Cin­e­mat­i­cal are report­ing that, in an inter­view with Howard Stern, Jon Favreau said he had not yet be con­firmed for the Iron man sequel:

“They haven’t offered me any­thing yet. They’re all talk­ing — they want to do it, they even announced a date.”

Whilst Slash Film have run an arti­cle con­cern­ing Tony Stark him­self, Robert Downey Jr. It is thought that most cast are con­tracted for up to two sequels, how­ever when Enter­tain­ment weekly quizzed Downey Jr. con­cern­ing Iron man 2, he replied,

“I really don’t know. What I’m on board for right now is the ride home. I don’t want to start talk­ing out of my league, because that would have cer­tainly been my incli­na­tion in the past. I kind of know how to keep my teeth together a lit­tle bet­ter than I used to.”

I wouldn’t be too dis­heart­ened, these are early days and sequel talks are only just beginning.

On the 5th May, shortly fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful release of the first Iron Man movie, Mar­vel made an offi­cial announce­ment about the box office rev­enue of the afore­men­tioned and their goals for the much antic­i­pated sequel.

Iron Man debuted this week­end, gen­er­at­ing an esti­mated domes­tic box office of $100.75 mil­lion for the three-day week­end. This per­for­mance rep­re­sents the 10th best open­ing week­end ever and the 2nd best non-sequel fea­ture film debut ever — sec­ond only to Spider-Man, also a Mar­vel character.

Given this suc­cess, Mar­vel imme­di­ately revealed their plans for Iron Man, stat­ing that a sequel shall be com­ing April 30, 2010:

Mar­vel today updated its fea­ture film slate strat­egy and plans for the next three years, lock­ing in key release win­dows for its char­ac­ter franchises.

In order to focus its atten­tion on max­i­miz­ing the suc­cess of an Iron Man sequel and the launch of Thor in the sum­mer of 2010 and because Mar­vel believes that the sum­mer is the opti­mal time to launch a new prop­erty, the Com­pany will not release a self pro­duced film in 2009.

Mar­vel plans to launch its 2010 film slate with the release of the sequel, Iron Man 2, on April 30, 2010, fol­lowed by the launch of Thor on June 4, 2010.

Addi­tion­ally, Mar­vel is plant­ing its fea­ture film stakes for sum­mer 2011 with an Avengers-themed sum­mer — a two-picture project which will debut on May 6, 2011 with The First Avenger: Cap­tain Amer­ica (work­ing title), fol­lowed by The Avengers in July 2011.

Seib­ertron have posted images of three iden­ti­cally dressed motor­cy­clists, sex­ily made up in leather and boots. Some rumors sug­gest they are Megan Fox stunt dou­bles, which frankly sounds a lit­tle absurd.

The call sheets with the char­ac­ters labelled “Arcee Rid­ers”, give two of their names as Jessie Graff and Melissa Hartman.

Fol­low­ing the Smith­son­ian rev­e­la­tion in the call sheet, fans rushed to the Smith­son­ian Air and Space Museum know­ing what, where and when to expect the Trans­form­ers film­ing crew to be doing. Topher­lyon has sent TLAMB his pic­tures of the event, and HowDe­sign have some up too. There’s a set report fol­low­ing the gallery that pro­vides some back­ground infor­ma­tion on the day’s events.

It is thought that the plane with the Auto­bot sym­bol on its tail, where no film­ing was tak­ing place, is Michael Bay’s per­sonal air­craft. You can also see sev­eral shots of the SR-71 Black­bird, which is now known to be Jet­fire. Out­side, Bum­ble­bee is clearly vis­i­ble as well as a green car (partly under cov­ers), thought to be a Chevy Beat con­cept, almost cer­tainly another Autobot.

Both Shia and Megan Fox have been spot­ted on set, though no clear pho­tos snapped.

I’ve got a first-hand Trans­form­ers 2 set report from Friday.

The mis­in­for­ma­tion machine con­tin­ues to roll for TF2. News was that TF2 would be film­ing in DC for a few days. Got a call from my buddy at 4pm yes­ter­day that they were film­ing at the Air and Space Museum, no not the one in DC, the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum by Dulles Air­port in Dulles, VA (30 –40 mins out­side DC).

My friend and I quickly left work and headed over to the museum because it was only 5 min­utes away. We arrived there and there was noth­ing to really indi­cate that film­ing was going on, it was very low-key. Found them film­ing inside and the only way you could tell it was for TF2 was from the crew’s badges (an Auto­bot logo fol­lowed by the num­ber 2).

Met up with our buddy and watched a few scenes being filmed. Saw Michael Bay film­ing, but couldn’t make out what was going on too well because they kept us back far enough. Museum secu­rity and crew were heav­ily guard­ing the area from peo­ple tak­ing pho­tos. My buddy said Shia and Megan Fox were there ear­lier film­ing some scenes and Shia would be back soon. We finally saw what looked like Shia dressed in an old time pilots out­fit (think avi­a­tor gog­gles and a white scarf around the neck). He was stand­ing between a pil­lar and a man­nequin dressed like him, along with sev­eral other man­nequins dressed in dif­fer­ent pilot out­fits. They repeat­edly filmed a secu­rity guard run­ning by as Shia reached out and put a taser to his neck and the guard would fall to the ground.

We chat­ted with a crew mem­ber and he men­tioned how not many peo­ple knew they were there and that they had been film­ing there since Thurs­day. At the time we were there, they were film­ing around the SR-71 Black­bird. I don’t know how legit this is, but the crew mem­ber said that the Black­bird is going to be fea­tured very promi­nently in the film, but that peo­ple aren’t really sup­posed to know that. So if true, let the spec­u­la­tion begin as to what Trans­former this will be [Jetfire].

They con­tin­ued film­ing the taser scene as the museum closed and we were ush­ered out­side. The crew mem­ber also men­tioned they would be going out­side to film some scenes in the park­ing lot later. So when we got out­side we found the coned-off park­ing lot with a few cars sit­ting hud­dled together under tarps. One was clearly Bum­ble­bee, the rims and parts of the yel­low bumper were vis­i­ble. There was also a lime green car. From the look of the shape and the front bumper I would guess that it is either a Toy­ota Matrix or a Scion xA, but I’m prob­a­bly wrong. The third car had a very strange shape and I could not make it out.

Unfor­tu­nately, I couldn’t get close enough to the cars to get decent pic­tures on my cam­era phone. We waited around for a while but by 6:15 we had to leave. They were still inside at that time so we didn’t get to see the new cars actu­ally being filmed.

So there you have it. They are film­ing there again today and I plan on going back to check out some more. I’ll be sure to send along any­thing new I find out.

Oh, one last thing, Michael Bay flew to the Museum (which has its own run­way) and there on the run­way sat a white plane with the Auto­bots logo on the tail. Pretty freakin’ cool. Can’t remem­ber if he had that dur­ing film­ing for the first one, but he’s got it now!

Com­ing Soon have spo­ken to Sam Raimi about his future involve­ment in Spider-man 4 — things are look­ing up, though the future is still uncertain:

“James Van­der­bilt is writ­ing the script and I’m excited to read it. I think it’s going to be done in a few months. I’m hop­ing it’s as great as our dis­cus­sions were about it and I’m hop­ing it feels right for me because I love Spider-Man. I’m hop­ing I’m well rested enough to embrace it and I’m hop­ing Sony wants me to do it. If all of those things come together, I would love to do it. There are a lot of unknowns about the future.”

Thanks Robin!

J.K. Sim­mons has also been speak­ing about is role in Spidey sequels on the set of “I Love You Man”,

SHH!: So we know that James Van­der­bilt is close to turn­ing in a script for “Spider-Man 4.” Have they reached out to you yet?
J.K. Sim­mons: We sort of check in once in a while. They say, you know, we want J.K. to do it. We don’t know where. We don’t know when. We don’t know who. We don’t know any­thing, you know? They signed all of us for the first three films. Sam, Tobey, all the way down the line to me and we’ll see where it goes. I mean its all con­jec­ture and you guys prob­a­bly know more than I do at this point. There was talk of doing four and five con­cur­rently and I don’t know if they’re still con­sid­er­ing that or not and I spoke to Tobey in I guess it was Feb­ru­ary, sort of awards sea­son time and he’s cer­tainly amenable to doing some more and hope­fully we’ll be able to get every­body back and make another good one.

SHH!: Or a cou­ple of ‘em?
Sim­mons: Cou­ple, three, four, five! What­ever. You know, I could buy a big­ger house.

SHH!: What if Sam decides not to come back as a direc­tor but stays as a pro­ducer, would you guys still be…
Sim­mons: Well…

SHH!: Would you and the rest of the gang still come back?
Sim­mons: Well, I can only speak for myself, but if Sam were not the direc­tor but still had a hand in it then I would cer­tainly have a rea­son­able amount of faith in it. Obvi­ously if he’s the direc­tor I’m there 100%. If he’s not involved at all, which I think is VERY unlikely, then it would be a sit­u­a­tion that I would have to think about. But if he’s involved, hope­fully direct­ing or at least as a pro­ducer then, I’m pretty con­fi­dent that it would be some­thing that I wanna do. Plus they pay money.

Latino Review last week hinted that Sony were shop­ping around for an actor to replace Tobey Maguire as Spider-man in the next movie, cit­ing Patrick Fugit and Michael Angarano as pos­si­bil­i­ties. How­ever, Sony Pic­tures have told SHH that there is no truth to this rumor and they are not look­ing for a new Spider-man.

Thanks Gree­nieGob­bie

Vari­ety have con­firmed that both Alfred Molina (Doc Ock in Spider-man 2) and oscar win­ning Ben Kings­ley shall be a part of the Prince of Per­sia movie:

Molina will play Sheik Amar, who becomes a men­tor to the prince.
Shoot­ing is slated to begin in July in the U.K. and Morocco.

Vari­ety later con­firmed that Kings­ley shall be play­ing the vil­lain Nizam,

In the fan­tasy actioner, Kings­ley por­trays Nizam, who plots to kill his brother King Shahrman and blame it on Prince Das­tan so he can take the throne.

Thanks hobo123

Com­cast have unveiled a Dark Knight themed flash based web­site, com­plete with posters and screen­saver down­loads, in a sim­i­lar vein to the offi­cial site, but all the same slightly dif­fer­ent! Thanks Csram

Handy ZIP of all downloads

Video

The site fea­tures two new fea­turettes, one focus­ing on Imax, another on the mak­ing of the clown masks.

Down­load IMAX Promo

Down­load Clown Masks Featurette

Wall­pa­pers

I’d also like to take this moment to thank my friend aCyn­i­calPie for keep­ing the web­site up to date in my two week absence! The remote parts of Greek islands do not have high speed inter­net access.