Never underestimate a new-found studios ability to celebrate with near drunken enthusiam. Of course you’ve heard probably a thousand times by now that Marvel studio’s inaugral film, “Iron Man” topped the box-office with over $100 million dollar in theatrical receipts (some $200 million worldwide).
Of course there’s still the questionable success of the “The Incredible Hulk” to deal with (guys, your new trailer is better, but it’s not like it’s time to kick back), but so seemingly gung-ho and stoked, the comic-book movie studio went on a veritable rampage announcing a slew of upcoming projects with hard dates.
“Iron Man 2” is now set for April 30, 2010, which will be followed by “Thor” on June 4 201o (directed by Matthew Vaughn). Hope you guys actually have some decent scripts finished.
2011 will evidently yield, “The First Avenger: Captain America,” on May 6 and “The Avengers” proper in July of that year with no fixed date. Last we all heard all these projects were “in development.”
Has something new happened? Or is Marvel just confident that all the script tweaks can be figured out in time? Considering big business announcements and trying to instill confidence in shareholders, bet on the latter.
“The Avengers” would likely contain at least five major heros and would need to have a massive budgets for all their respective effects, plus what one can assume what would be bigger paydays for Robert Downey Jr. (who would play Iron Man in it), Edward Norton (who would presumably play The Hulk in the franchise) and whichever stars go on to play Captain America and Thor. Is that July 2011 film going to cost $350 million to make, marketing not included?
Have Marvel overstepped their bounds? This sounds incredibly harder than it sounds on paper, people. And Jon Favreau can’t direct everything (surely, the guy will lose interest in a picture or two). Can someone at least kill the hammy and unctuous Stan Lee in one of these cameos, please? Oh and wait, what about the goofy Antman movie?
In typical over-reaction mode, the bonered up media is flailing about. Some blogger at Entertainment Weekly is laughable positing Oscar talk for “Iron Man” (slow down, friendo) and Defamer is trying too hard to parse “Iron Man’s” unprecedented success.