James McAvoy, who plays Dr. X in X-Men:  First Class, has replaced fellow X-Men actor Michael Fassbender in the lead role of Danny Boyle’s next film Trance, according to a report in Variety magazine.

Trance, is a remake of a 2001 British TV drama written and directed by Joe Ahearne, who is best known for his work in Doctor Who.  The film will be about an auction house employee who helps steal a painting, but then suffers amnesia and can’t remember where it is hidden.

I am a big fan of McAvoy so I am really happy about the news.  Just having caught X-Men: First Class recently, I do have to say that the film was spectacular!

So hopefully…there won’t be any hard feelings between the two co-stars!!

But in other news, Boyle, who won the Academy Award for best director in 2008 for Slumdog Millionaire, is due to direct the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games!

Knowing that the task will be a big one, Boyle plans to shoot Trance before the event gets under way.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

“Super 8″ had a big opening weekend, earning a total of $37 million dollars, reports CTV.

The action flick, directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, started with $1 million in sneak-peek screenings Thursday, then earning a total of $38 million domestically.

“The movie was never conceived to be a blockbuster, tent-pole film opening to $60 or $70 million,” said Don Harris, head of distribution for Paramount.

The film bumped the previous No. 1 movie, “X-Men: First Class,”  to second-place, earning $25 million over the weekend. The “X-Men” prequel raised a total to $98.9 million domestically. “The Hangover Part II” still came in strong with $18.5 million, making it the year’s top-grossing domestic release at $216.6 million.

Here’s a list of the top 5 weekend openings:

1. “Super 8,” $37 million ($6.7 million international).

2. “X-Men: First Class,” $25 million.

3. “The Hangover Part II,” $18.5 million ($38.3 million international).

4. “Kung Fu Panda 2,” $16.6 million ($56.5 million international).

5. “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” $10.8 million ($41.1 million international).

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

X Men Origins: Wolverine 2, is in the works and Hugh Jackman is raving about it. According to Perezhilton.com, Hugh Jackman has seen the script and said it’s going to be a lot darker than the previous film.

The film is a sequel to Wolverine, which is a prequel to the X-Men trilogy. Chris McQuarrie, who wrote The Usual Suspects, has written the script for the new film and Darren Aronofsky, (Requiem for a Dream) is set to direct. That already seems like a winning team.

With Aronofsky directing, the film is sure to be a lot darker and more obscure. However, Aronofsky does seem like an odd choice to direct the film. He usually stays within the boundaries of artistic dramas and psychological thrillers, Wolverine is definitely new ground for the director to cover. Additionally, Aronofsky’s new film, Black Swan, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, was praised by nearly all critics. The success of Black Swan will only bring good publicity to Aronofsky and his future films.

It will be interesting to see a more artful take on a superhero franchise. Christopher Nolan attempts to do the same with Batman, but the films lack intriguing dialogue and are drowned with action. Perhaps, Aronofsky and McQuarrie can bend the lines of the superhero genre with Wolverine 2. We’ll just have to wait and see…

The film is set to begin production next year.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

Marvel Entertainment Inc., home of famed comic book characters such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Incredible Hulk and Fantastic Four, was purchased by Walt Disney Co. today.

The deal did not come cheap – Walt Disney Studios shelled out $4 billion in cash and stock to own the comic book catalogue consisting of more than 5,000 characters, some of which were created by legendary Stan Lee.

“This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters . . . with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories,” said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Walt Disney Company in a press release.

The full press release – and all the boggling stock statistics – is available online.

But it’s what this deal means to the comic franchise’s loyal fans that is concerning bloggers everywhere today.

The New York Daily News’ David Hinckley makes a valid point that this isn’t one rival company buying out another (think Coke buying out Pepsi). Marvel and Disney have never exactly been adversaries – rather, Disney has been at odds with Warner Bros. since the early 1900s, whereas Marvel has warred it out with DC Comics. However, DC Comics, home of Batman and Superman, is owned by Time-Warner and has admittedly been gloriously profitable since the Batman film franchise obliterated the dividing line between counter- and pop-culture.

The worry remains, as noted by The Wall Street Journal’s Steven Kurutz, of the unsettling offspring that could result from the close proximity of Marvel and Disney’s main characters.

“How about an American Idol-esque mall tour featuring pop songs by Ernst, a teenage girl suffering from the aging disease progeria, who first appeared in issue #135 of New X-Men?” Kurutz writes.

It’s a chilling thought, but Disney isn’t all bad. Sure, their reputation recently consists of little more than the photographic fare littering a teen girls bedroom walls (including Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.) But that’s because they use subdivisions of the company to release their edgier films, such as the Pirates of the Caribbean series, rather than taming the content for family audiences.

But as everyone knows, there’s nothing better for business than a little competition.

With Marvel/Disney now fiscally and commercially poised to take on DC/Time-Warner, audiences worldwide can expect even more enhancements in the comic adaptation frenzy that erupted this decade.

Of course it’s hard to imagine improving 2008′s Iron Man, and even more difficult to imagine what kind of competition would have encouraged a stronger product than The Dark Knight. But I can’t say I’m not curious.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

Just a heads up for those loving the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine game by Activision (or those who have grown tired of the story mode already). We now have the ability to download the Weapon X arena, yes, the very same arena DLC that came with a Wolverine pre-order is now available to the masses on both Xbox 360 for 800 Microsoft points, and Playstation 3 for $9.99.

The Arena is comprised of four combat simulators for your gory enjoyment. In the Custom Combat arena, Logan potentials can ‘grow’ and combination of enemies (big or small) to fight, creating your ultimate brawl dreams including Sentinel Prototypes, Machine Gunners, Machete Men and more! As well, the Ladder Challenge mode gives those that have fought ever enemy in the game the ability to fight through an onslaught of preconfigured challenges, starting weak and easy and growing gradually until the room fills with the hardest battles imaginable; there are 50 ‘levels’ to plough through in this mode. The Environmental Simulator gives you the ability to utilize all the environmental weapons throughout the game, things like broken tree branches, electric panels and all the fun stuff you can throw enemies into are all here for your Canadian chucking pleasure. Finally the Weapon X Arena provides an extra bonus room that has heightened enemy reaction effects.

So you heard it here folks, those Wolverine fans that didn’t get the pre-order no longer have to wallow in self pity that they don’t have access to this arena because now for 800 MS points or $10 bucks, you too can have hours of mutilating mutation entertainment!

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

Logan, Weapon X, James, Jimmy, Wolverine. Whatever you want to call him, there’s no denying he’s one of the biggest names in super-hero history. Then why has he been so hard to franchise for? Could it be that it’s hard to market a children’s video game where the main character is a raging animal? Could it be that with such a deep story line a game could never encompass everything that wolverine is? Could it be that it’s hard to have a game where players can die, when the character himself has survived bullets in the brain, being ripped in half, AND walking directly into the sun? For these reasons and more I feel there has never been a video game that has done wolverine justice… that is, until now.

With the increasing level of quality connected to licensed games (Spiderman: Web of Shadows and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Athena come to mind), X-Men: Origins: Wolverine raises the bar with this exceptional title. It could be because in the past only children played games, but as those children grew up, they required more adult oriented action. Enter Wolverine. This is by far one of the bloodiest, gruesome-ist, and most stylized carnage I have ever had the pleasure of controlling, and after the lack of blood found in the X-Men: Origins: Wolverine movie, I felt this was much needed.

Origins, like any other game based on a movie, follows the main character, Wolverine, as he progresses through the story, based on the movie, based on the comic. However, where the movie would zig, the game would zag, including much more action, fighting, character depth, super powered villains and dismemberment than the movie had. While I enjoyed the movie as both a comic geek and an action enthusiast, I feel it would have been a lot more enjoyable had it tied closer to what this game represented. As a single player story title, Origins is most comparable to the God of War franchise, same graphical style, same amount of gore (although I feel Origins wins out here a little), and same perspective. You control Wolverine, beginning in a jungle fighting off tribal locals you quickly understand why he’s ‘the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn’t very nice’. Utilizing your fighting knowledge, claws, mutant powers such as berserker mode, feral sense and other manoeuvres (such as combos similar to God of War) you make your way through the game, more or less along the same path as the movie.

Now, there are a couple of mechanics I feel must be explained before we go into the graphical aspect, feral sense is a little odd, the screen will go black and white for a little while in which time you will see explosive objects in red, environmental objects in green, and other objects of interest in orange allowing you to see exactly what is around you easily. As well, feral sense can help you figure out where you need to head to progress through the game via a weird Donny Darko style wormhole coming out of you (or by following footprints during specific parts of the game). There are mutagens spread throughout the game as well that can be upgraded three levels and give you various bonuses such as increased health, increased reflex learning and so on, you can also unlock three separate mutagens to use at the same time to make your perfect killing machine. Continuing on with reflexes, based on the different types of bad guys you fight (robots, gunner, knife wielders, etc) you gain experience from killing these people and begin to learn how to kill them much more efficiently, through reflexes, after killing enough of them, you ‘gain a level’ against those specific bad guys and can improve this up to three levels as well. For those who have tried the older Punisher game from a few years back will also be reminiscent of environmental kills. Throughout the game Wolverine has the ability to perform gruesome one hit kills by impaling bad guys on tree stumps, throwing them into electric grids and so on. Horrific and efficient. You gain experience much like God of War, and throughout the game you find special soldier corpses that hold dog tags, collect these tags for extra experience and achievement bonuses as well.

Throughout the game you will also find, hidden (of course) a number of action figures, collect enough and you can unlock one of three extra costumes from Wolverine’s history. So to recap the collectables throughout the game, we have dog tags for experience, mutagens to increase abilities, action figures to unlock costumes, and as well, there are health increase items to find. Finally the last aspect unique to Wolverine is that he’s nearly indestructible, adamantium skeleton and mutant healing means he takes a beating and keeps on going. So how did they fix this issue in game? By introducing two different health bars, the first is kind of like Wolverine’s mutant healing, your standard health bar, but if you don’t get a hit for a while, it heals up fairly quickly. The second is a circle with a heart in it, this essentially shows his vital organ status. After taking enough damage and having the first bar depleted, Wolverine’s REAL health starts to lessen and takes a longer time to replenish. Once both health bars are gone, Wolverine is ‘captured’ or his mission ‘fails’ and you have to restart from the last checkpoint, never once do they ever say he died, because well… if he was able to die so quickly, chances are he would have long ago.

Graphically I truly enjoyed Origins, there was a high level of detail to be found in every varying level (from jungle, to snowy lake for example) and while some games go over the edge to a point where it’s hard to see anything, Wolverine’s feral sense takes care by simplifying your view. Blood splatters, grainy sand and destroyable environments (as well as destructive environments) means you’ll always be able to appreciate your surroundings when taking a break to heal or relax. Wolverine’s visualization was by far one of my favourite aspects of the game. Any damage he takes is shown on his person. Bullets hit him, bullet wounds appear, shotgun to the chest, hole in chest until it heals up. And his tank top keeps getting torn apart. As realistic as an X-Men game can be! Animation styling is also high up there, as Wolverine gets smashed into the ground by a big bad guy or thrown across the room by Sabretooth, you see limbs flail and even want to flinch at the pain inflicted upon him, but you don’t, instead you smile and keep on playing.

Wolverine sounds like Hugh Jackman in the game, and Liev Schrieber sounds like Victor Creed in the game. How could they get such good voice actors for a video game based on a movie? Well the answer is simple, because the voices you hear in game are in fact, Hugh Jackman and and Liev Schrieber! Unlike most other video game movies in the past, they hired on most of the same people to voice their virtual counterparts throughout the entire game, making the production value for this title that much more prestigious. As well, when Logan pops radio headsets into his ear and you hear the surrounding chatter, it gives a little bit of an edge, having a little knowledge of what will pop out based on what the bad guys are saying. Otherwise your standard fare of screams, growls, artillery and metal scraping on metal balance out the rest of the audio entertainment in this game.

Over all I was surprised by two things in this title. First, I was surprised that I actually found it good! After the Iron Man game, I feared the worst, but this title was actually full of value and entertaining! The second surprise was that since it seemed like a lot of repetitive slashing and maiming, I thought I would bore quickly of this game, but really, I played it for a good long time before beating it and even after that I wanted to play again on hard mode! Not many games make me want to do that. As well, apparently if you pre-ordered this title, you received a code to download the Origins arena which (I’m told) gives you access to hours of impaling bad guys or cutting off limbs… not sure what else it offers. As well, watch out which version you get for X-Men: Origins: Wolverine as the PS3 and Xbox 360 have the un-caged edition (meaning you fight humans and there is a lot of blood) vs. the normal edition for PS2, Wii, DS, and PSP. These versions lack blood or humans to chop up… and in the end, that’s what makes this title so much better!

Gameplay: 5/5
Graphics: 4.5/5
Sound: 4/5
Replay Value: 4/5

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

Josh Schwartz, creator of hit shows “Gossip Girl” and “The O.C.,” is in talks to write the newest “X-Men” movie for Fox.

According to Variety, Schwartz was also presented with the opportunity to direct “X-Men: First Class,” but opted not to take the directing role.

The movie will focus on a younger group of mutants than the previous films and may act as a prequel to the “X-Men” series by focusing on such characters as Cyclops in their teen years.

Another possibility is that the film will follow some of the students attending the mutant school introduced in the “X-Men” movies.

It’s not the only “X-Men” project in the works: Fox is reportedly developing a “Magneto” prequel and a potential spinoff of the upcoming “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” that will focus on the character Deadpool.

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” in which Hugh Jackman reprises his role as the titular mutant, will hit theatres next summer.

The “X-Men” series has earned $1.2 billion worldwide.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

Marvel has sharpened up it’s plans for the “Wolverine” movie.

Now with a title – “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” – and a release date – May 1, 2009 – the film will star Hugh Jackman as the brooding mutant.

According to “Variety,” the film’s plot could include a young William Stryker, Sabretooth, Weapon X and perhaps some returning characters. It will be directed by Gavin Hood (“Tsotsi”).

Marvel.com will update fans as soon as further decisions are made.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

It looks like Canadian X-Men star Shawn Ashmore has defrosted his relationship with old flame Michelle Trachtenberg.

The couple, who dated for two years and broke up in 2006, were seen kissing and cuddling at the restaurant Koi in Los Angeles recently.

In their off time, Trachtenberg (Eurotrip) was seen out and about with the likes of Pete Wentz and Jason Lewis.

Ashmore, who just turned 28, will next be seen in the films Solstice and The Ruins.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

Batman Begins writer DAVID GOYER is setting his sights on another superhero property – he is directing the spin-off movie to the X-MEN trilogy, MAGNETO.

The movie will focus on the young Magneto, the villain of the X-Men pictures, and how he became mortal enemies with character Professor X, played by Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart in the trilogy.

The main characters in the spin-off will be played by actors in their twenties instead of the original cast.

Goyer has previously worked on superhero movies Batman Begins and the Blade trilogy.

(c) 2007 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All global rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or re-distributing permitted.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

Fox head Tom Rothman has confirmed there will be a fourth X-Men movie, despite the third being titled “The Last Stand.”

“It’s the conclusion of this trilogy. These three movies work as a trilogy. These characters in this relationship, it’s the culmination of that saga,” Rothman says, according to Movie Hole.

“It’s the culmination and the resolution of those relationships laid out in the first two movies. That doesn’t mean never, I would ever say never again, but I will say that this brings that saga to an end. It’s quite the way the last Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, brought that trilogy to a conclusion in terms of those characters, that’s what this movie does. It goes all the way back to the first one and rounds off and completes that three-part story.”

Fans can also look forward to a Wolverine spin-off in addition to what will no doubt be many, many more X-Men films.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

“X-Men: The Last Stand” set a new box office record for a U.S. Memorial Day weekend opening, bringing in an estimated $107 million US across North America and blowing past “The Da Vinci Code.”

The movie’s distributor, 20th Century Fox, had hoped the film would open close to the $86 million mark set by 2003′s “X2: X-Men United,” according to Reuters.

Until the arrival of “X-Men” this weekend, “The Da Vinci Code” boasted the best opening of the year, taking $77 million for its debut. The religious thriller slipped to second spot this weekend, though sales data is not expected to be released until Monday.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

After successful outings, and one not so successful one, Halle Berry is ready to hang up her super hero costume for good.

Berry has appeared in all three of the X Men movies, portraying Storm, a mutant who has the ability to control the weather. She also portrayed Catwoman, which was a box office bomb.

Berry said she wanted to play a stong woman, which Storm is. However, she feared that Storm was not written as strong and independent as she is in the comic book.

?It?s no fun to play a woman that does nothing,? she told the Associated Press.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance

The upcoming X-Men movie, X-Men: The Last Stand, will be the final film in the comic book-based franchise, says 20th Century Fox.

Director Brett Ratner confirmed the statement, adding that there will be no more films except for possible spin-offs based on the characters of Wolverine and Magneto.

“Well, it seems to be the last of the series,” says Ratner of the title for X3. “We wanted to make sure the audiences knew that this was a trilogy. Even though they weren’t made together like Lord of the Rings, this is really closure for the X-Men series… This is the last stand for sure.”

Development for the Wolverine and Magneto spin-offs are already under way, according to Marvel Studios head Avi Arad.

The Last Stand is due in theatres May 26.

Read more at andPOP. andPOP - POP Culture with Substance