Marvel’s Thor stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, and Anthony Hopkins, and was directed by Kenneth “Cap’n Shakespeare” Branagh, so if nothing else, the concept is really weird.  Like the teaser, it opens with Clark Gregg interrogating Thor, trying to find out where he got his training — Afghanistan? Chechnya?  Try VIKING HEAVEN, MOTHERF*CKER.

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A director-star relationship Todd Phillips could only dream of

HitFix recently spoke with director Darren Aronofsky, and in addition to de facto confirming that he was actually directing the latest Wolverine movie for Fox, they got the Black Swan director to reveal a little about the chronology of the franchise.

The film that he’s directing is officially called “The Wolverine,” and there won’t be a number attached to it.  In our interview, he referred to the movie as a “one-off,” and he emphasized that the film isn’t a sequel in any conventional sense.

Of course, of course, it will have the same actor playing the same lead character, but it’s not a sequel.  On the one hand, a director denying that his film is a sequel is nothing new.  On the other, it sounds a lot more credible coming from Darren Aronofsky.  Let’s compare this with what we normally hear about comic book movies:

Aronofsky: I promise this will be a stand-alone movie, a one-off.

Marvel: We promise this will include cameos from every character in the Marvel universe and at least seven Easter eggs in every scene!  If you look closely, you can see Iron Man cleaning Captain America’s shield with Thor’s hankie!

Oh, Hollywood.  So dumb, yet so predictable, like a retarded kid that craps in your driveway at the same time every morning.  That’s right, the ZOMBIELAND writers have been hired to adapt the comic COWBOY NINJA VIKING (capitalized to reflect the only words the studio exec heard during the pitch meeting).

The Zombieland writing duo of Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have been brought onboard to adapt the comic book series Cowboy Ninja Viking, reports Variety. The official solicitation for the first issue is as follows:

COWBOY NINJA VIKING is the creation of Doctor Sebastian Ghislain, a psychotherapist who recruits Multiple Personality Disorder patients to produce a unit of counter-intelligence agents called Triplets. But what happens when those guys become out of control assassins? That’s when the deadliest Triplet of them all, COWBOY NINJA VIKING, is called in to take down his own brethren. [ComingSoon]

Finally we’ve discovered the secret to getting your property optioned as a Hollywood film.  Just remove all the verbs and definite articles and replace them with TOTALLY AWESOME INTERNET STUFF!  Try it yourself!  Pirate Beautiful Mind! Dances Betty White Wolves!  Ninja Wizard Steampunk Oz! Firefly Silence Chuck Norris Viking Lambs!  I think we’re onto something!

At long last, here’s the first picture of Chris Evans in his WWII-era costume for Joe Johnston’s Captain America.  Er, Captain America: The First Avenger.  Sorry, Marvel, I wouldn’t want to forget your precious tie-ins.  Oh my gosh, is that Black Widow’s spent tampon in the background? I love Easter eggs!

The film is set to open July 2011.  In the meantime, someone should tell Chris Evans that there’s a fine line between “Determined Hero” and “Le Tigre.”

[via EW]

"You looked."

Sony has announced in a press release that Welsh actor Rhys Ifans will be playing the villain in Marc Webb‘s upcoming 3D Spider-Man reboot with Scarfield and Emma Stone. The 42-year-old Ifans is a classic movie “that guy” who’s done solid supporting work in a billion movies and is perhaps best known to Americans as the kicker in The Replacements, which is on cable roughly every seven minutes.

Which villain Ifans will be playing has not yet been identified.  “Welsh Guy”, perhaps?  We could speculate, but if I sat here writing a post about which bad guys from the comic book I’d most like to see Spider-scarf fight, I’d have to kick my own ass.