marvel

Dang, Thanos got shredded. Gone is the lazy titan who can’t be bothered to get his giant purple butt up off that excessively swanky space chair. As teased in the post-credits scene from Captain America: Civil War, the new Thanos means business, and thanks to a new statue unveiled at D23, you can see just how serious he is about obliterating the MCU in Avengers: Infinity War.

The Hollywood Reporter recently unearthed a vintage interview with comics giant Stan Lee from back in 1977, and on the occasion of Spider-Man: Homecoming’s release, they’ve decided to share some of its contents with the public. And if I may editorialize for a moment, it’s the single most relatable, humanizing media appearance the famously camera-friendly Lee has ever done. Because the unearthed truth of this Q&A is that Stan Lee did exactly what I would do — what any of us would do, really — if I was the head of Marvel Comics during the ‘70s: mess with DC all the time.

At the ‘Spider-Man’ junket, the new Peter Parker revealed that his character made his first MCU appearance way before ‘Homecoming.’

According to census estimates, there are currently 325.3 million people in the United States, which means there has to be dozens  —  maybe even hundreds!  —  of people who remain blissfully unaware that a new Spider-Man movie is hitting theaters this summer. The rest of us, however, have lived through the past several months of production rumors, trailers, teasers, teaser trailers, toy reveals, interviews, commercials, specials, features, articles, social advertising, news items, and just about any other form of audio or visual media that Marvel could commercially or organically slap a Spider-Man: Homecoming logo on. In fact, we’ve reached that point in the hype cycle where most fans are completely exhausted with marketing. Can’t we just start talking about the movie itself?

In the middle of their profile of Sony, Marvel, and their unique arrangement sharing the character of Spider-Man in both Spider-Man: Homecoming and Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, The Hollywood Reporter dropped a fairly major detail about the upcoming Venom film that Sony is developing alongside their Spidey franchise: Carnage will appear as a villain in the film.

Can you blame them?

At this point, it might be more productive (and would probably take less time) to list all the Marvel stars that won’t be in Avengers: Infinity War. If you thought Captain America: Civil War (so much WAR) was stacked with talent, the third Avengers film is primed to blow that number out of the water with the biggest super-ensemble yet. And today brings yet another name into the fold as The Walking Dead star and MCU newcomer Danai Gurira has joined the roster.

Stan Lee shows up in just about every Marvel movie. Now he’s starting to show up in commercials too.

This year will mark the first in which Marvel schedules three Netflix premieres, including Iron Fist in March, The Defenders in August, and Daredevil spinoff The Punisher. Marvel has yet to define the latter’s premiere beyond 2017, but a Punisher director may have given us a fall premiere.

Netflix and Marvel have understandably concentrated promotion on August’s The Defenders, but The Punisher spinoff is still slated for 2017. That’s abundantly clear with our first look at a new poster, as shared by the cast.

Even as Marvel continues to crank out massively scaled spectacles, they’re always keeping one eye on the future. Ant-Man sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp won’t shrink down and infiltrate theaters until July 6, 2018, but the wheels of pre-production have begun turning on the sequel audiences apparently asked for.

Over this past weekend, CinemaBlend ran an interview with Marvel Studios decision-maker Kevin Feige. As per usual, the man was exceedingly tight-lipped about the future of his beloved superhero playthings, but even his obfuscating non-answers contained the tiny seedling of a revelation within them. While getting grilled about the fate of the Avengers franchise, its third entry of Infinity War slated for 2018, Feige let slip that there was a good reason that the already-scheduled fourth installment has no subtitle as of yet. Though the film was originally planned as the second half of Infinity War, the two projects were recently split into their own individual spheres, and Feige doesn’t want the fourth installment’s full title coming out because apparently it contains a spoiler.

In the final scene of Guardians of the Galaxy, Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord asked Zoe Saldana’s Gamora what they should do next. “Something good, something bad?” he wonders, before settling on “a bit of both.”

After failing to capture audiences with their last Spider-Man reboot, Sony found a surefire way to win us back by teaming up with Marvel. Thanks to that deal, not only do we get to see Tom Holland’s Peter Parker swing over to the MCU to play with the Avengers, we also get to Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark pal around with everyone’s favorite high school hero in this summer’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. And, as teased at the end of Civil War, being friends with a billionaire inventor / superhero has some serious benefits, like a free super-suit upgrade.

Never lacking in ambition (at least when it comes to the expanding frontiers of branding and marketing), Marvel boldly announced back in 2015 that the third film in the Avengers series would be unlike those that came before it. At the time of the project’s initial reveal, Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige clarified his plans to split Avengers: Infinity War into two parts that would be released independent of one another. This was cause for great excitement, as moviegoers love nothing more than to shell out for two separate tickets just for the privilege of waiting up to a year to see the conclusion of a self-contained story. Incredibly, however, Feige backpedaled on that can’t-fail proposition shortly thereafter, amending their plans to separate Avengers 3 1 and Avengers 3 2 into the simpler Avengers 3 and Avengers 4.

The track listing for Guardians of the Galaxy’s Awesome Mix Vol. 2 has been revealed, and like the first volume, it's truly awesome.

Marvel has adopted a practice first used by the producers of the James Bond franchise, who’ve ended every 007 adventure for decades with the phrase “James Bond Will Return” in the credits. (For many years, they even specified which novel the series would adapt next; when they ran out of Ian Fleming books and stories, they shortened it.) Just last night I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, and sure enough it concludes with the words “The Guardians of the Galaxy Will Return. (I think we can all agree this is not a spoiler.)

While the post-credits scene was once a surprise specially afforded to those superfans with the dedication to sit through the final frames of a film, it’s now become par for the course, a de facto advertisement for whatever a franchise might have up its sleeve next. Marvel Studios has turned this into standard operating procedure, to the point where viewers expect nothing less than another tasty morsel of footage, the cinematic equivalent of the delicious fries waiting for you at the bottom of your McDonald’s bag. How to continue taking audiences off-guard, then? Marvel could do no post-credit scene at all, that’d certainly throw people for a loop. Or... they could do five.

The first press screenings of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 took place in New York and Los Angeles last night. Full reviews are embargoed until next week, but members of he media were allowed to tweet their reactions, so we’ve got a slew of mini-reviews to share today.

Marvel’s Punisher spinoff is still something of a mystery; given an ambiguous 2017 release date around The Defenders, without any confirmation of episode order. At the very least, we may now have a look at the cast and key art, courtesy of a new Quesada-style poster.