Chan­ning Tatum (G.I. Joe) was a name often men­tioned as a poten­tial Thor player, how­ever, he has recently con­firmed that he is no longer in the running:

“I think they’re look­ing for some­one more Nordic-looking,” Tatum told MTV News dur­ing a press event for his new film, “Fight­ing.” How­ever, Tatum con­firmed that he had indeed been inter­ested in the part, and even met with direc­tor Ken­neth Branagh about don­ning the golden locks and tot­ing the myth­i­cal hammer.

We’re still left wait­ing for that key cast­ing deci­sion. Still in the run­ning, and pre­sumed to be at the top of the list are:

Char­lie Hun­nam
Tom Hid­dle­ston
Alexan­dar Skars­gard
Liam Hemsworth
Joel Kinnaman.

Still in the air are the rumors that Josh Hart­nett may play vil­lain Loki and that Natalie Port­man will have some involve­ment in a key female role.

It didn’t take very long for the first on set pic­tures from Iron Man 2’s first day of shoot­ing to show up online! Spoil­erTV have posted a gallery of images show­ing Gwyneth Pal­trow, Robert Downey Jr. and new­comer Don Chea­dle as Rhodey on set.

Besides the usual nature of can­did on set imagery one inter­est­ing thing to note is the box that Tony Stark is car­ry­ing, a small black lunch box that bears the Iron Man emblem and the phrase ‘X-treme’. What does Tony Stark have in his sandwiches?

Rhodey

Tony Stark

The Box

Full Gallery

WENN recently con­firmed via Robert Downey Jr. that Garry Shan­dling would be appear­ing in Iron Man 2, and there were reports that he was on set at an ‘undis­closed loca­tion’ yes­ter­day. His role? The IESB com­mented on this:

Shan­dling is a reporter or Sen­a­tor or some sort that appears in a con­tin­u­a­tion of the final scene from the first IRON MAN film, you know that famous “I am Iron Man” scene. We start this film from there is what it looks like.

We have since had an image from Pacific Coast News show­ing Garry Shan­dling on set:

And direc­tor Jon Favreau has been twit­ter­ing again, to our delight, updat­ing through­out the first day with a num­ber of sta­tus reports:

Going over script with RDJ one last time before shooting.

On my way to set. Not much sleep, as one could imag­ine. First day at camp. Very excited.

Lunch! Boy it’s great to be back at work. Many famil­iar faces in cast and crew. I am so blessed to do what I love with won­der­ful people.

First day went great. I’ve never worked on a sequel before. It’s like we picked up where we left off.

He also posted a cou­ple of shots to stoke our excite­ment. The first shows “no cam­era on set”, which I guess Favreau is exempt from, being the direc­tor and all. I am enjoy­ing this new trend of tid­bit social movie report­ing from those behind the scenes.

eBay seller yayabeee has listed Scalpel on the auc­tion site with a host of new images detail­ing every aspect of the toy. Mean­while a video review of the toy has been posted by Peaugh detail­ing the trans­for­ma­tion from micro­scope to robot bug.

Visit the Scalpel auction

Images

Video Review

A batch of pro­duc­tion con­cepts have been leaked via TF08, reveal­ing some details about the Dev­as­ta­tor robot mode and toy. Also included are robot and alt mode shots of Jet­fire, Deluxe Mix­mas­ter and Deluxe Bar­ri­cade, a con­cept of how the Sam Witwicky fig­ure inter­acts with Human Alliance Bum­ble­bee and a Mega­tron Power Bot thrown in for good measure:

Bar­ri­cade

Jet­fire

Bum­ble­bee and Sam Witwicky

Mega­tron Power Bot

In Decem­ber we revealed that the Iron Man 2 pro­duc­tion would come under the work­ing title, “Rasputin”. With film­ing set to begin today it’s time to look out for said pro­duc­tion crew.

The City of Pasadena is one such place, they report that “Iron Works Pro­duc­tions LLC” will be work­ing on “Rasputin” on 4/5 and 4/6 at 200 Euclid Avenue S. That cor­re­sponds to the Masonic Temple.

Google Maps Location

At ShoW­est 2009 Sony Pic­tures Enter­tain­ment pres­i­dent, Rory Bruer, talked about their plans for movies in 2011. On the list were Spider-man 4, Men in Black 3 and Ghost­busters 3 — which are all actively being developed.

An early sum­mer 2011 release could put film­ing approx­i­mately a year from now. This announce­ment shows us that Sony are tak­ing GB3 very seriously.

Via /Film