§ Michael Fleming has a juicy item on proposed Captain America casting, with a bunch of candidates and word of director Joe Johnston clashing with Marvel Studios over budgets. Contenders include Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl), John Krasinski (The Office), Scott Porter (Friday Night Lights), Mike Vogel (Cloverfield), Michael Cassidy (Privileged), Patrick Flueger (Brothers) — the lucky actor who gets the role will make as little as $300,000 and have to sign up for nine sequels and spin-offs, so look for a youngish TV star in the role.

Matthew Goode Bilbo
§ Matthew Goode — Ozymandias in WATCHMEN — mentions that he’s auditioned for the role of Bilbo Baggins in THE HOBBIT:

“Now he’s a father, Goode doesn’t even like travelling that much. But just before we met, he’d auditioned for the role of Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo del Toro’s two-part film of The Hobbit. As he is the first to admit, he’s not an obvious choice – ‘Look at the size of me for Christ’s sake!’ If he got the part, he would, he says, find it almost impossible to refuse – despite the fact that it would involve him spending several months in New Zealand.”


Not a bad choice, although he is a lot taller than previous pint-sized hobbits like Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, but advances in CGI should make that much easier to deal with. What we want to know – who will play Fili and Kili?

§ Splash Page has a substantive report on the continued desire amongst comics fans to see manly Jon “MAD MEN” Hamm play a superheroic character. It turns out that Hamm can credibly claim to be a comics reader, accurately describing the darker comics era of the last 15 years, but choosing the right character might be hard:

“I don’t know,” he said when asked if he’d consider a role in a comic book movie. “It’s a tricky road to go down with some of those heroes, because they’re not flawed. Superman is Superman — he’s invincible, so where’s the drama?”

“I think what people are finding with the success of things like “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man,” it’s much more interesting to talk about the person behind these heroic personae rather than the flying, shooting fire and lasers and all this other stuff,” continued. “Although it has been interesting to see the evolution of the comic book film, because technology has essentially caught up with the ability to tell those stories.”


Hamm also suggests the perfect Captain America would be Stephen Colbert.

1 COMMENT

  1. I think the title of the movie: First Avenger: Captain America is very misleading.

    Obviously, Iron Man and Thor were Avengers before Steve, and Nick Fury proposed the idea to Tony Stark in the first movie.

    So how is Captain America technically the first avenger?

    ~

    Coat

  4. Cary: I believe the movie is supposed to take place in WWII, so that’s how he gets “first” status. I imagine the Avengers movie would then feature the modern heroes finding Cap frozen in ice.

    Still, $300,000? For starring in a movie likely to make 600 times that at the box office, that seems really low…

  5. Okay Jason – I’ll take your explanation to heart – but isn’t Samuel Jackson supposed to be in all the Marvel films from Iron Man 2 and onward?

    As for casting the lead- my pick would be Oscar nominated Jeremy Renner from the Hurt Locker. His Axe aroma surely would smell like Steve Rogers shield swinging teen spirit.

    ~

    Coat