Photo–Anne Hathaway As Catwoman

Warner Bros has released the first official photo of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises.

The photo, which appeared on the official website, TheDarkKnightRises.com, has a file name of “selina_kyle.jpg”. Most comic fans know that Kyle is the secret identity of the Batman villainess… but I find it interesting that the file uses that name and not “Catwoman”.

Is it possible that this might not be Hathaway’s complete Catwoman outfit? A source earlier revealed that the Catwoman costume is more “tactical, like the comic book,” “less sexy than Halle Berry and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman costumes”, and would feature goggles.

This looks exactly like what was described (although the goggles look more like high tech glasses). Read more

The Flash & Justice League Movies Still Possible

Jeff Robinov, the president of Warner Bros. film group, recently started quite a stir saying that he’d like to see a Green Lantern sequel be “a little edgier and darker.” At the same time he also foreshadowed the future of DC superhero movies beyond The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel in 2012 and 2013 by saying they have a “solid script” for The Flash and that they’d still like to bring all the heroes together for a Justice League movie. Read more after the jump. Read more

Hellboy Being Killed Off Too?!?

Spoiler Alert!!

It appears increasingly likely that in Hellboy: The Fury #3, which goes on sale next week, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is about to join the ranks of recently departed superhero characters such as the Ultimate Spider-Man and Bucky. But it also appears that, unlike so many superhero characters, Hellboy will meet his demise in such a way that he won’t be coming back in corporeal form ever.

But this doesn’t mean the end of Hellboy comics. For one thing in stories set in the past (a Hellboy comics staple), the big red guy will remain the same as he ever was, but also as Mignola pointed out in a revealing interview with Comic Book Resources, “I always say that when characters die in the Hellboy universe, they just become more interesting. So Hellboy now is a lot more interesting.”

Fans will have to wait until next week to find out exactly what happens to Hellboy—and even longer to find out how events in The Fury miniseries affect the B.P.R.D. Dark Horse is promising “mainstream media attention” for what it describes as a “major development" in The Fury #3, so those who enjoy like being “in the know” early and don’t mind having their reading fun spoiled can expect to learn the details of Hellboy’s demise on Tuesday (most likely, if previous patterns hold, in USA Today).

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Green Lantern 2 To Be A Darker, Edgier Film

Green Lantern had a reasonable (not great) opening weekend but was otherwise a creative and financial dud. It is an example of that strange studio phenomenon: a film that manages to feel both over-written, with villains and set pieces seemingly cobbled together from different script drafts, and under-scripted, thanks to the total lack of sense behind most of the character actions. And audiences didn’t respond, once the marketing gave way to word of mouth? Shocker.

Because that opening weekend was north of $50m, Warner Bros. is still planning a sequel. What will the studio’s approach be this time? A solid script that establishes a story with logical and emotional drive and then embellishes it with action? Pfft. Why bother, when it can just be darker and edgier? (Or Dark Knight-ier, as the case may be.)

Warner Bros. film group president Jeff Robinov told the LA Times,

We had a decent opening so we learned there is an audience. To go forward we need to make it a little edgier and darker with more emphasis on action… And we have to find a way to balance the time the movie spends in space versus on Earth.

There is already a script outline put together by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim, all of whom worked on the first film. But the LAT reports anonymous sources saying that the outline could be changed or scrapped altogether.

And as for Martin Campbell, who directed the first? He has an option to direct the sequel, but WB reportedly doesn’t want him to be in the big chair. So there might be some backstage dealmaking to be done, but expect to see another name on the film in 2013 or so. (As we expected, really.)

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World War Z Begins Filming–Finally!

For those feverishly following the World War Z production… Shooting for the film kicks off in Falmouth, Cornwall today, supported by local film crew from the South West. The production – starring Brad Pitt and James Badge Dale – will be partially shot on board a ship.

Open casting for the zombie thriller took place in Truro in July, where five hundred extras were brought on board for the Falmouth-based scenes.

World War Z is based on Max Brooks’s best-selling book, "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War."

Set in the near future, it revolves around UN employee Gerry Lane (Pitt) who traverses the world in a race against time to stop the zombie pandemic that is toppling its armies and governments, and threatening to decimate humanity itself. Mireille Enos also stars as Gerry’s wife, Karin.

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Fantasy Flight Games To Publish Star Wars Games

Breaking news from the Fantasy Flight Games website:

Fantasy Flight Games is pleased to announce that it has entered a comprehensive licensing partnership with Lucasfilm Ltd. for the worldwide rights to publish card, roleplaying, and miniatures games set in the popular Star Wars™ universe!

”Being able to publish gaming products in the Star Wars universe is quite simply a hobby-game company’s dream come true,” said Christian T Petersen, CEO of Fantasy Flight Games. “I’m confident that both Star Wars fans as well as FFG’s regular customers will be blown away by the game experiences we have planned for this legendary IP.”

“As a leader in hobby gaming, we’re excited to be partnering with Fantasy Flight Games,” said Howard Roffman, President of Lucas Licensing. “Fun and adventure are hallmarks of the Star Wars saga, and FFG perfectly captures this in their games.” Read more

Diablo 3 Bringing Real Currency Into Game

The hotly anticipated role-playing game will feature an online auction house in which players can hawk almost everything they find in the game for either in-game gold or real money. The company calls it a “convenient, powerful, and fully integrated” solution for players who want to turn their green boots into greenbacks.

By using a real-money auction house in Diablo III, the company is attempting to wrest control away from the lucrative gold-farming industry and back into its own hands.

“Acquiring items has always been an important part of the Diablo series, but the previous games have not had a robust, centralized system for facilitating trades, and as a result players have turned to inconvenient and potentially unsafe alternatives, such as third-party real-money-trading organizations,” Blizzard said. Read more

Expendables 2 – Chuck Norris, John Travolta And Jean-Claude Van Damme? What?

It should be said that the rumored action stars lining up for “The Expendables 2” are anything but expendable.

The original cast already had one hell of a line-up, including Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Jet Li, but now some new names are potentially joining the team. David Varod, the CEO of Bulgarian film company Nu Boyana, reportedly told Novinite in an interview that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis are both coming back for the sequel, and added several other names to the mix as well.

Like who, exactly? Do the names John Travolta, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris get your excitement level up to 11? Those are the guys coming aboard the “Expendables” sequel, according to the interview, though there’s been no official announcement confirming their involvement yet.

“The shooting is going to take place the second week of September. The movie is on, definitely. It will be a very good thing for Bulgaria, since there are some very big stars coming,” Varod said. “I believe the sequel will be better than the first movie.” Read more

Death of Spider-Man Issue Sells Over 159k

Driven by press coverage (see “Ultimate Spider-Man Death Issue Gets Advance Press”), the “Death of Spider-Man” storyline brought big sales in June, with the polybaged Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #160 selling over 159,000 copies to comic stores, according to our estimates of comic sales number based on sales indexes released by Diamond Comic Distributors. That was best sales number for the top comic in over a year; Avengers #1 sold 163,000 last May (see “Avengers Launch Is Over 163K”). This issue increased sales on Ultimate Comics Spider-Man by over a factor of three.

Marvel’s Fear Itself was the #2 book at around 96,000, the #3 issue holding strong at only slightly less the sales on #2. DC’s Flashpoint event came in behind Fear Itself, but sales on Flashpoint #2 actually came in higher than the first month sales on #1 (and issue #1 picked up another 8,864 copies this month).

Despite the strong sales on the books at the very top of the chart, over-all sales were down from the year ago period (see “Comics Slide Continues in June”).

DC had only eight of the top 25 issues this month; not shipping the titles Green Lantern or Green Lantern Corps hurt.

Top 25 decliners outnumbered advances by a significant margin in June; 14 of the top 25 titles declined in sales; eight increased.

On the graphic novel chart, The Walking Dead Vol. 14 was the top title with over 20,000 copies in first month sales, a great performance when compared to other top graphic novels in recent months. And if you needed more than the continuing sales on The Walking Dead Vol. 1 to show the series is gaining new readers, the 6% increase between first month sales of Vol. 14 and Vol. 13 (see “Top 300 Graphic Novel s Actual—November 2010”) should help.

Here are ICv2’s estimates for the sales by Diamond Comic Distributors to comic stores on the Top 25 comic titles in June of 2011:

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The Real Iron Man Suit Almost Ready?

If you have dreamed of one day having a real Iron Man style suit to endow you with superhuman strength, the wait may not be too much longer.

We’ve seen lots of Iron Man style wannabees over the last few years, but the XOS 2 from Sarcos Raytheon looks like the closest thing to a real product so far.

This improved version of the original XOS is stronger, lighter, more damage resistant, and uses only half the power of its predecessor. It’s still tethered to an external power supply, which trades mobility for a lot more power and longer running time.

The good news is that Sarcos just announced that they expect to start shipping XOS 2 within about five years, and that an untethered version could be about 10 years out. Come to think of it, isn’t that what they said almost five years ago?

Obviously the military will be getting first dibs on the initial production, but eventually we should be able to get what would be the all time ultimate Halloween costume for ourselves.

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