Comic Book Films

Summit Entertainment will release ‘Astro Boy’ in North America on Friday, October 23, 2009, it was announced today by Rob Friedman, Co-Chairman and CEO of Summit Entertainment, and Erin Corbett, President of Imagi Studios U.S.  Summit and Imagi are putting together the final details on a marketing plan designed to reach both the family movie-going audience and adult fans of Astro Boy alike.  Plan includes a commitment from a major fast food restaurant partner as well as alliances in the areas of toys, games, books and others, soon to be announced.

Produced by Imagi Studios, the CG-animated motion picture will bow on over 3,000 screens across North America.  International release dates for the film are to be announced soon.

“We are pleased to bring the exceptional world of ‘Astro Boy’ to the big screen for movie-goers in North America,” said Friedman.  “We have lined up some key marketing partners for the film and our October date allows us to put the film out at the right time enabling our partners to reach their targeted audiences with on-going marketing programs tied to the film.”

“A beloved icon for over half-a-century, this marks Astro Boy’s first time on the big screen, making our film one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year,” stated Corbett. “We’re thrilled to be bringing this remarkable and enduring property to fans – both old and new – as a grand-scale action-filled adventure with cutting-edge CG technology.”

‘Astro Boy’’s all-star cast features the voices of Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Nathan Lane, Bill Nighy and Eugene Levy with Freddie Highmore in the title role. David Bowers (Flushed Away) is directing ‘Astro Boy’ from a screenplay written by Timothy Harris (Trading Places, Kindergarten Cop), with Maryann Garger producing.

The iconic character Astro Boy has found global popularity since his creation in the early 1950s by Japan’s Osamu Tezuka, known as the “god of manga” and “father of anime”, and has been the hero of three acclaimed animated television series aired around the world.

Set in the future, Imagi Studio’s Astro Boy is a classic superhero origin story about a young robot with incredible powers, created by a brilliant scientist, and his adventure-filled journey in search of his identity and destiny, taking him into a netherworld of robot gladiators before he returns to save Metro City.

Summit Entertainment, which entered into a global alliance with Imagi Studios earlier this year, will distribute Astro Boy worldwide except for Imagi’s reserved territories of Japan, Hong Kong and China.

Rich Johnston over at ComicBookResources.com has a theory about the Watchmen legal issues and their relationship with the old Batman tv series. Apparently, Fox owns all of the original footage from that particular Batman TV series. However, Warner Bros. owns the trademarks on the characters and won’t play nice with Fox on the series release.

Sources tell me that Fox want the 1960s Batman TV series. Currently Fox own the TV footage, but Warner Bros own the characters and trademarks, via their ownership of DC Comics. The rights to a DVD release have been held up for a long time now, and this case looks like it may be the instrument to release them.

Oh, Fox will get a wodge of cash as well - many millions of dollars it seems. But it seems they also want the rights to release the Adam West-starring Batman on DVD, something long denied fans of the series. And Warners will get the “Watchmen” film, to release as planned.

There were comic fans who threatened Fox boycotts over what they saw as their scuppering of the Watchmen movie. Looks like they may soon have cause to thank Fox for this action.

Source: Comic Book Resources

Some pictures of Megatron from the upcoming movie ‘Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen’ have been released. Latino Review did some detective work and came to the following conclusion in regards to the pictures:

One of the big questions is, is Megatron returning and if so, what will he look like? If these images are any indication, he appears to be a giant ass armored tank.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up best. Although the pictures are grainy, this is still some pretty exciting news.

Source: Latino Review

There have been multiple rumors of who the villains will be in ‘The Caped Crusader’. With the success of ‘The Dark Knight’, the bar is set quite high for what should be the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s take on ‘Batman’.

Those rumors have been quite interesting to say the least. Cher could play Catwoman, Johnny Depp could be The Riddler, and Philip Seymour Hoffman could be The Penguin. But which of these are actually credible?

Some believe that The Riddler will be included in the third film because of a recently written by Edward Nashton (an alias of The Riddler) in the ‘Gotham Times‘, a virally-marketed website for the Batman franchise.

Others believe that Catwoman could be ‘The Caped Crusader’ because of various rumors. One early rumor was the Cher was a candidate to play as Catwoman, but that was later debunked. Other rumors are that Shirley Manson could potentially be cast as Catwoman in the next film.

Of course, there was also the rumor of ‘The Penguin’, who was to be played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman firmly denied this rumor in a recent interview.

BadTaste.it caught a sneak peak of a new trailer for the film ‘The Spirit’ and detailed the experience on the site:

First, we saw a new trailer, at least one I haven’t seen online. There are many new scenes in this one and I believe it’s better that the latest one (not too much, but it’s still an improvement). We start with the Spirit voiceover, then we see a woman that helps Spirit, Scarlett Johansson who says “we have to do something about Spirit” and a flashback with younger Denny Colt and Sand Saref. The last part of the trailer shows a large gunfight between police, Spirit and Octopus, which frankly is a bit excessive. Finally, Spirit says “I’m on my way”.

You can read about it more at their site. Honestly, we’re excited about the film over here. Somewhere between the cinematography and Eva Mendes losing her clothes on camera we’re giving all thumbs up over here.

Source: BadTaste