Just in time for your lunch break, here are a couple of minor updates on Marvel‘s latest efforts to lead Hollywood on all fronts.
First up, after all that Marvel Phase Two teasing last week, the comic studio has announced that production has officially started on “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and provided a first image from the movie to go with it. Granted, it’s not the most revealing pic — frankly, it could have been taken from from either the first movie for “The Avengers” — but hey it’s something right? Here’s the official vague log line to go with it:
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” will pick-up where “Marvel’s The Avengers” left off, as Steve Rogers struggles to embrace his role in the modern world and teams up with Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, to battle a powerful yet shadowy enemy in present-day Washington, D.C.
Rounding out the cast: Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Redford (as Agent Alexander Pierce a senior leader within the S.H.I.E.L.D.) Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie (as Sam Wilson/Falcon), Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo (as Brock Rumlow), Georges St-Pierre (as Georges Batroc), Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Emily VanCamp and Maximiliano Hernández. Anthony and Joe Russo (“Welcome to Collinwood”) are directing with the film slated for April 4, 2014.
Meanwhile, things are gearing up on the small screen front, too. “S.H.I.E.L.D.” has now been retitled superfluously as “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” While ABC has not yet released an official premiere date for the program (we’re guessing this fall, and we wouldn’t be surprised if they find a way to tie it into “Thor: The Dark World“), there is an official synopsis which says a lot without actually saying much:
Fresh from his role in the summer’s box office smash, Marvel’s The Avengers, Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) returns to the worldwide law enforcement organization S.H.I.E.L.D. He puts together a small, highly trained, team of Agents to tackle the cases that haven’t been classified yet, the new, the strange and the unknown. That team consists of straight arrow Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), an expert in combat and espionage; pilot and martial artist Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen); and brilliant if socially awkward scientists Agent Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Agent Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge). They’ll be joined by civilian new recruit and computer hacker Skye (Chloe Bennet).
Prepare for an epic adventure that showcases the hope and wonder of the human spirit. This is a world of Super Heroes, aliens and the unusual – of action, spectacle and world spanning stories. The show will speak to the human condition through the lens of our very human, non-powered S.H.I.E.L.D agents – that together we are greater than we are apart, and that we can make a difference in the world.
Okay, there are your Marvel morsels for the day. Your move, everybody else.