Merry Marvel movie-making machine marches morward

With substantive stories from the world of cinema seemingly thin on the ground today, we are instead bringing you a fun-size buffet of Marvel Comics movie titbits. We have some nibbles from Edgar Wright regarding Ant-Man, a crumb or two from Sir Anthony Hopkins concerning Thor, and a little soupcon of Captain America garnish courtesy of Wolfman director Joe Johnston.

Let's start with Ant-Man, who is certainly not the best known of Marvel properties even if he is one of the most venerable. This Indie Movies writer recalls the incredible shrinking superhero first being talked about in terms of a big screen transfer back in 2007, with Edgar Wright named as director, working from a script by Wright and comedic titan of the UK radio airwaves Joe Cornish (that duo having since worked together polishing the script for the first, Peter Jackson-directed Tintin movie, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn). Very little has been heard about the Ant-Man film since, with Wright instead making Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as his follow-up to Hot Fuzz.

However yesterday found Marvel Comics cornerstone and Ant-Man creator Stan Lee tweeting that, 'Marvel is prepping a movie starring – Ant Man!'. Lee went on to tweet, “I had lunch with the cool, young director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) and, as you'd imagine we had fun discussing the tiny hero.' Putting aside the fact that Lee was 39 when he created Ant-Man in 1962, so he would probably describe Clint Eastwood as a 'cool, young director', this seems to indicate that the Ant-Man movie is firmly back on Wright's agenda now that online hype-hoover Scott Pilgrim has completed shooting. Wright seemed to confirm as much when he re-tweeted Lee's comments, and also added, 'Sometimes you shouldn't meet your heroes in case they disappoint. [Stan Lee] does not disappoint.' Aw, how nice. What actual stage Wright's Ant-Man script is at is anyone's guess, but the word back in 2007 was that any film would feature both incarnations of the wee fella, Hank Pym and Scott Lang. Now while that will mean less than nothing to the vast majority of folks out there, we are sure someone somewhere will appreciate the regurgitated rumour.

Certainly arriving before any Wright-made Ant-Man flick is Thor, which hits cinemas worldwide in May 2011. Focusing on the earth-bound antics of the eponymous hammer-swinging Norse deity, one of the questions pondered by Indie Movies when we covered the movie late last year was whether the famously overblown, grandiloquent speech patterns of the comic book would be retained by director Kenneth Branagh for his cinematic incarnation of Thor? Would popcorn-scented multiplexes be reverberating to cries of, “Thou didst not reckon with the might of Thor, knave!”? Would suburban mallrats be forking over their cash in order to be regaled with such philosophical pearls as, “Strange! Though thou and I be godlings born, we can see the future no more clearly than do the mortals who crawl the earth below!”?

Well, no. Not according to Sir Anthony Hopkins, who has lent his star wattage to an otherwise relatively unknown cast by taking on the role of Daddy of the Gods, Odin. Sporting a beard like a rhododendron (to borrow a phrase), the Welsh actor recently told MTV that while Thor is “a superhero movie... with a bit of Shakespeare thrown in”, the dialogue would be strictly “all modern language”. Does that signal that we are going to be treated to a streetwise thunder god, raving about his “well sick hammer”, and moaning that all his problems are down to “Loki, innit”? Seeing as no-one can prove otherwise, for now we will say yes. Yes it does.

Hopkins was chatting to MTV as part of his publicity duties for The Wolfman, which finally opens this week after the kind of epic delays that might even shame the Royal Mail high command. And the director of that lupine tale, Joe Johnston, has been elucidating some of his thoughts about his next big-budget assignment, at the helm of The First Avenger: Captain America. Collider has a neat summary of the Cap'n A details revealed by Johnston at The Wolfman press conference, with the main points being that the movie will be filming in Britain (shooting in HD and then being converted into 3D), and that the lead part will go to a relatively unknown American actor (definitely no Will Smith then – not that that rumour was ever particularly likely to harden into reality), with casting needing to be completed by 1 March. CHUD also reports that there will be a big role for World War II gang of super-friends The Invaders, while Ain't it Cool claims arch-foe the Red Skull had been confirmed as the movie's villain (as he was in the 1990 version of Captain America, which starred Matt 'son of the late J. D.' Salinger in the title role. Although one suspects that on this occasion the rosy cranium won't, for some unfathomable reason, be playing funky organ as he tries to see off his flag-draped nemesis. God, what an awful, awful movie that was).

Mildly more interesting was what The LA Times' Hero Complex blog gleaned from Johnston, with the director revealing story details from the first act of the film: “We have Steve Rogers [aka Captain America] forced into the USO [United Service Organization, morale-boosting outfit for the American military] circuit. After he's made into this super-soldier, they decide they can't send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He's the only one and they can't make more. So they say, 'You're going to be in this USO show' and they give him a flag suit. He can't wait to get out of it.”

Johnston continued: “So he's up on stage doing songs and dances with chorus girls and he can't wait to get out and really fight. When he does go AWOL, he covers up the suit but then, after a few things happen, he realizes that this uniform allows him to lead. By then, he's become a star in the public mind and a symbol. The guys get behind him because he embodies something special... that's a whole new concept and it's one that sounds pretty promising... it was never in the comics.” New? Never in the comics? Sounds like Johnston isn't aware how the fanboys like their adaptations. Noisy, unadorned and fired straight down the gullet. Filming is due to start on The First Avenger: Captain America in June, with the ambitious intention of having it ready for release in July 2011.