After a somewhat long break we are back to superheroes. Last time around we were in 2008 looking at what was arguably the best year yet for the genre. Today we’ll look at a few comic book characters brought for the first time on the big screen, an original black hero, two sequels, a spin-off and a once considered impossible to adapt graphic novel. But first there’s a little something that must be done.

Before we get going I have to give Spider-Man 3 a second look just to clear some things. I understand very well that last time I came across way to harsh on Sam Raimi, blaming him for a lot more then he deserved blaming. What I didn’t mention was how Sony handled the project and how they forced Venom into Raimi’s story with a crowbar. This explains why the Symbiote plot was so underdeveloped and why it seemed shoehorned into the overall plot. Now I’m not saying Raimi is a saint, he could have handled certain plot points a lot better and his direction was all over the place compared to previous entries. Throwing that to the side, I blame Sony and only Sony for how Spider-Man 4 was handled (read cancelled) and I have to be honest, if it wasn’t for Mark Webb (500 Days of Summer) directing The Amazing Spider-Man, I would not be interested in that reboot.

Back to 2008, we start with Wanted, the Mark Miller comic turned big budget movie starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman. This isn’t your typical superhero but the dude can curve bullets and he fights a secret worldwide assassin organization, so you could say he qualifies to be in here. Wanted made $134.5 million in North America and $341.6 million worldwide. A sequel has been considered and then dropped but there’s still a chance we might get Wanted 2 in the future.

Released on the 2nd of July 2008 starring Will Smith, Hancock became the first original superhero movie to hit big. It made $227.9 million in North American and $624.3 million worldwide, mostly thanks to the huge drawing power of its star, Will Smith. Hancock 2 is categorized as being in development on IMDB for a 2013 proposed release.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army came out on July 11th 2008. You see, the original Hellboy (2004), while loved by fans, wasn’t a particularly big hit grossing only $99.3 million worldwide on a $66 million budget, so Sony dropped it. Few years later, Universal stepped in and gave Guillermo del Toro $85 million to make the sequel fans expected. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army was well received by just about everyone but, turns out releasing just a week before the most hotly anticipated title of the year isn’t a good idea, even more so when said title is also a superhero movie. With $160.3 million worldwide Hellboy 2 didn’t cover its budget so the 3rd planned entry is now on hold. Unfortunately with time passing by so fast and Ron Perlman (Hellboy) not getting any younger (61), not to mention Guillermo del Toro being so busy with other projects, Hellboy 3 is starting to look like a pipe dream.

July 18th 2008, the day The Dark Knight opened in theaters. Now for those living under a rock, this is the sequel to 2005′s Batman Begins, the fantastic reboot of the cape crusader handled by the brilliant mind of Christopher Nolan. Now Batman Begins made $372.7 million worldwide, a good number, certainly not enough to prepare us for how big The Dark Knight would become. I won’t make a big deal out of it but the untimely death of Heath Ledger (28 at the time), playing the Joker in the movie, turned more then a few heads and ears. But it was the movie that kept building hype and if Spider-Man 3 taught us anything, hugely anticipated popular superhero movies can become extremely popular at the box office. The Dark Knight was no different, grossing $158.4 million opening weekend, a new record at the time (second today). It generated $533.3 million in North America becoming the 2nd highest grosser ever (3rd today) and by far the biggest superhero movie (a title it still holds). The Dark Knight made over $1 billion worldwide (4th movie to ever get there) turning Batman in Warner’s biggest moneymaker and going as far as having them move Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (that was set to open in November 2008) to summer 2009 just so they had a big movie the following year, since they already had their fill for 2008. The Dark Knight Rises, followup to this, will open in July 2012.

As you might remember, 2008 started bad for superhero movies with the godawful Superhero Movie. It was only fitting that it would end on that same note with The Spirit. This is a movie I can only describe in so many words and those would be: REALLY BAD. The Spirit made only $39 million worldwide, so a massive disappointment on all accounts.

Watchmen, the highly anticipated big screen adaptation of the most celebrated graphic novel ever, came out in March 2009 under the direction of Zack Snyder of 300 fame. Thought by many to be impossible to adapt, making Watchmen was anything but an easy task. When it finally came out, the movie was appreciated for a lot of things it did (or tried to do) but not nearly as much as I think it deserved. For anyone interested in a more complex, brainy, superhero flick, I definitely recommend you watch this. It gets a lot more hate then it should, blue penis aside. A 163 minute R-rated superhero movie is not what you would call commercial so Watchmen only made $185.2 million worldwide on a $130 million budget. Warner were not too happy about that.

In May 2009 it was time for Fox to dust off that old X-Men license once again with a spin-off titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The movie tells the story of Wolverine and how he became the character we knew in the X-Men movie trilogy. Arguably the most popular of the X-Men, this was the obvious choice for a spin-off and it payed off, at least financially since fans didn’t particularly enjoy this one all that much. On a budget of $150 million, X-Men Origins: Wolverine made $373 million worldwide and a sequel simply titled The Wolverine is planned for sometime in 2013 (and yes, I am well aware they are not calling it a proper sequel).

Finally on today’s order is Kick-Ass, a weird yet awesome flick based again on a Mark Miller (Wanted) comic. Coming out in April 2010, just before the big summer craziness, Kick-Ass had a lot of internet hype that unfortunately didn’t translate into big numbers at the box office. It made only $96.1 million worldwide on a $30 million budget, so at least it made back some money. The idea of a sequel has been thrown around but so far nothing is certain.

We started in 1978 and we’re already in 2010, now there’s just one more part left to go and I promise it won’t take as long as this one. Until then, if you’ve missed any of the previous parts, you can check them right here in the links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

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Director Tony Scott has been tearing it up on Filmonic lately: his new trailer for Unstoppable hit a couple days ago, and he’s in talks to direct Shia LaBeouf in the upcoming adaptation of John Grisham’s The Associate. Now, there’s another interesting story rumbling through the interwebs: Bleeding Cool reports Scott is attached to direct Nemesis, a film based on the comic by Wanted and Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar.

If you haven’t heard of Nemesis, it sounds like a pretty cool take on the ever-exhausting superhero genre. This one centers on yet another billionaire costumed vigilante, but instead of the typical hero role, this guy’s the supervillain. He’s essentially the only costumed villain in the world, and because he’s at the top of his game, he travels the world picking on one police officer in major countries and making that person’s life miserable. It’s been pitched as “what if Batman WAS The Joker?”, if that makes any sense.

A writer for the screenplay hasn’t been set yet, but Scott Free (Ridley and Tony’s production company) will produce for 20th Century Fox. Millar added the following to a website called Millarworld:

Bryan Hitch and I would reference Tony on a weekly basis when we were doing The Ultimates. Our dream was an Ultimates movie with Scott directing because he can do the character work and the intensity, but also handle scale and action like practically no other. The idea of a him helming a superhero movie had us giddy and here he is directing the one Steve McNiven and I created.

In the same post, Millar mentions a bit about the budget and potential casting:

We talked casting, we talked budget (and we’re talking way more than Wanted and Kick-Ass put together here in terms of money for him to play with) and we talked with Fox about making this into a major franchise, something they’re really going to invest their time and energy into…The actor he’s shooting for as the lead character is going to blow your socks off.

What do you think about Tony Scott directing a superhero movie? Are you excited to see Nemesis come to the big screen?

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Today is the day that Wanted will be hitting the shelves in DVD and Blu-ray form, and below we have two videos showing us some behind the scenes stuff that you will get to see if you decide to make a purchase. The first gives us a look at how they filmed the rotating train carriage sequences with James McAvoy and the second is a look at how they managed to get a bus flying through the air. I’m surprised how much green screen was involved!

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MCV reports that Activision is taking on the games for both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:

In addition, a brand new Transformers outing, dubbed Revenge of the Fallen, which will tie-in with the new Paramount movie. There was also news of another movie licence – this time for 20th Century Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

A game based on Wanted is also in the works. The game will be published worldwide by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and is being developed by game developer GRIN.

The “Wanted” video game will feature intense third-person action, taking combat to a new level with iconic moves — such as “curving bullets” and “Assassin Time” — drawn directly from the film, as well as an innovative, multi-layered cover mechanic. The storyline of the game will pick up where the movie leaves off, providing fans with another chapter to explore both Wesley’s journey into becoming an uberassassin and the epic fiction of the Fraternity.

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“To be fair, it really helped, but it came with a massive side effect of me violently farting. It was so often and so vigorous, I couldn’t stop.

-James McAvoy on taking muscle-gain supplements for his role in Wanted

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[Some Wanted spoilers]

Variety say that Universal Pictures have decided to keep Wanted producer Marc Platt for five more years, where he will begin work on Wanted 2 with director Timur Bekmambetov and writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas.

Wanted was designed as a franchise from the very start, and the writers are going to have to rack their brains considering most of the original cast were shot through the forehead or temple.

“The writers are at work already, and those creative discussions are taking place,” said Platt

Their intention is to get James McAvoy back into gunslinging mode and we will have to wait and see what the writers do with the script to see if Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie or Common return.

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I saw Wanted the other day and I enjoyed it. Good action, nice twist towards the end and of course, Angelina Jolie. It seems a lot of people thought the same as me because it did rather well for an R-Rated movie. It is the second biggest opening that didn’t reach number #1 (damn you Wall-E!) and has already made back its budget with a total of $90 million as I type.

Universal are currently choking on money, and when they finally spit it out there is a good chance they will be wanting more. (See what I did there? The movie is called Wanted and I said ‘wanting’ and made it italic…I’m hilarious!)

Cinema Blend are saying that a source told them that Universal want to go international next time round. Spoilers below.

For the sequels their idea is to take Wanted international, and have James McAvoy’s Wesley character fighting Fraternity cells all over the world. It seems Sloane isn’t the only Fraternity leader who has been ignoring the instructions of fate, it’s something that’s been happening for centuries, and that means a lot of Sloane’s peers are now pretty pissed off at Wesley.

They also say:

It’s surprising, since by the end of the film both Jolie and Freeman’s characters are quite definitively dead. That’s no barrier for Hollywood though. The plan is to involve them in flashbacks which will explore the past of Angelina Jolie’s Fox, and allow us to meet the man who trained and recruited her. That person could become a major villain in the sequels, which would explain the flashback links to Jolie and Freeman.

Bring it on I say!

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Friday box office estimates are in! Wall-E has shot out of the gates with a cool $23.3 MILLION, while Wanted is close on his heels with $18.7 MILLION…! If they keep this up, I’m going to say that Wall-E will rake in $80+ million this weekend, and Wanted will be in the upper $50 – lower $60 million! GREAT WEEKEND TO BE A MOVIE STUDIO!

Has anyone seen either of this weekend’s debuts, yet?  Sound off below on your opinions of the movies!

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This is probably one of the coolest movie posters I’ve ever seen. It features a collage of scenes, including snippets of dialogue from the movie!

Click on the image for a larger version to see better… The more you look, the more you notice!

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Below you’ll find (what’s supposed to be) the first seven minutes of the upcoming Wanted movie!

I’m going to see this movie anyway, and the action shots are really, really cool, but… doesn’t it look a little, I don’t know, CHEESY to anyone else? All those times with James McAvoy screaming (and some cheese dialogue, too), and there are about 100 slow-motion shots in just these seven minutes ALONE. Ah well, guess we’ll find out if it’s good or not in a few weeks!

Angelina Jolie looks amazing, though! I know many a guy who’d KILL to be in James’ place in that while she’s hanging out the windshield!

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