Tag: Spider-Man (31-39 of 39)

Nov 23 2010 12:18 PM ET

'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark': New video features Bono, Julie Taymor, gorgeous-looking nonsense

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A new behind-the-scenes video for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has just hit the internet. If you’re like me, you’ve been confused but fascinated by everything you’ve seen about the Broadway superhero show, with music by the more famous half of U2. Now, the production has posted a new behind-the-scenes video. There are mostly just a few glimpses of the insane stage design, but the really fun thing is seeing the creative forces behind the project struggle to explain just what, precisely, this thing is.

Julie Taymor — the woman who turned The Lion King into the awesome Broadway show that gave your kids nightmares for weeks — wins for her description: “We can’t really tell you what this is. But it has rock ‘n roll, it has drama, and it has circus.” (Pause to picture a dramatic rock ‘n roll circus.) Bono says the Bono-iest thing I’ve heard all week: “They’re modern myths, these comic book heroes.” The Edge, meanwhile, takes a jaunty Everyman approach that Stan Lee himself would appreciate: “He got bitten by a spider! It could happen to anyone!”

PopWatchers, I have no clue if Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will be good-crazy (like Maximum Carnage) or bad-crazy (like the Clone Saga), but man, I’m stoked to see it! What do you think? Is the world ready for a dance-fighting superhero?

Read more:
‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark’ images
Spider-Man musical delays opening until January
Spider-Man musical faces safety inspection

Nov 16 2010 01:55 PM ET

'Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark' images: And you thought Emo Spider-man was bizarre!

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Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark seems like a lunatic proposal– are any fanbases more distant than comic book geeks and Broadway mavens? At best, it could have been a Shrek: The Musical!-style cash grab. But director Julie Taymor is known for dementedly twisted theatrical visions. Also, Bono and the Edge are writing the music, and there aren’t any iPods in sight! (I don’t even think Bono knows who Spider-Man is. I’m convinced that the Edge just told him they were writing a musical about Abraham Lincoln or Jesus or something.) Now, Annie Leibovitz has taken some photos for Vogue of the cast and set, which seem to confirm that this might very well be the most bizarre take on the Spider-Man mythos ever. (Crazier than Spider-Man: 2099. Crazier than that time Peter Parker went crazy and didn’t take off his costume for five months.)

Just how insane are we talking about? Cripes, look at that picture up there! The Green Goblin looks like an actual flying goblin, Mary Jane is dressed completely in red, and the overall aesthetic suggests Hieronymus Bosch crossed with a Pink Floyd album cover. Other pictures introduce a bizarre metallic villain named Swiss Miss (purely invented for the musical). These pictures make me wish that I was still a kid, so I could go see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and have nightmares about it for the rest of my life.

PopWatchers, have these pics made you more excited for Turn Off the Dark? I’m pretty stoked to see that Taymor is so set on putting her own spin on the material. (Although… Swiss Miss?)

Follow me on Twitter @EWDarrenFranich

Oct 6 2010 01:40 PM ET

'Spider-Man': Who is Gwen Stacy?

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Emma-StoneImage Credit: David Gabber/PR Photos; Marvel EntertainmentGwen Stacy is an incredibly important figure in comic book history. Sadly, the vast majority of moviegoers probably only know her as “That random girl in Spider-Man 3 whose existence made no sense, much like everything in Spider-Man 3.” Well, Gwen’s about to make a big comeback. Like, Downey-Jr.-in-Iron-Man big. As EW’s Nicole Sperling reported last night, Emma Stone will be playing Spidey’s original love interest. (Yes, Emma Stone seems better-suited to play red-haired Mary Jane, but Hollywood is Bizarro-world and life is chaos.) Which begs the question: Who is Gwen Stacy, anyways? READ FULL STORY »

Sep 24 2010 03:47 PM ET

'Spider-Man' reboot: Who should play Mary Jane and Gwen?

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wasikowska-stoneImage Credit: Tina Gill/PR Photos; Bob Charlotte/PR PhotosEven though Spider-Man 1 isn’t perfect and Spider-Man 3 is awful, you could make a decent case for the Spider-Man trilogy as the most successful adaptation of a comic book into a complete cinematic saga. The origin story isn’t changed very much. The key characters all appear. The costume is retro-fabulous. (No black leather here). But for me, the trilogy could never quite get over one hurdle: the woman thing. Kirsten Dunst was nominally playing Mary Jane Watson, but she was really more of a mash-up of Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy, Spidey’s first girlfriend. Through no fault of Dunst’s, the cinematic Mary Jane became more nonsensical with each movie — especially in 3, when a personality-free Gwen Stacy herself actually appeared for a two-second love triangle. (Adding to the confusion: the on-screen Gwen Stacy was a model, just like Mary Jane in the comics.) So I was incredibly excited to read yesterday’s report by EW’s Nicole Sperling that both Mary Jane and Gwen will be front and center in the upcoming Spider-Man reboot. READ FULL STORY »

Sep 17 2010 03:22 PM ET

'All-Star Superman' will get animated. Does this mean we're finally done with gritty superheroes?

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dark-knight-supermanImage Credit: Stephen Vaughan; DC ComicsThe formula for superhero movies hasn’t really changed that much since Bryan Singer’s X-Men ten years ago. Make it grim and gritty. Remove all primary colors. Tell the actors to scowl. Don’t put anyone in a costume unless you have to. The post-Matrix vogue for bleakly dystopian action movies merged with the post-Frank Miller trend of “realism” in comic books, and the result was Batman’s Alec-Baldwin-with-strep-throat voice.

Friends, there is another way. Look no further than Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s epic All-Star Superman, a miniseries that supercharges all the hokiest elements of an unabashedly hokey character – Bizarro talking funny! Time-traveling Superman from the future! Kryptonite in every color! Jimmy Olsen! – and becomes a funny, sad, world-beating epic. According to The Hollywood Reporter, All-Star Superman is next in line for DC’s well-regarded series of direct-to-DVD animated movies. (Christina Hendricks is voicing Lois Lane, and I’m already sweating.) A DVD-movie intended for kids ain’t exactly a blockbuster, but could we be witnessing the end of the Grim Superhero era? READ FULL STORY »

Sep 10 2010 01:38 PM ET

'Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark' musical details revealed: Are you getting drawn into its web?

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spider-manPerformances of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark — the most expensive musical, and one of the medium’s most anticipated shows, in Broadway history — begin Sunday, Nov. 14, with the show’s opening set for Tuesday, Dec. 21. And, as if the din around the impending show hasn’t been huge for the past few years, now that an opening date has been announced and rehearsals are ramping up, the fervor for the musical is only getting crazier. Just look: The New York Times did an interesting look at Spider-Man, through the lens of its producer Michael Cohl.

Here’s a juicy tidbit from that story about the acrobatics-laced show’s rather out-of-control budget: “The cost of the musical, widely reported to be $50 million, will have grown by an additional $10 million when all expenses are accounted for, Mr. Cohl said,” writes Patrick Healy. “He expected the running costs of Spider-Man to be slightly under $1 million a week — meaning that the show would need to have blockbuster sales on the scale of the top-grossing musical Wicked if he and his investors were to see a profit from the Broadway production alone.” To make sense of that, I’ve heard that a way to imagine how much that means in terms of Broadway math (which, as you might expect, is very different than television or movies) is that Spider-Man needs to sell out its theater at full ticket price for five years. That, my friends, is a feat that’s nearly unheard of on the Great White Way.

But there’s more! Bono and The Edge — who did the music for the show — and director Julie Taymor, as well as star Reeve Carney, appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America today to talk about the show. The interviews, which you can watch below, reveal storyboards that show what the sets of the show will look like. In short, the sets look expansive and complicated. And the costumes for some of the villains, like Green Goblin and a new baddie Swiss Miss (yes!), were also shown by Taymor. Check out the videos here:

READ FULL STORY »

Aug 23 2010 12:45 PM ET

Lunchtime Poll: Speidi sex tape or Spidey sex tape?

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Speidi-or-SpideyImage Credit: PRN/PR Photos; Zade RosenthalI’m sorry to be so inconsiderate as you’re about to eat, but there’s supposed to be a Spencer Pratt/Heidi Montag sex tape. A “flurry” of tapes, according to Spencer. Ewwww, don’t say flurry. There might also be footage of Heidi and a Playboy Playmate getting intimate. No way do I care about either of these tightly packed bowls of (probably) whipped-potato lies, but I might have watched the latter had the Playmate been Kendra, because then it could just be a slow-looping track of her laugh, like on The Soup. Maybe I’d even score some tips on how to keep my nasolabial folds in check while getting tickled by a stupid feather. ANYWAY, I’d been blissfully unaware of any of this until this morning, at which point someone in a meeting mentioned “the Speidi sex tape” and I misinterpreted it as “the Spidey sex tape.” There it is. (FYI: Seth/Summer Spider-man kiss!)

Read more: All Lunchtime Polls on PopWatch

Annie on Twitter: @EWAnnieBarrett

Jul 2 2010 10:07 AM ET

Andrew Garfield is the Spider-Man I've been waiting for

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When it comes to superhero movies, I’m a Batman guy. Not a Joel Schumacher Batman guy, mind you, but a Christopher Nolan, gritty Gotham City, bad-to-the-bone Batman guy. To me, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films were always a tad tame, and dramatic weight seemed secondary to the lucrative business of selling lunch-boxes to third-graders. So I was surprised and excited by Sony’s announcement that Andrew Garfield will be the new Peter Parker in the Spidey reboot scheduled for 2012. READ FULL STORY »

Jul 1 2010 01:03 PM ET

Josh Hutcherson on Spider-Man rumors: 'It's something so big, it's hard to even fathom, honestly'

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Josh-HutchersonImage Credit: Matt Carr/Getty ImagesEven before the web exploded with unconfirmed chatter yesterday that actor Josh Hutcherson is the final choice to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Sony’s reboot of the comic-book franchise, the 17-year-old’s name had long been in the mix of potential heirs to Tobey Maguire’s red-and-blue tights. (Other actors reportedly being considered for the role include Jamie Bell and Aaron Johnson.) So when EW spoke with the actor last week about his upcoming role in the critically acclaimed The Kids Are All Right, we couldn’t help but ask him about all the Spidey talk.

UPDATE: Well, that was fast: Columbia Pictures is confirming that actor Andrew Garfield has landed the role of Spider-Man, not Hutcherson. Still, Hutcherson’s answers do give some insight into what it must be like for a young actor to be thrown into such an incredibly high profile casting experience. Here’s what he had to say about it:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you find out all about the talk that you’re being considered for the new Spider-Man?
JOSH HUTCHERSON: I found out when everybody else did, through the random blogs and stuff like that.

Your agent didn’t tell you that you were being considered?
People like my mom have Google alerts, and my agent is always looking out [for news]. It’s so crazy to be talked about for a project that nobody really knows a whole lot about, like who has it or who doesn’t have it. It was so weird to me. READ FULL STORY »

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