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Joss Whedon To Direct The Avengers
olyar noted that Joss Whedon has been tapped to direct The Avengers. This should make a lot of nerds very excited, and begin rampant speculation on Buffy/Firefly/Horrible universe actor cameos. Hope the script doesn't suck.
...Mrs Peel. 'nuf said.
here is no way that a) Downey is going to agree to doing an ensemble picture as a bit player after headlining 2+ Iron Man movies, or b) That the studio is going to spring for the big money it would take to hire him, just for an ensemble role in a risky new franchise.
Don't be too sure about that.
We don't know what kind of deal he has going with the studios. Nor do we know what his intentions are. I've seen big name actors take bit parts due to: favors, desire to work, or wanting to work with someone that they've always wanted to work with.
Eddie Murphy did Bowfinger because he is a fan of Steve Martin. Tom Cruise worked for scale on Rainman to work with Hoffman. Sean Bean shows up in weird places with different sized parts all the time. And Downey did do a cameo in Hulk - granted it was part of a grander plan for some future super hero movies, but never the less, he did it.
There are countless times where you see a big name in credited and uncredited appearances in movies doing small parts.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
This is Marvel's Avengers not the UK Avengers.
So far the movies actually made by Marvel studios rather than just co-produced by them do seem to be better than what they were initially licensing their characters to (the Fantastic Four sequel being a perfect example of the latter).
They still fall squarely in the 'high budget Hollywood superhero movie' category, and they're not exactly highbrow, but I found both Iron Man and Ed Norton's version of The Incredible Hulk to be good entertainment. I'm interested to see how they do with Iron Man 2, and I still hold out fairly high hopes for The Avengers.
Whedon's last movie was 5 years ago, and bombed.
Not sure where you got your info from... According to Wikipedia "It received generally positive reviews and opened at number two, taking in $10.1 million its first weekend, spending two weeks in the top ten, and totaling a domestic box office gross of $25.5 million and a foreign box office gross of $13.3 million. However, it did not make back its budget until its release on DVD. Serenity won film of the year awards from Film 2005[2] and FilmFocus. It also won IGN Film's Best Sci-Fi, Best Story and Best Trailer awards and was runner up for the Overall Best Movie. It also won the Nebula Award for Best Script for 2005, the 7th annual 'User Tomato Awards' for best Sci-Fi movie of 2005 at Rotten Tomatoes, the 2006 viewers choice Spacey Award for favorite movie, the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form and the 2006 Prometheus Special Award."
Although it did not make back its budget immediately, it did after DVD release, plus winning all those awards...I would not call that a movie that "bombed"
You don't seem to be aware that Downey's contract already requires him to be in the Avengers.
That still doesn't make me optimistic about this movie getting made by him. Your comments about Whedon getting played by the movie executives seem quite familiar, given how he was assigned to Wonder Woman, got all worked up over it, and here we are five years later with no sign of a movie.
You are missing the point. I remember seeing the promos Fox ran for it and thinking what the hell is this crap, even though I love Sci-Fi. It wasn't till it was cancelled I watched it and fell in love with it. They put it on Friday nights, where alot of the younger crowd that would have been into it are out. What's worse is from what I heard they showed it out of order, and the order they showed it in made no sense. No wonder it didn't catch on. It's the same shit they did with Futurama, putting it on at 7:30 on Sunday and then premepting it because of football games or whatever constantly.