Marvel Studios announces Phase 3 films up to 2019

Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 3 finally begins. After the launch of Avengers: Age Of Ultron teaser trailer last week (another one, containing new scenes, will be released again later today), Marvel Studios announce their full Phase 3 plan, including release dates for said films. Age Of Ultron is confirmed for next year and will close Phase 2, meanwhile Ant-Man has already been announced at San Diego Comic-Con this year, so these two movies don’t play a large part in the announcements.

Perhaps the most exciting part is the announcement of The Black Panther movie. Chadwick Boseman is playing T’Challa and he will have a cameo in the next Captain America movie, which was initially announced as ‘Serpent Society’ (later on, this was proven to be a red herring and Marvel officially announced that it would be a Civil War movie.) Boseman appeared on stage at the Marvel event where the announcement was made, together with Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans.

Without further ado, here they are in all of their glory.

2016

Captain America: Civil War (6 May)
Doctor Strange (4 November)

 

2017

Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (5 May)

Thor: Ragnarok (28 July).

Black Panther (3 November)

2018-2019

Avengers: Infinity War – Part I (4 May 2018)

Captain Marvel (6 July 2018)

Inhumans (2 November 2018)

Avengers: Infinity War – Part II (3 May 2019)

 

Black Panther Concept Art

Marvel also released the following concept art for the Black Panther. (This is so exciting!)

 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Blu-ray promo clips

Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out on DVD and Blu-ray in September. Marvel has been teasing the extras through a series of clips. Here’s all of them so far in one place.

Entertainment Weekly SDCC ’14 Star Portraits

Photos from Entertainment Weekly SDCC Star Portraits Gallery. Photography by Michael Muller for EW.

DAY 1

  
  
   

First row: Benedict Cumberbatch; Sarah Wayne Callies; Josh Hartnett
Second row: J. August Richards; Jim Parsons; Adam West
Third row: the cast of Penguins Of Madagascar; Robert Kirkman (creator of The Walking Dead); the cast of Hannibal; the cast of Under The Dome

*

DAY 2

   
  
   
   

First row: Daniel Radcliffe; Colin Firth; Zachary Quinto; Jon Bernthal
Second row: Isaac Hempstead-Wright; Natalie Dormer; David Benioff & DB Weiss
Third row: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gwendoline Christie & Pedro Pascal; Sophie Turner, Kit Harington & Maisie Williams; Will Poulter, Dylan O’Brien & Kaya Scodelario; Freddie Highmore & Vera Farmiga
Fourth row: Samuel L. Jackson; the cast of Dominion; the cast of Outlander (incl. Graham McTavish); DC Comics’ Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, John Romita Jr, Dan DiDio, Jim Lee & Scott Snyder of DC Comics

*

DAY 3

   

   

   
    
 

Top: The cast of Avengers: Age Of Ulron
First row: Robert Downey Jr.; RDJ & James Spader; Spader; Mark Ruffalo
Second row: Cobie Smulders
Third row: Hayley Atwell; Chloe Bennett; Paul Rudd; Josh Brolin
Fourth row: Michael Douglas, Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly & Corey Stoll (Ant-Man cast)
Fifth row: Janet Montgomery & Shane West; the cast of Gotham; the cast of Constantine; the cast of Arrow
Sixth row: Grant Gustin; Omar Epps; the cast of Grimm; the cast of Sleepy Hollow; Danai Gurira
Seventh row: The cast of The Walking Dead; Steven Yeun & Lauren Cohan
Eight row: Theo James & Shailene Woodley
Ninth row: George Miller, creator of Mad Max
Last: The cast of The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies

 

Marvel’s Avengers Age Of Ultron First Look

After yesterday’s panel of Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron debuted (descriptions here), I looked at the film stills released by Marvel on Entertainment Weekly.

   

The first picture should be the scene where they were hanging out and trying to lift Mjolnir. There’s Mjolnir right there. Also, even just by looking at the picture, I can sense the strong ‘brofeel’. (And it is good to see Don Cheadle there. I was hoping he’d be in the panel yesterday…)

I can’t even fathom what the second picture indicates, but the third picture makes me happy. I really like seeing them in costume because somehow Joss Whedon and Marvel always make them work in the story. That they are not just characters who dress differently because they’re unique and powerful, but because there’s a story behind their getup. Cap is back to his colorful star and stripes too, and I appreciate that. Although, I’m hoping Thor’s armor gets a little less summer-y… he probably just wants to show off his arms but I like it better when the armor has long sleeves.

The third one, though? I am not going to lie but at the moment I will say that Evan Peters’ Quicksilver is still better. His hair, for one, is a lot nicer to look at than Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s hair in this one. The bit available in the Captain America: The Winter Soldier after-credit scene was intriguing but it’s not like we get to see him being Pietro Maximoff in entirety… it’s really hard or me to expect anything without seeing more. And the X-Men: DOFP version of Quicksilver was a real highlight in any summer movie I’ve seen this year so it will be very hard to top that.

From the way everyone talks about, the one thing that really makes me curious is the Hulkbuster armor. Hopefully soon we will get to see that. Of course, we will all appreciate the first look of James Spader’s Ultron.

A side note on fan expectations and differences of the MCU films from the comic books… I don’t get it. I see vitriol poured by some fans over the announcement of the cast and characters of Ant-Man and I am baffled.

Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron Concept Arts from SDCC ’14

San Diego Comic-Con 2014 is on and, as expected, there’s an absolutely massive deluge of information coming from just about every single fandom you could possibly think of.

As usual, I’m following SDCC from the comforts of my own home, via the Interweb, and already I’m feeling kind of tired from the oversaturation of geek. However, these Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron concept art posters by Ryan Meinerding (Captain America, Iron Man) and Andy Park (Black Widow, Scarlet Witch) are just too good to NOT to be reported.

Without further ado, here they are.

   

   

Vision:

[UPDATED] The final 2 concept artworks for Hulk and Thor have been revealed (look up). And this is the full picture, which looks TOTALLY EPIC.

Also, check out Andy Park’s Ant-Man concept art that was released before.

[UPDATED] Entertainment Weekly posted this on their website:

The good guys are tired, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been destroyed, and there’s no one else for the planet to turn to when menace looms on the horizon. Everyone wants a break—and that’s exactly how they’re about to be broken. There’s no abdicating heroism.

“What you said about abdication is apt, but I think it’s also about recognizing limitations,” Robert Downey Jr. says. “The downside of self-sacrifice is that if you make it back, you’ve been out there on the spit and you’ve been turned a couple times and you feel a little burned and traumatized.”

For better or worse (trust us, it’s worse), his Tony Stark has devised a plan that won’t require him to put on the Iron Man suit anymore, and should allow Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the Hulk to get some much needed R&R as well. His solution is Ultron, self-aware, self-teaching, artificial intelligence designed to help assess threats, and direct Stark’s Iron Legion of drones to battle evildoers instead.

The only problem? Ultron (played by James Spader through performance-capture technology) lacks the human touch, and his superior intellect quickly determines that life on Earth would go a lot smoother if he just got rid of Public Enemy No. 1: Human beings. “Ultron sees the big picture and he goes, ‘Okay, we need radical change, which will be violent and appalling, in order to make everything better’; he’s not just going ‘Muhaha, soon I’ll rule!’” Whedon says, rubbing his hands together.

Completely sinister. We’ll know more from the panel later.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Official Trailer & Intros

Are you hooked on this feeling yet? Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy is proving to be a serious summer blockbuster contender!

I’ve been waiting to see what Marvel and director James Gunn are doing with this particular Marvel property… the comic is obscure enough to feel like a novelty in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but the story of the comic book (that is, the 2008 version) is quite good so that people who’ve read it like it enough to get excited about it and promote it. Personally, I think this team have a great set of characters just from the looks of them (I mean, a tree and a talking gun-wielding raccon? Those are already winners in my book!) and I think they are totally different from other MCU titles so people are going to be curious to see what the Guardians are all about.

There’s a good chance that this seemingly out-of-left-field film will trump others in the summer movies race. If nothing else, this already looks better than last year’s slew of failed sci-fi movies. Also, it has a very attractive cast led by Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana… with gorgeous Lee Pace playing the villain (if The Hobbit‘s Thranduil is anything to go by, Pace’s Ronan The Accuser is going to be even more evil/bitchy/intimidating). Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper and action man Vin Diesel will also draw big and GOTG will probably pull in other genre fans to the cinema (Whovians for Karen Gillan, wrestling/sports fans for Dave Bautista, comedy fans for John C. Reilly, etc.)

Marvel also seems to be doing quite a lot to familiarize us with the characters and the movie’s concept months ahead of the release in August. They released the official trailer yesterday and have just now released 5 intro clips introducing the GOTG crew members. We get to hear Rocket Raccoon’s voice by Bradley Cooper (no Cockney accent here and I like it) as he and the rest of the cast introduce their characters in the movie. This way, we have an idea of who they are and what they’re going to look like, if not really completely aware of the whole story just yet.

I admit to liking very much how Marvel builds up the hype for James Gunn’s comic book flick – it doesn’t have that overly smug feel of TASM2‘s major promo and the confusing way Bryan Singer is promoting X-Men: Days Of Future Past (I mean, I love X-Men, but honestly… announcing Apocalypse even before DOFP is out strikes me as an attention-seeking move. But that’s probably just me.) Now we’ll just have to see how Marvel Studios will treat this movie at Comic-Con!

Anyway. Enjoy the videos below, right after the poster.

Guardians Of The Galaxy – Marvel’s “you’re welcome”

Marvel Studios Hall H Comic-Con 2013 Panel: Thor 2, Captain America 2, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Avengers 2

Silas Lesnick from Comingsoon.net live-blogged descriptions of each footage shown at the Marvel Studios panel at Hall H, San Diego Comic-Con 2013.

THOR: THE DARK WORLD
Footage Description

WOW! It looks like the most epic Game of Thrones battle you can imagine

Very, very practical-looking

The footage begins in the middle of a battlefield. The Warriors Three are among those fighting.

The rainbow bridge appears and Mjolnir comes through first.

It hits one of the opponent soldiers and Thor is right behind it.

He slams it against the Earth and soldiers go flying.

Sif saves Thor from a spear at the last second.

Over the hill a giant monster who looks like he’s made of clay approaches.

He’s huge and angry. Nearly 20 feet.

“I accept your surrender,” Thor grins.

The beast refuses and Thor smashes him to pieces with the hammmer.

“Anyone else?” Thor asks.

The Marvel logo comes up and we’re in London. Jane Foster is there and Thor arrives via the bridge.

“I gave you my word I would return for you,” he says.

We see Jane in Asgard, exploring the wonder of it all

There’s a brief, “Holy s–t” line from Kat Dennings as Thor and Jane vanish via the bridge.

Something is wrong in Asgard. There’s some sort of invisible bridge that has been discovered nearby.

Thor goes to Loki. He’s get in a prison cell with a big glass panel in front.

“After all this time, you come before me, brother?” says Loki, “Why? To mock?”

Thor says he needs Loki’s help.

We see a hand reach for a broken mask, I believe it’s Malekith.

“Your bravery will not relieve your pain,” a voice (I think Eccleston) says. “Your family and your world will be extinguished.”

Loki sets off with Thor, Jane, Sif and the Warriors Three for a mission.

Jane looks at a monitor and says something about the fabric of reality being torn apart.

Sif tells Loki that if he betrays Thor, she’ll kill him.

Jane marches right up and slaps Loki in the face.

“That was for New York!” she says.

“I like her,” Loki grins.

There’s a final shot of Thor on the ground, hurt, with Loki standing over him.

He kicks Thor directly in the face.

Thor reaches for his hammer, but Loki kicks his hand away.

The logo comes up. It looks amazing!

*

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
Footage Description

We open in an elevator. Cap is inside, looking out the glass window. I think we’re in DC.

We see him from behind. He’s got the shield on his back like a backpack.

He turns as more people (Frank Grillo among them) get on.

His uniform is new. It looks a lot like the US Agent costume.

The music is moody, like The Hunt For Red October.

Cap looks Grillo up and down. He senses something isn’t right.

More people get on. Cap keeps looking at them. He notices many of them are armed.

More and more get on with each floor. The elevator is packed.

Cap takes another look at their guns.

Before we get started,” he says, “Does anyone want to get out?”

Grillo says something about it “not being personal” and a fight breaks out.

It’s a massive fight, mostly shot from above, in the confined space. Cap takes out every single guy.

He kicks his shield, flipping it into his hand as he exits.

The Marvel logo comes up. We see Robert Redford in an office.

He saying that he joined SHIELD to protect the world.

“To build a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down,” he says. “And that makes enemies.”

We see the Helicarrier flying. Lots of Black Widow action.

Fury shaking hands with Redford.

Fury is talking to Cap.

“I thought the punishment usually came after the crime,” Cap tells him.

We see Mackie running from a futuristic helicopter. He leaps off a building and we see the Falcon wings come out!

Cap on his motorcycle, fighting the helicopter.

The helicarrier falling out of the sky in flames.

The final shot is Cap’s shield on the ground, A metal hand reaches down to pick it up, revealing the Winter Soldier.

*

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
Footage Description

Star-Lord gets arrested, disappointed they don’t know his name.

We see him being booked on a prison ship and John C. Reilly reading off the passenger manifest.

Drax, all practical

Gamora (Zoe looks AMAZING), also practical.

She’s described as “Thanos’ adopted daughter by Reilly”

Rocket Racoon, just called “Rocket”

No word on the voice. But he’s feisty. He spits as his name gets read.

Groot, who is all CGI and has to lean down for his mug shot.

Reilly calls him a “personal houseplant slash muscle”

I AM GROOT

Then Star Lord, who very slowly does a jack-in-the-box flipping off Reilly.

When he finishes, he mocks surprise. “Oh,” he says ,”I’m sorry. I didn’t know how that machine worked.”

As he’s getting booked, he’s very angry about a guard taking his headphones and listening to them.

“They call themselves the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’,” Reilly says, rolling his eyes.

“What a bunch of a-holes,” says the guard behind Reilly.

The logo comes up with “Hooked on a Feeling” playing over it.

*

THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

This is revealed to be the title for the sequel of Marvel’s The Avengers by Joss Whedon.

San Diego Comic-Con: Iron Man 3 Panel (Hall H)

In case anyone couldn’t be at San Diego Comic-Con this year (like me and a million of other people), there were some interesting new developments about PHASE TWO of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In this year’s Marvel Studios panel in the famed Hall H, just an hour after Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures buzzing panel, Kevin Feige & Co. announced what will be the next step they’ll take for their post-The Avengers take.

Some of these updates are:

• Iron Man 3 is currently filming (halfway through).
• Captain America‘s sequel gets the title Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
• Thor’s sequel gets the title Thor: The Dark World.
• Edgar Wright is working on Ant-Man and he’s taking “the Terrence Malick approach to superheroes” to explain why the progress is so slow.
• There’s going to be a new superhero team movie, The Guardians Of The Galaxy.
• The Guardians Of The Galaxy line-up: Star-Lord, Draxx the Destroyer, Groot and Rocket Raccoon and Gamorra)

Now, I am not there personally but I have a Twitter filled with various accounts of movie websites and I followed live-blog from this great site called Coming Soon and Super Hero Hype. Thanks to them, I got to know what happened in the footages that were shown in the panel. A certain Mr. Silas Lesnick live blogged for these two sites from the panel and he gave us a full report of what happened during the Marvel Studios panel. Check it out.

For those of you who are too lazy to look at the live blog report to find out (shame on you, though! They’re worth scrolling for!) I’m copy-pasting the footage breakdown. (This also serves as my personal archive… just so I can compare what happens in the footages to what happens in the actual clips or trailers that will come out in the future.) Please be aware that this is not my live blog text. It belongs to Mr. Silas Lesnick and the websites above.

Ant-Man test footage breakdown:

The costume looks a lot like the IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN costume.

The face is completely covered, so we don’t know who the actor is.

It’s a black suit with red highlights.

The scene is a hallway with two guardians (maybe shield agents?) guarding a door at the end.

on the opposite end of the hallway is a vent and, at it, stands Ant-Man at only a few inches high.

He leaps down and we see him running down the massive hallway.

Suddenly there’s a flash and he’s full sized, charging the guards.

He leaps and flashes again. He punches one at his tiny size and one of the guy’s teeth goes flying out of his mouth as he crashed into a panel.

Ant-Man slides down the tie of the other man and returns to full size, flipping him over.

He gets in the door, apparently an elevator, at full size and, with another flash, is gone.

The title comes up, just plain ANT-MAN.

Iron Man 3 footage breakdown:

We begin in Stark’s lab. He’s talking to “dummy” and his suits of armor, telling them he’s about to introduce them to their badass baby brother.

He asks Dummy to play some seasonal music and he turns on a techno version of Jingle Bells.

Stark stands, posing and flexing. Suddenly a piece of armor shoots across the room.

One by one, his armor form, flying at him as he wills it to.

One hits his crotch, through, and he doubles over.

Another slams into his back and he falls, but jet-propels himself back up.

The last piece is the faceplate and, as it comes at him, he flips, propeling himself off the crowd with one hand upside down while the mask comes on.

We see another scene with Favreau as Happy talking to Stark through a video chat.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” he tells Stark good humoredly, “I don’t work for you anymore.”

“That’s because you quit!” says Stark.

He says he can’t deal with Stark being off with the Superfriends these days.

We see a bunch of footage — Guy Pearce’s character — The Iron Patriot armor.

“Some people call me a terrorist,” says a voice (I don’t think it’s Kingsley).

“I consider myself a teacher. Lesson number one: There is no such thing as heroes.”

We see a bunch of helicopters firing on Stark’s house, blowing it off the edge of the cliff.

Inside, every suit of armor is destroyed.

Iron Man falls into the ocean as wreckage comes down on top of him.

Cut to…

Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin.

It’s the costume from the comic almost exactly.

The footage ends and they’re even calling him the Mandarin now.

Mandarin is wearing at least four rings.

And he cocks a gun in the shot.

(Really, many thanks to Silas Lesnick – whoever he is – for typing all of that up.)

During the panel, I noticed on Twitter that “Ant-Man“, “The Winter Soldier“, “The Dark World“, “Ben Kingsley” and “Phase Two” were trending worldwide. I don’t know if my Twitter was faulty during the WB/Legendary panel, but I didn’t notice any of the things from their panel was trending worldwide, except for the Godzilla remake, directed by Gareth Edwards. (I could be wrong and I hope I’m wrong because everything about The Hobbit and Pacific Rim were absolutely awesome and fantastic.) But this, I think might be an indication of just how big still the hype of The Avengers is.

Marvel’s Phase Two is something that’s been bandied about in the past few month since The Avengers played in cinemas and we all know that movie is so far the biggest movie of the year. So many rumors were circling… and now we’ve got confirmation on a few things. Naturally, all the fans are excited about this. Meanwhile, Zac Snyder’s Man Of Steel may have come up with some amazing footage as well, but I’m guessing there’s now a bigger anticipation for movies about Marvel superheroes than about DC superheroes. (But this is a discussion for another time.)

What I want to say is that this Marvel Studios panel has convinced me that they’re taking solid steps in the right direction for The Avengers sequel. (Some people would argue against The Guardians Of The Galaxy but I have a different opinion. And I’ll also discuss this another time because I’ve no time right now.) No matter what will happen with The Avengers 2 – which Joss Whedon is still isn’t sure about directing at this point – I think we’ll get some great films on the meantime.

“Can hardly wait” seems to be an understatement after Marvel’s Hall H panel.