Mark Ruffalo's world weary Hulk is greying at the temples (image via League of Comic Geeks)

The Avengers is pulling an advance ticket sales sweep a la The Hunger Games. Deadline reports that AMC Theaters’ marathon showings of The Avengers along with showings of Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger are selling out all over the place. There’s also a new trailer featuring a cute new “HULK SMASH” scene on The Avengers Facebook page and Avengers’ Director/Co-Screenwriter/Candidate for God, Joss Whedon, and Hulk actor, Mark Ruffalo, have confirmed that we’re going to be seeing a “world weary” Bruce Banner along the lines of The Hulk TV show from the 70’s in the film. Whedon explained in an on set interview to /Film this week, that since he’s unable to kill these hard to die Marvel franchise characters, he’s opting to up their misery, loss and acceptance stakes: “what’s at stake has to be more than their lives. It has to be something bigger externally and smaller internally like they have to be going through an internal struggle that matches what they are facing on the outside, so that even if they survive, they may be compromised to a point where they can’t recover.”

In other Marvel movie franchise news, The X-Men First Class sequel will be shooting next January, around Jennifer Lawrence’s schedule. Ms. Lawrence will be reprising her role as Mystique but the X-Men must bow down to The Hunger Games shooting schedule, in which Lawrence stars as Katniss Everdeen. (via Heat Vision)

And that’s not all the Marvel movie news you get this week: mark your calendars, smart phone having nerds, the date for the Captain America sequel has been announced: Opening day is April 4, 2014 (via CBR). Also, Emma Stone, who plays Gwen Stacy, stopped by the Ellen Degeneres show to show off a new clip from The Amazing Spiderman (via Spinoff Online)

The new Man of Steel logo has a tres fashionable distressed metal look, huh? (Image via CBR)

I can give you but a mere smidgen of DCE movie news. Since that’s all the folks over at TimeWarner have for us, you’re just going to have to consider yourself satisfied with this Legendary Films still of the new Man of Steel logo. It looks all tarnish-y, no? (via Legendary Films)

Game of Thrones viewers surged for the season 2 premiere with an average of 3.9 million viewers for HBO’s first play last Sunday night – up 74% from the first season premiere average of 2.2 million. HBO also brought in a total of 6.3 million viewers for all three plays on Sunday. The numbers are similar to those of HBO’s biggest hit, True Blood‘s jumps between its first and second season premieres… And the awards keep rolling in as well. Did  you know Game of Thrones won a mutherfrackin’ Peabody? I didn’t. It’s also been nominated for the Monte Carlo Television Festival Award for Best Drama. I didn’t even know that such a thing existed. (via NY Times Media Decoder, Spinoff Online and Deadline)

Btw, HBO has announced a start date of June 10, 2012 for Season 5 of True Blood. Also SPOILER ALERT!!!! casting notes have been posted on the IMDB forums. Of note is a call for actors to play “14 year old versions” of werewolves Alcide Hevereux and Debbie Pelt (via IMDB forums and EW)

The Powers pilot is being TOTALLY re-shot with TOTALLY different actors in some of the pivotal roles. Bummer! But apparently that’s kinda sorta par for the course with FX shows, or at least it’s not the first time it’s happened. Apparently the same fate befell FX’s popular Sons of Anarchy series, which the noted critic, my dad, is totally into (via CBR)

MTV’s movie blog has an interview with Ender’s Game producer, Alex Kurtzman, who says, among other interesting things, that the film is a “distilled version of the book.” And, oh look! Ender’s Game has a cool Tumblr as well (via MTV)

In adaptation news, the Image comic, The Great Unknown, is being adapted for the big screen with Jorma Taccone directing, while one of Cartoon Network’s most popular animated series, Ben 10, about a ten year old boy with a watch that enables him to turn into different alien lifeforms is getting the live action treatment as well (via Heat Vision and Splashpage)

And last but not least, The Expendables sequel is reportedly getting an R rating which is doubtful to hurt it’s box office returns, since it is arguably for, by and about olds (via EmpireOnline)

Hope you get a good egg this weekend! See ya next week.

1 COMMENT

  1. Joss Whedon:
    “What’s at stake has to be more than their lives. It has to be something bigger externally and smaller internally like they have to be going through an internal struggle that matches what they are facing on the outside, so that even if they survive, they may be compromised to a point where they can’t recover.”

    Hmmm … that sounds kinda stupid, when it makes any sense. Hopefully, there’s more angst in his description than on the screen.

  2. I want to watch the Lucy Punch Powers pilot and decide for myself which one is better. Hopefully someone bootlegs it.

  3. Re-shooting pilots with different scripts and actors is pretty standard. It happens a lot. It’s just for most show no one cares about them before they air and so no one is paying attention when it happens.

    Two notable Sci-Fi shows that are known for having done this are the original Star Trek and Heroes.