German Avengers trailer reveals all new scenes. Plus a Farscape star joins Doctor Who!

John Carter's Andrew Stanton and Michael Chabon explain the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Susan Sarandon reveals the insane process behind adapting Cloud Atlas. We may not have heard the last of Chronicle — and, for some reason, Terra Nova.

Spoilers from here on out!

Top image from Prometheus.

The Avengers

Here's a German trailer, featuring a few bits of new footage.

The two new scenes are dubbed, for so our non-Germanophiles, here's the translation:

Extended Tony Stark Scene:
Tony: And following orders is obviously not my style.

End Scene with Tony:
Banner: Ow!
Cap: Hey!
Cap: Is everything like a joke to you?
Tony: If it's funny!

[Coming Soon]



The movie's Weyland Industries viral tie-in website has released this new image, which I'm going to go ahead and assume is an android's fingerprint. Here's the accompanying caption:

Weyland engineers have been working around the clock to bring you the newest, most advanced addition to the Weyland family. Stay tuned for a special announcement.

[Rope of Silicon]

John Carter

Director Andrew Stanton explains why he resisted the urge to update Edgar Rice Burroughs's early 20th century conception of Mars to something that is a bit more scientifically accurate, in the process taking an inadvertent slam at Lynne Ramsey's new film:

"If I could be a kid in 1976, and fall in love with a 1912 piece of literature for exactly the way it sounded and read, and didn't have a desire to make it a '70s, present-day thing, I didn't think anybody would have that desire in 2012. It's like saying, 'It's Moby Dick, we've got to put a battleship and lasers in it.'"


Screenwriter Michael Chabon discusses how he and collaborators Andrew Stanton and Mark Andrews handled the adaptation process, and how even original author Edgar Rice Burroughs was aware how creaky parts of his work were:

Andrew Stanton and Mark Andrews, his collaborator, had already made a lot of the hard decisions about what to keep and what to let go. They had already analyzed the multiple characters … say, there are three evil Thark chieftains, and we really only need one evil Thark chieftain, we don't need three. Burroughs introduces the idea of telepathy, everyone on Barsoom is telepathic. It's a terrible idea, and Burroughs realizes that very quickly, and completely abandons it eventually, because it makes storytelling impossible. If everybody can read everyone else's mind, you can't have secret plans, you can't have hidden agendas, and those are the meat and potatoes of storytelling. So even Edgar Rice Burroughs betrayed his own story, so in a sense we had his imprimatur. Another example is the fact that John Carter is immortal when we first meet him in the first book. It's this really bizarre element that Burroughs apparently derived from a popular novel of the time, and it has nothing to do with anything, it's completely irrelevant, and again he very quickly just...he doesn't even abandon it, it just withers away and never returns.

He also explains how the first three novels have formed the basis for a planned trilogy:

They had also made I think the very key decision to take material from the first three novels, and to consider those first three novels in the series as a whole, and then to look at the entire matter of those three novels as potentially the matter for three films. Each of those films would be conceived independently to tell its own discrete story separate from the others, so that if you didn't see the first film and you only saw the second one you wouldn't be lost, you would be able to follow what was going on, and it would present you with a satisfying experience on its own, and so there are elements in the first film, the one that we're talking about today, that don't actually appear in the novels until the second book.

There's plenty more at the link, including Chabon's spirited defense of science fiction as a literary genre. [Wired]

Dominic West, who plays the villainous Sab Than in the movie, discusses the creation of the various Martian cultures' fighting styles:

"We worked really hard on the fights, down to there being a different style of fighting between the Zodangans and the Heliumites. I broke five swords because they're made of wood. A good martial artist like Lynn [Collins], and Taylor [Kitsch] as well, they're very controlled in their movements and I tend to go crazy!"

[Spinoff Online]

Chronicle 2

Considering the film's $105 million (and counting) return on its $15 million investment, this was pretty much inevitable - original movie writer Max Landis is reportedly working on a sequel script for Fox. [Deadline]

Dark Shadows

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Here are some promo photos featuring stars Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, and Chloe Moretz. [ShockTillYouDrop]

Cloud Atlas

Susan Sarandon discusses the unique approach taken by co-directors Tom Twyker and the Wachowskis in adapting David Mitchell's novels, which tells six stories spanning multiple genres and time periods:

"I have very small parts, but many genders of varying looks and ages and everybody else does too. Everyone was trans-everything, all over the place. I was a little nervous. I was so flattered that the Wachowskis wanted me there and I read the script and thought, 'This is impossible, I definitely want to be part of this,' and when I got there there was such, it was like Cirque du Soleil of the creative energy. Everyone was getting noses or eyes and contacts, moving from one set to the other just like 'What the hell, just jump in.' Hugh Grant had never been in makeup for longer than fifteen minutes and he was sitting in a chair for hours. Halle Berry did one thing for seven hours, they are just amazing things. What the movie is about is so beautiful, so I hope it comes together. If it doesn't it's going to be one of the most extraordinary failures ever, and I love that they had the guts to try it and that Halle and Tom Hanks and all these people were game enough to jump in."

[MTV Movies Blog]

Evil Dead Reboot

Cloverfield's Jessica Lucas and Legend of the Seeker actress Elizabeth Blackmore have reportedly been cast as the final two of the five young friends who end out to an isolated cabin to kick a drug habit and wind up summoning the forces of evil. They join the previously cast Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, and Lou Taylor Pucci. [ShockTillYouDrop]

Doctor Who

The latest Doctor Who Magazine has released a ton of exciting details for the show's third episode. They confirm the rumors that it will be a Western - though there's no comment on whether it's actually called "The Gunslinger" - and that it is indeed the work of Being Human creator and "The God Complex" writer Toby Whithouse. This is the episode that is currently filming in Spain, and most excitingly the episode will feature a guest appearance from a big name in cult American sci-fi: Farscape's own John Crichton (or Stargate: SG-1's own Cameron Mitchell, I guess), Ben Browder will be appearing in the episode.

The magazine also reveals that "42" and "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood" writer Chris Chibnall is doing the second episode, and that's the one that guest stars Harry Potter's Mark Williams as what is most likely Rory's dad Brian, plus fellow Harry Potter actor David Bradley and Sherlock costar Rupert Graves in guest roles. [Den of Geek]

Terra Nova

I really don't see how the numbers for this could ever, ever work, but Netflix is reportedly in preliminary discussions to take on the series, much like its plans to bring back other short-lived beloved Fox series like Arrested Development — except, of course, Arrested Development is actually beloved, which seems like a pretty crucial distinction in all this. Well, that and it doesn't cost several million dollars to make an episode. So yeah, I'd take this with a particularly skeptical grain of salt. [The Live Feed]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Here's a sneak peek for this Friday's episode, "Brothers", in which Savage Opress searches for his supposedly dead brother Darth Maul. [Coming Soon]


Resident Evil and James Bond movie actor Colin Salmon has been cast in the CW's Green Arrow pilot as Walter Steele, described as "a former business associate of Oliver's late father Robert Queen and the No. 2 executive at Queen Consolidated [who] married Oliver's mother Susanna Thompson following her husband's death at sea and the disappearance of her son." [Deadline]

Misfits (US)

There have been rumors of this for awhile, but Clerkenwell Films just announced that they are teaming with Fake Empire to make a pilot for an American remake of the show. The pilot has been co-written by original series creator Howard Overman and Chuck co-creator Josh Schwartz, with production set to begin this year or early 2013, so it seems this is still a ways away. [Clerkenwell Films]

Lost Girl

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Here are some promo photos for episodes nineteen and twenty, "Truth & Consequences" and "Lachlan's Gambit." [SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Ben Vrignon, Charlie Jane Anders, and Cyriaque Lamar.