The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision Blog has some exclusive casting news for us today: Hugo Weaving is in talks for the villainous role of Red Skull in Captain America. If this is true, it would reunite Weaving with director Joe Johnston; the two recently collaborated on The Wolfman for Universal.

No contracts have been signed yet, but the trade expects an official announcement regarding Weaving’s involvement sometime in the next few days. At least they’re giving us a loose timetable here; the amount of speculation and casting curveballs thrown by this film are the most chaotic in recent memory.

Honestly, I’ve never read a Captain America comic in my life. The most knowledge I have of the character comes from overhearing conversations about the recent Marvel Comics event Civil War, in which he is prominently featured. So while we wait around for final confirmation on who is going to carry the star-spangled shield, I’ll share an interesting bit of trivia for you regarding the Red Skull. According to Marvel.com’s profile page of the character, at one point he operated under the alias “Mr. Smith.” The eyebrow-raising parallel, of course, being that arguably Hugo Weaving’s most famous role is Agent Smith from The Matrix films. Click on over to Wikipedia for an exhaustive run down of the character.

Marvel fans, rise up! Since I don’t know the character very well, let us know in the comments below if you think Hugo Weaving would make a good Red Skull. If not, who would you rather see?

The first teaser trailer for Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians (recently renamed from Guardians of Ga’Hoole – a sensible move, probably) was released today. You can watch it below.

HD versions are available from Yahoo here.

The Ga’Hoole series, written by Kathryn Lasky, is about a barn owl and his friends who flee “St. Aggie’s,” a training / brainwashing facility for turning owls into soldiers (yes). The young escapees arrive at the island of Ga’Hoole, and go on to fight St. Aggie’s army alongside the island’s inhabitants.

Legend of the Guardians is a CGI adaptation, based on the first three books – and judging from the trailer…it doesn’t look that exciting. The imagery’s good and all, but as with most of these types of films, I can just imagine it having a horribly generic plot. I’m not familiar with the books, but that’s the “vibe” this initial trailer is giving off. A young boy becoming a hero, uninspired stereotypical villains, the kinda thing where you know what’s going to happen before it actually does. Although obviously, I’d like it if the movie turned out not doing that.

Unsurprisingly for any animated film nowadays, the cast features some famous names – including Sam Neill, Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush, Helen Mirren, and Lost’s Emilie de Ravin. They might add some character to…the characters. I’m not quite sure why Zack Snyder is such a celebrated director – he did some great visuals for 300 and Watchmen, but both those films seemed pretty empty outside of the aesthetics. Maybe he’ll do a better job here? I’m much more interested to see Sucker Punch, which he should be getting to work on after taking time to do this family film.

It’s well known that actors enjoy voice work. In exchange for their name and a few hours in a sound booth they receive a nice tidy sum that goes straight into their bank account. They don’t have to spend hours in costume and make-up, and if Hugo Weaving’s experience is anything to go by, they don’t even have to deal with directors. Not in person anyway.

Weaving spoke to The Age recently about his work on the Transformers franchise voicing Megatron, and he was surprisingly honest about how little interest he has in the films:

“Oh no,” he barks with a laugh. “They’re not making Transformers III, are they?” Given that Transformers II made $800 million, they’re probably going to have to.

“[Director] Michael Bay talks to me on the phone. I’ve never met him. We were doing the voice for the second one and I still hadn’t seen the first one. I still didn’t really know who the characters were and I didn’t know what anything was. It’s a voice job, for sure, and people assume I’ve spent my life working on it, but I really know so little about it.”

I suppose it’s not written in his contract that he has to see the films. Big films with big explosions probably aren’t his thing, although if I were him I’d see the films simply out of curiosity.

From what I remember Megatron was still around at the end of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so Weaving and his vocal cords will probably be required for Transformers 3, which begins filming in June.

The movie that has taken literally years to get here has finally reached that stage in the marketing process where TV spots are released. We have three of them embedded below:

The Wolfman will be released on February 12th and stars Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Hugo Weaving.

Good news for horror fans. According to /Film the MPAA have reviewed The Wolfman and have given it an R rating, deeming it unsuitable for anyone under the age of 17 as it contains “bloody horror, violence and gore.” This is a good move by Universal as there were fears they would dilute it to a PG-13. It’s also a brave move as they could potentially make less money because of this rating.

We’ll let them worry about the money and we can just focus on seeing, what could be, one of the best horror movies in 2010. Lets hope so anyway, as director Joe Johnston will soon be working on Captain America and we don’t want that movie to detail The Avengers.

The Wolfman stars Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Hugo Weaving, and will be released next February.

Today Apple debuted a new trailer for Universal’s remake of The Wolfman. This trailer is quite different to the first one we got as it’s just a montage of scenes, whereas the teaser was your typical trailer which set up the story and characters. As we are moving closer to it’s February release date the visuals are nearing completion and some scenes look bad ass. Watch below!

The Wolfman stars Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Hugo Weaving, and is directed by Jurassic Park 3 director Joe Johnston.

Last month Universal decided to push The Wolfman back from November 6th 2009 to February 12th 2010, which annoyed a few people as it’s the second time the film had been pushed back. However, to easy the pain Universal promised that we would finally be getting a trailer, and that trailer is now online. Watch below!

I’m liking the look of the film. Dark and moody. The transformation scenes look quite cool too, and I’m glad they look nothing like what we saw in Van Helsing. Assuming they don’t push it back again, it looks like we will have a decent monster movie on our hands come February.

Yesterday we heard that Universal had pushed The Wolfman’s release date back once again from November 6th 2009 to February 12th 2010, and there was talk that recent reshooting was to blame. However, Universal have now commented on why they decided to delay the hairy one, and revealed that we will be getting a trailer in a few weeks!

From ShockTillYouDrop:

I’ll start with the good stuff. You’re going to see a trailer sooner than later. Attached to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds on August 21st, in fact.

I’ve spoken to my reps at Universal and have been informed the release shift had much to do with box office potential.

In its November 6th slot, the Joe Johnston film would have been going up against Disney’s A Christmas Carol, whereas in February it faces little competition (although The Cabin in the Woods opens one week earlier). Futhermore, from a marketing standpoint, Universal wanted to ensure all of the FX were complete so they could use them in the ad campaign.

So not only will we get a trailer for The Wolfman, August 21st is also the day we will get a trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar!

If you can’t wait that long to see Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Hugo Weaving in action, click here to see some blurry footage that was presented at last years Comic Con.

Last week The Hobbit director Guillermo del Toro told the BBC that Andy Serkis, Ian McKellen and Hugo Weaving would be reprising their roles in the film, however it seems he got a little ahead of himself as Weaving told Moviehole that he hasn’t signed up just yet.

“I knew that if and when it happened I’d get a call and we’d chat about it, but I haven’t spoken to anyone about it. Someone said to me ‘I hear you’re doing the Hobbit?’ I said ‘Well, um, probably’, they said “No, no. you’ve signed on’. I haven’t actually talked to anyone about it. Doesn’t mean I won’t be doing it, [I’m] just not onboard yet.”

Weaving hasn’t met the prequel’s director but says the he’s “really excited that [Del Toro] is directing. He’s a fantastic choice – an absolutely wonderful choice, just brilliant. It’d be good to get back together with Andy Serkis and Ian McKellan, and whoever else comes back – there’s not many other characters that could come back I guess. Bilbo is back, but you’ve got to have a much younger version of the character. Whereas Elves and Wizards it doesn’t matter – you might just have to age me back though”, he laughs.

I’m pretty sure most of the cast would return if asked and if their schedules allowed it. Even Cate Blanchett who only had a small role in the trilogy said she would be happy to come back. The Lord of the Rings cast are great.

Guillermo del Toro said last week that he would be revealing casting details for The Hobbit in a few weeks time, namely who will be playing Bilbo Baggins. However, today del Toro appeared on a radio show in the UK and gave a little more information about The Hobbit. He confirmed that Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis would be back, but we’ve known and assumed that for a while, however he also revealed that Hugo Weaving will be back as Elrond. It looks like the old gang will be getting back together!

From the BBC’s Simon Mayo show (via /Film):

Mayo then asked if Andy Serkis is back, which prompted Guillermo to confirm a nice little trio of casting locks:

“Yes [and] Ian McKellen is back, [and] Hugo Weaving in the roles they originated in the trilogy.”

Guillermo del Toro also spoke about Smaug and explained that only now, after eight months of design work have they “cracked the basic engineering.” He suspects that they will need another six or seven months of application there before Smaug is ready for his close up.

Hopefully we will learn who’ll be playing Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming weeks as Guillermo promised, and possibly more casting news over the coming months. December 2011 seems so far away!