Marvel has not made any kind of official statement but we will take the word of Nick Fury himself, Samuel L. Jackson, as confirmation. Jackson was asked about the giant sequel to The Avengers by The Wall Street Journal and had this to say:
“I don’t think we begin shooting before March of next year. I know we’re shooting in London, that James Spader is Ultron and going to be the bad guy, and that we added Ms. [Elizabeth] Olsen [who will play the Scarlet Witch], but I don’t know what she’s doing, if she’s on the inside or the outside. I haven’t seen a script.”
If you do not know Elizabeth Olsen, she is the younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley and has not gone batsh** crazy yet, so that is a win. She can be seen in Spike Lee’s remake of Oldboy this year and in the Godzilla reboot next year.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Kick-Ass is in talks to take the role of Scarlet Witch’s twin brother, Quicksilver.
The Avengers: Age of Ultron releases on May 1, 2015.
Joss Whedon has found his villain for the sequel to The Avengers and my excitement just went from 10 to Alan Shore. The star of Boston Legal and the new fall show The Blacklist will take on the role of Ultron in the 2015 movie. It is not known if it will be only voice work or if there will be any motion capture involved.
I think this is another home run for The Avengers sequel. I am a huge Spader fan and he is only going to add quality to the movie. Who doesn’t want to see Robert California whip The Avengers ass?
The Avengers: Age of Ultron releases on May 1, 2015.
In an interview with MTV, director Joss Whedon gave some insight on his sequel to [amazon_link id=”B0083SBJXS” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]The Avengers[/amazon_link], Age of Ultron. He said that Black Widow will still be an integral part of the second film:
“Natasha is a huge part of the sequel, because you do want to concentrate on the people who don’t have their own franchises. Although she’s in ‘Cap 2,’ [and] she’s great. She was the most fun for me because she’s not a hero, you know, and it’s something that I read—and I feel bad that I can’t remember who wrote the book—but it’s in one of the books explaining, ‘These guys are heroes, you are a spy. It’s a different thing—it’s a different skill set—and you don’t have their moral high ground or any of that good stuff.’ And that just makes her so interesting to me. So yeah, the stuff I’ve got going on with her in the second one is killer.”
I know many people have had problems with the Black Widow character, but Whedon can put as much ScarJo on screen as he wants and I will thank him for it.
The director is also excited about having Hawkeye be a full member of the team this go round:
“It’s very much a global Avengers film. A lot of the movie has to do with their place not just in America, but the world. Part of the fun for me, definitely this time around, is writing Hawkeye. He did get possessed pretty early by a bad guy and had to walk around all scowly for most of the movie, so now it’s nice to actually have the character there and see him interact with the other guys.”
Joss Whedon has shed some light on his just announced sequel to The Avengers, Age of Ultron. Once again, Whedon makes us internet guessers look foolish by saying that this will be a completely new origin for the character of Ultron. His script is going to bring in the robotic terror in a new way. So no Hank Pym…yet. Whedon also said that since this will be a new story that this past years Age of Ultron story will have no bearing on the next Avengers film.
Check out the interview he gave for Marvel at Comic-Con just after the announcement:
You knew Marvel could not leave San Diego Comic-Con without something pertaining to The Avengers right? At the end of the panel which featured Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy, Joss Whedon came out on stage and announced the title for his follow-up to the second biggest movie of all time.
The Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Not exactly what anyone was expecting huh? I think most thought that Thanos would be the big bad in the second Avengers film, but this tells me that he will most likely be held off until #3. Why would you have him be the villain in the second film where he doesn’t even have top billing?
The title does (possibly) reveal a few things about the upcoming Marvel cinematic universe. We know that Vin Diesel has been teasing his future work with Marvel and the fact that Ultron will be the villain in Avengers 2 almost guarantees that he will be cast as The Vision, who was created by Ultron. The villain also may be the segue into the Ant-Man movie with the robotic terror being a creation of Hank Pym himself.
Marvel certainly got a lot of people talking now about the next Avengers, but was it enough to trump the DC announcement of the Batman/Superman movie?
In a recent interview, Joss Whedon announced that he will not direct Avengers 2 unless Robert Downey, Jr. returns as Iron Man.
“He is Iron Man in the way that Sean Connery was James Bond. I have no intention of making Avengers 2 without him, nor do I think I’ll be called upon to do that. I don’t think it’s in my interest, Marvel’s interest, or his interest, and I think everything will be fine.”
Now that ABC has officially picked up Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (was there any doubt?), we can all begin salivating over the trailer that was just released for it and not so patiently wait for September to exactly figure out how Coulson lives.
Joss Whedon directed the pilot and will consult and produce the rest of the first season.
Joss Whedon may be Hollywood’s golden boy now, but back in the late 90’s he was a promising writer and show runner who had a cult hit show on television. Many were excited to see him get the opportunity to try his hand at the fourth Alien movie, but when Alien: Resurrection was released it…..well it sucked. Joss Whedon knows this and he still has to live with that even though the studio made a lot of changes to his initial script that he had no control over.
In an interview with Total Film, Whedon discusses what it was like to see things changed and how it feels to have his name attached to the film.
“Casting is storytelling, I wrote two characters for Alien: Resurrection and their arc was that you would not know what way they were going to go. One of them turned out to be insane – and what do they do? They call Brad Dourif. So there is no plot twist. Brad is a very good actor but he has been pigeonholed into these roles. Then they cast J.E. Freeman as a thug – and his character was also supposed to be a mystery. So there you go again – the mystery is gone. Those are just a couple of examples because there are thousands of them when it comes to Alien: Resurrection.”
Whedon gets brutally honest when asked about being involved in the Alien legacy.
“Yeah – you don’t ever get over it. When you are making a movie you are making something that is going to last forever, especially now with the internet. So there is always going to be a shitty Alien movie out there. A shitty Alien movie with my name on it.”
He also had quite the interesting name for last year’s Prometheus.
“Yes, I did see Pro-meaningless,” he joked. “In all seriousness,Alien: Resurrection was, I thought, the lowest I could ever feel. And then they cancelled Firefly. ‘Yup, there you go. That’s me feeling even lower.’ Let me quote King Lear – ‘The worst is not, so long as we can say, ”This is the worst.”
Well here is another reason to be even more excited for Iron Man 3 this May. Marvel president Kevin Feige has been making the rounds building up the hype machine for the Shane Black directed sequel and in a recent interview he may have gave the biggest reason to think that Iron Man 3 may be the best Marvel movie yet.
“There are a lot of suits in this movie. While it is both a movie in which he spends quite a bit of time outside of the suit, as you see it’s not working and he’s — and he’s with Ty in Tennessee, by the end of it we reveal that underneath the house, which is now covered with rubble, he’s got dozens and dozens of suits.
And once, throughout the course of the movie, and all that rubble gets pulled aside by construction cranes, just when he needs them, he calls them to the rescue and we have what I think is the biggest most action-packed finale we’ve had. I showed the film to Joss Whedon, who is our writer-director of Avengers and who is currently working on Avengers 2, and he saw the finale of this and he goes, ‘Now what am I supposed to do now? What am I going to do in Avengers 2?’”
So the ending of Iron Man 3 has Joss Whedon wondering how is going to top it in Avengers 2? Consider my excitement level at maximum thanks to Whedon and his damn opinion.
One of the best things about [amazon_link id=”B001KVZ6HK” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]The Avengers[/amazon_link] becoming a massive hit last year is that more people than just nerd culture want to know what Joss Whedon thinks about other Hollywood features. And true to form, he does not mind giving his blatantly honest opinion about things.
Take Star Wars for instance. In a recent interview with Digital Spy, Whedon was asked about J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII and what he would do with the universe were he in the director’s chair.
“You know, I wouldn’t go back, I’d go forward. I would want to create characters that would resonate the way that they did. I mean not that I don’t want to see the new movies, I would be excited to, but I also feel like I would want to explore a very different part of that universe.”
Whedon also gave his thoughts on the supposed Han Solo standalone film in the works (spoiler: no).
I am of two minds with Episode VII. On one hand it would be a true nerd moment to see Luke, Han and Leia on the big screen again, but the Star Wars universe is a vast place and to have new characters take over and be fleshed out in a new trilogy could bring back some of that old Star Wars magic.
Or they could just cast Olivia Wilde and put her in a slave outfit for 90 minutes and I will be there at midnight throwing my money at the glass.
