Amazing Spider-Man, his billionaire daddy shouldn't be far behind. Then there's Jamie Foxx as Electro, rumored to be one of several villains. And of course, someone's gotta get Aunt May's eggs!

So yeah, they didn't learn a damn thing from Spider-Man 3.

New Man of Steel Poster Sucks

They didn't put much effort, huh?

A new poster for The Man of Steel unlocked as a reward for favoriting The Dark Knight Rises home-video release tomorrow. For those of you forunate enough to attend and/or saw the bootleg footage, the image is taken straight from the Comic-Con footage.

This crappy poster notwithstanding, still expecting good things from the trailer in front of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Also still hearing good things on the actual film.

Star Trek Into Darkness Poster: The Wrath of Cumberbatch's Back

Nothing to interpret, misinterpret or get into hours of forum debates. That's Benedict Cumberbatch's back on the Star Trek Into Darkness poster.

Yes, it's taking from The Dark Knight marketing playbook and no, they're not hiding that. The first nine-minutes are in front of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in IMAX, a minute-long teaser trailer to regular prints and said opening screening for select net-press later this week. Maybe we'll know what season-one Original Series canon character the Sherlock star is playing by then.

I doubt it. But I'll stay optimistic.

Darkseid is the Villain in Justice League

I sure hope Warner Brothers knows what they're doing. But I don't.

Everything about Justice League is that kid tagging along your inner-circle. You've seen him around but don't know him that well. Nice enough, but he brings nothing to the table. He just nods, in annoying agreement, to whatever you, or your pals, said. He wants to be a part of the gang, because he likes what he sees. From the outside looking in.

Marvel took one of the biggest risks of our time, to the point of sacrificing the quality of sure-thing Iron Man 2 and large portions of Captain America. All in the interest of painting a wider landscape to the cinematic universe they created. To lead the way to The Avengers, and when that succeeded so spectacularly, that risk was forgotten. Justice League wants in on that action.

Latino Review, scoop kings who unearthed among other things Christian Bale as Batman, Heath Ledger as the Joker (Remember when that stirred up the Interwebs) and David Goyer penning The Man of Steel, say Warner Brothers has settled on the baddie for Justice League: Darkseid.

DC's biggest villain, the intergalactic conqueror was chiefly a physical advisory for Superman. Imagine Zack Snyder visualizing that smack-down versus Henry Cavill. Not a coincidence he bears striking resemblance to Thanos; the death-obsessed tyrant whose cameo in the closing minute(s) of The Avengers caused "Who's the purple dude?" reactions from 95% of the audience. All signs point to his being the villain for The Avengers 2, scheduled to drop May 2015. Opening the same summer Warner Brothers is scrambling to have Justice League out.

Part of me still thinks if Snyder's Superman redo over registers, the studio will get their heads outta their asses and steer direction towards a sequel for 2015 instead of Justice League. There just isn't time, tracks laid down onscreen (Assuming the rumors of Joseph Gordon-Levitt fully accepting the cape-and-cowl transpire) to properly connect the dots and we still have to see how The Man of Steel does.

And again, everyone can see from miles away how desperate you look, Warner Brothers. Don't be that tag-along kid. Set your own path, make your own moves independent of how (well) Marvel did. This is a fight you can't win.

Weekend Box Office: November 30 - December 2

Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1.  The Twilight Saga:  Breaking Dawn Part 2 - $17.4 million

2.  Skyfall - $17 million

3.  Lincoln - $13.509 million

4.  Rise of the Guardians - $13.500 million

5.  Life of Pi - $12 million

6.  Wreck-It Ralph - $7.02 million

7.  Killing Them Softly - $7 million

8.  Red Dawn - $6.5 million

9.  Flight - $4.5 million

10.  The Collection - $3.4 million

In what was basically a repeat of last weekend's box office results, Breaking Dawn 2 took the top spot for the third weekend in a row with $17.4 million.  The Twilight finale cruised past Skyfall's $246 million domestically to bring its total U.S. box office to $254 million.  But don't feel too badly for James Bond, as Skyfall continues to do blockbuster business both here and overseas, earning $869 million worldwide so far.

Proving that legendary U.S. presidents can be just as popular as teenage vampires and superspies, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln earned another $13.5 million this weekend, bringing its domestic total to $83 million.  It was almost neck-and-neck with Rise in the Guardians, which continued to sputter in its second weekend, earning about $9000 less than Lincoln and only $48 million total since opening over the long Thanksgiving weekend.  Life of Pi, on the other hand, did well in its second weekend, dropping only 46% to earn $12 million. 

New releases went mostly unnoticed this weekend, as Brad Pitt's Killing Them Softly went quietly with just $7 million.  The Collection, a horror sequel to Saw-wannabe The Collector, flopped with just $3.4 million.

Another quiet weekend is in store next week, when Gerard Butler's Playing For Keeps tries to swoon away some of the Twilight audience.  Good luck with that.  And the weekend after that is The Hobbit, which at this point can't come soon enough.

New 'Die Hard' Featurette Promises Lots of Action but R-Rating Still Questionable

20th Century Fox has released a new featurette for their February 14th release of A Good Day to Die Hard, the 5th entry in the Die Hard franchise.

In this clip, we're given a good look at John McClane's son, Jack (Jai Courtney), who is revealed to be a deep cover CIA agent.

One thing to take away from the short, 5 seconds of dialogue between McClane Senior and Junior is that Bruce Willis looks to be acting like John McClane again, though that could be wishful thinking for such a short sample size.

Here's hoping the film lands an R-rating at least:

Since the first "Die Hard" in 1988, John McClane has found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the skills and attitude to always be the last man standing, making him enemy #1 for terrorists the world over. Now, McClane faces his greatest challenge ever, this time on an international stage, when his estranged son Jack is caught up in the daring prison escape of a rogue Russian leader, and father and son McClane must work together to keep each other alive and keep the world safe for democracy.

Source: ComingSoon.net

Les Miserables: Five New Clips

Universal Pictures has released five new clips from the upcoming movie musical Les Miserables, which opens in theaters on December 25th.  I've put them in sequence order below, with some setup for those unfamiliar with the story:

Clip #1:  "Javert Releases Prisoner 24601 on Parole"

This is where Les Mis starts, with Jean Valjean, aka Prisoner 24601, being released on parole after spending 19 years on a chain gang for stealing a loaf of bread.  The police Inspector Javert is giving him his release papers (and fans of the musical will notice some lyric changes here), that Valjean must show wherever he goes, forever marking him as a convict, despite having served his time in prison:

Clip #2:  "At the End of the Day"

After breaking parole, Valjean changes his identity to Monsieur Madeleine, and becomes a successful and respected factory owner and mayor.  When Fantine, one of his factory workers, is discovered to have an illegitimate daughter, she is cruelly fired from her job and thrown out into the street, begging Madeleine/Valjean for help:

Clip #3:  "Who Am I?"

Javert and Valjean cross paths again, after Valjean rescues a man pinned by a runaway cart.  Javert remarks that the remarkable strength of "Monsieur Madeleine" reminds him of a parole breaker, Jean Valjean, who had recently been re-arrested and was about to appear in court.  Knowing that Javert has the wrong man, Valjean contemplates what to do next:

Clip #4:  "A Heart Full of Love"

Cosette, the daughter of Fantine who's been raised by Jean Valjean, is now grown up and has fallen in love with Marius, a young student revolutionary.  The two meet in secret, while Eponine, who is also madly in love with Marius, looks on with envy:

Clip #5:  "On My Own"

Knowing that Marius loves Cosette and not her, a broken-hearted Eponine takes small comfort in still imagining them as a couple, even though she knows that it will never happen:

Wow.  And we really haven't seen any of the barricade stuff yet.  Looks amazing.

Hugh Jackman Joining 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'

I'll come out and state it: before the end of the year you will see pretty much every member of the original X-Men cast - from James Marsden to Famke Janssen to Rebecca Romijn - joining this film.  This is the X-Men 3 Bryan Singer never got the chance to make and is the closest he is going to get while sequel-izing X-Men: First Class.

Anyway, unless you're head's been under a rock for the past couple days, you've probably heard by now that both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen will be joining X-Men: Days of Future Past along with returning cast members James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult.

Now comes word that Wolverine himself - Hugh Jackman - will be taking part in the X-Men fan's dream film as well.

Jackman, who stars in next year's stand-alone Wolverine film, The Wolverine, did a hilarious cameo in First Class and led many to believe he would be coming back for more in DoFP.  With original director Bryan Singer on-board, it was almost a certainty.

Days of Future Past is a classic storyline that unfolded in two issues of Marvel Comics' Uncanny X-Men in 1981, from writer Chris Claremont and artists John Byrne and Terry Austin. The story was partially set in an alternate future where surviving mutants have been penned in concentration camps, giant robots called Sentinels patrol America, and most of the X-Men have been hunted and killed. In the present day, the X-Men were forced to stop a key event from unfolding in order to keep that future from occurring.

I'll go out on a limb, but I think this film is going to kick ass.

X-Men: Days of Future Past hits theaters July 18th, 2014.

Source: Heat Vision

Final Django Unchained Trailer Dials Back Tarantino-Isms

All the 70s slobbering homages are gone, and this final Django Unchained trailer, from Yahoo! Movies, is better for it. Don't even mind using hip-hop music in the background (my number-one pet peeve with trailer cutting).

Never doubted Quentin Tarantino would deliver. Everything shown from Django had a "Been there, done that" feeling is all. Save for Death Proof, which he just today acknowledged as his worst film (He's correct), he hasn't disappointed and as with Inglorious Basterds publicly released the script for all to read. How fearless is that?

Let the Pacific Rim Viral Marketing Begin

Blue prints of the Jaeger (the sky-scrapper sized robots used to save humanity) courtesy of Wired and videos from the Kaiju Emergency Alert System and "news reports" of San Francisco under attack.

This is more like it. Stop telling us how cool Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim looks, and show us. Trailer should be up relatively soon.