Disney has been giving the full court press during this year’s March Madness in anticipation for the summer’s Maleficent. After yesterday’s legacy trailer and winged preview, the prospect of another traditional trailer today theoretically could seem like overload…Unless, the House of Mouse was saving something special up their sleeve for this preview beyond the gloried wings of Disney’s greatest villain, as devilishly embodied by Angelina Jolie. And aye they have, for here there be dragons…

Maleficent refocuses the narrative of the 1959 Walt Disney Animation Studios classic, Sleeping Beauty, as the journey of their greatest villain, who is in fact an even greater anti-hero. Once her homeland is ravaged by an invading kingdom, Maleficent (Jolie) grows up with revenge in her heart, and she will have it when she damns the king’s infant daughter to an eternal slumber when she reaches adulthood. Yet, as little Aurora (Elle Fanning) grows, Maleficent sees something of herself in the child, but vengeance must be tasted.

And if you like the looks of this film (or not), here is our list of 6 more Disney Villains who could use their own movie.

Maleficent opens May 30, 2014.

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The Incredibles 2 is on the way. How it has taken this long, we'll never know, but why bother complaining about something when your wish has just been granted? Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed today during a shareholder's meeting that Pixar is developing The Incredibles 2.

I could probably go on at length about the virtual perfection of the superhero genre that is Brad Bird's original Incrediblesfilm, but I'll spare you all. For now. In the meantime, let's just sit back for a moment and consider the fact that this is actually happening. There are no other details available. Not a release date, nor a confirmation that Brad Bird will return.

Pixar went public with the news via Twitter:

It’s official: we’re currently working on new films featuring your favorite characters from The Incredibles and Cars! pic.twitter.com/HzdvF0rvpA

— Disney•Pixar (@DisneyPixar) March 18, 2014

They also confirmed Cars 3, but, well...ANYWAY. Bring on Incredibles 2!

Source:THR

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Disney has been making waves all day with a new trailer for Maleficent that dances with dragons, announcements that The Incredibles 2 and Cars 3are coming down the Pixar track, and, oh yes, confirmation that the original Star Wars trio of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford will be back for the 30-years later Star Wars: Episode VII. But it is truly the House of Mouse’s time to shine, as Disney CEO Bob Iger has been able to offer one piece of good news after another at today’s annual shareholder meeting for The Walt Disney Company, held in Portland, Ore.

In fact, Iger reportedly kicked off the meeting by reminding shareholders that last year’s Frozen, which won two Oscars for Best Animated Film and Best Original Song earlier this month, has crossed $1 billion at the global box office. Iger further spoke highly of the film by indicating Disney expects the picture to outperform Toy Story 3 at the worldwide box office, making it the highest grossing animated movie of all time. Toy Story 3 currently holds that record with $1.06 billion, however since Frozen is only now opening in the Japanese market, it will be more than enough to pass that figure by Disney’s estimation. “I’d call that a great year,” Deadline reports Iger told shareholders.

Considering the only two pictures to cross $1 billion last year are Frozen and Iron Man 3, we’re inclined to agree with the CEO on that count. Better still, Frozen crossing $1 billion and its other unmitigated successes have already led us to call it a breakthrough for the future of movies made in the Hollywood system. Many more will hopefully want to build that kind of snowman.

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After helming the entire eight-episode run of HBO’s instantly beloved True Detective gumbo noir, director Cary Fukunaga (Jane Eyre) is set to return to features as the director of DreamWorks’ Noble Assassin.

As reported by Deadline, DreamWorks has closed a deal with Scott Silver (The Fighter) to pen a screenplay for the project, which will be based on the real-life exploits of Robert de Rochefoucauld. The film is also set to be produced by Anonymous Content’s Michael Sugar, as well as Carla Hacken and Fukunaga himself.

Noble Assassin will focus on the exploits of Robert de la Rochefoucauld during the Second World War when he went from a French aristocrat to an anti-Nazi saboteur working behind enemy lines in Occupied France. Recruited by the British Special Operations Executive and trained in fighting techniques, he returned to France where he blew up manufacturing and transportation targets before being captured, tortured, and nearly executed prior to his escape.

It will be interesting to see how this affects the second season of True Detective.

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Ghostbusters 3 has been rumored almost since Ghostbusters 2 first hit theaters. At one point it seemed inevitable. In recent years, it's seemed more ethereal than actual ectoplasm. Make no mistake, though, Ghostbusters 3is happening. However, it's not going to happen with director Ivan Reitman.

Mr. Reitman will stay on as a producer for Ghostbusters 3, but will not direct, for a number of reasons, some of which you can probably guess.

“There has been all kinds of stuff, unofficially written about Ghostbusters,” Reitman told Deadline. “I’ve been reading things online for about four years, speculation on who’s writing, what they’re writing, who’s in it, who we will use, and who’s directing. We’d decided not to comment up till now, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, and it was never clear what Bill was going to do. A lot of things happened in the last few months, the most significant of which was the passing of Harold, who was a very good friend who was extraordinarily influential in my career. We did five movies together including both Ghostbusters.”

Beyond saying that they are "very excited" about the current draft of Ghostbusters 3, Reitman was less forthcoming about specifics. “I’m not going to say how many Ghostbusters there will be in the new cast, but we are determined to retain the spirit of the original film, and I am pleased that all of this seems to have happened organically...I’m hoping we can get started by the fall, set in New York, but given the logistics and the stuff that happens, the beginning of 2015 seems more likely.”

There's lots more with Ivan Reitman over at Deadline. It's certainly worth your time. He discusses a little about the evolution of the current draft, the continued efforts to get Bill Murray to join up (don't hold your breath), and much more. It's refreshingly candid and a very good read.

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Marvel aired their Assembling a Universe special this evening, beating the drum for the imminent release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy, but also Avengers: Age of Ultron. In the course of the last few minutes of the show, fans were treated to glimpses of concept art, which Marvel has since leaked out through various social media accounts. Chief among these, though, is our first indication of what Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) will be wearing. Check 'em out! 

Admittedly, it isn't much, but it's a start! No surprises here that Elizabeth Olsen won't be sporting the rather impractical comic book duds of the Scarlet Witch, and there's a certain functional simplicity to Quicksilver. Even, perhaps, a similarity to a SHIELD jumpsuit. The special also offered glimpses of Hulk squaring off with someone in the Iron Man "Hulkbuster" gear, which was a bit of a moment for comic book obsessives everywhere. We'll keep updating this with more images as we go along!

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What else can be said about Captain America: The Winter Soldier that won't be said again and again in coming days? The buzz on this film is overwhelmingly positive. It's based on one of the greatest Captain America stories of all time. It's billed as a "political thriller" rather than a superhero sequel. What more do you want, really? Oh, you mean you actually want to see the movie? How about the first ten minutes?

Well, that was exciting. And probably the single greatest superhero/supervillain punch-up this writer has yet seen on film. 

Thanks to MovieWeb for this. We'll be over here making popcorn.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens everywhere on April 4th. You'll probably have seen it before then.

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This interview contains spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

When Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige announced at Comic-Con in 2012 that the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger would be subtitled The Winter Soldier, the place exploded with excitement: Ed Brubaker’s story in the comics was widely regarded as one of Cap’s greatest and most personal adventures. The job of adapting Brubaker’s tale fell to Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the screenwriters who had done such a credible job bringing Cap to life in the first film.

The writing duo, whose past credits include all three Narnia movies and Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain (as well as some work on Thor: The Dark World) did not adapt Brubaker’s storyline literally but rather took major elements from it – in particular the title character, a legendary assassin with powerful ties to Cap’s past – and crafted a modern political conspiracy thriller that finds Cap (Chris Evans) teaming with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and new hero The Falcon (Anthony Mackie) against a vast plot that threatens not just the existence of S.H.I.E.L.D., but the course of history.

Den Of Geek sat down with Markus and McFeely at the recent press junket for Captain America: The Winter Soldier to discuss writing the film, working with directors Anthony and Joe Russo, and what they have planned for Captain America 3.(warning: slight spoilers)

Den of Geek: How long after Captain America: The First Avenger came out did (Marvel president) Kevin Feige call you up and say, “Hey guys, you want to start looking at the second one?”

Stephen McFeely: Pretty early. We had made a deal to write it before the first one came out and maybe a month or two afterwards we started the process of doing, you know, the outlining and blue sky thinking and things like that. Summer of 2011 we started.

Did you have any mandates at that point in terms of where Cap had to go in this story or what elements had to be in it? Weren't there a couple of different versions discussed, with and without the Winter Soldier?

McFeely:  Starting off I don’t think there were any mandates per se. Things came up as we went along -- not even mandates but sort of, you know, Marvel Universe trajectories that they wanted to head toward. There was a debate whether we should do Winter Soldier flat out in the next movie or maybe save him for later. Was it too soon to go back to this guy? And we did plot out a version that was not –- that wasn’t this movie at all. And it worked fine but all of us just kept coming back to how cool the...

Christopher Markus: Wouldn’t it be better if, you know...

McFeely: And eventually everyone just sort of went, why are we saving this? Let’s go. And at one point Kevin came in and said, “Hey, we all at Marvel have been talking and we think we want to bring down S.H.I.E.L.D..” And we went, “Oh, we can do that. Let’s build that story.”

Why do you think The Winter Soldier is one of the most appealing and popular Cap stories?

McFeely: Well, part of it is Brubaker because he and Steve Epting just put out a really great book. But for our purposes, it was the best way to discuss the problem we saw Steve having, you know, which is "Where do I fit in in the modern world? What do I know to be true? I think I know my values but I don’t know the values around me." And then we bring back this character who now makes you question everything, you know.

Markus: He’s also almost the exact negative image of Cap, you know. He was unnaturally awake for the years that Cap was unnaturally asleep. Cap does good things, he’s done terrible things, you know. And they both come from the exact same place and have gone in radically different directions and then come back together. It’s just so loaded.

McFeely: Yeah, it was pretty clean storytelling.

A lot of us already know who the Winter Soldier is going in, but the way the film builds to Cap discovering it is great. He has all this other stuff happen to him, so by the time the Winter Soldier takes off his mask, it's the straw that breaks the camel’s back in a way.

McFeely: Right. It's like, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Markus: We played with deploying it in a couple of places because it’s like, you know, geez, do you have no mask and just get it over with? Or do you delay it too long even though anyone’s who’s read a comic book knows who he is. But it all synced up really nicely to have him part of this larger conspiracy that Cap’s uncovering. And so, you know, as the story unravels you get closer and closer to seeing the face of this. And the enemy is ourselves.

Did you talk with Brubaker during the process or consult with him at all on any aspects of his original story?

McFeely: We know him and talk with him, you know, halfway frequently. We didn’t quite use him in that way but he’s been to my house for parties and stuff.

Markus: And I think I can say, you know, for a man who writes such sinister stories he’s giddy.

McFeely: Yeah, he’s pretty damn happy.

Do you approach adapting a story like this in the way you would approach a novel, taking the elements that will work on screen and keeping it faithful to the tone and the spirit?

McFeely: Exactly right. Like, you know, we kind of knew we’re not gonna use the Cosmic Cube. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. He’s not Russian exactly. He’s not a Soviet experiment.

Markus: We didn’t want to bring back the Skull so soon.

McFeely: Right.

Markus: Let alone have him inside the head of somebody else.

McFeely: There were just some things that would be much tougher to do on screen as they are in the comic.

Markus: But yeah, it is a matter of being really respectful to the tone and the spirit of it without necessarily having to duplicate the exact details.

Did I hear you say something about bringing the Red Skull "so soon"? Did I get a little piece of news there?

Markus: (laughs) I only said that because I think it’s fairly clear he didn’t die in that first movie but fucked off into Wonderland.

When you’re actually writing the script, are you aware of what Joss (Whedon) is doing? Does he share notes on where he maybe wants to pick up the story? Because Age of Ultron is very much going to be a sequel to this.

McFeely: Kind of, yeah. We certainly read the drafts we’re allowed to read, you know. So for Cap 3 we read Avengers 2 and for Cap 2 we had to read Iron Man 3 and The Avengers early on.

Markus: But even though they seem like they’re all coming out kind of contiguously like that, there’s enough time to read the preceding ones before you’re really writing. Like, we’re thinking now about Cap 3 and we’ve read Avengers 2. And Joss had read us, I think, before he started in earnest on Avengers 2. Plus there’s the overriding control of Kevin who has a very, very accurate bullshit detector -- not only does he know when ideas are stupid but he also knows when ideas are gonna conflict.

McFeely: But Kevin also wants the best movie possible so he always steers you towards that. Other movies can get out of the way, you know. It’s pretty organic.

One thing I was surprised about was how much Robert Redford is in the movie. When they announced it, I kind of assumed he'd show up in one or two scenes. But he’s right in the thick of things. Did his role expand once you had him or was Pierce always that big a character?

Markus: Pierce was always there but to be honest, once Redford came in we rewrote him.

McFeely: We rewrote twice. We wrote a draft to kind of seduce him, you know, because once we knew they were going to get him we went all right, well let’s write towards him which means smart, which means a little cool. And then once we got him, we sort of pulled stuff away because he can say things with his eyes. And he said as much. He said, “Listen I probably don’t need these three sentences because you’re gonna get it off of my last sentence because I’m gonna then do this.” It was pretty impressive.

Markus: When you know you have Robert Redford, he maybe has played a villain before on TV in the '50s, but this is not a guy who comes off sinister. So when you’re writing a generic villain, you know, when you don’t have a face to put to a name, they tend to start to say more nefarious things. And then you trim it back and then when you know that Robert Redford’s gonna be saying it -- one, you take away some of the things where Robert Redford cannot say that crazy line but then it’s also, if Robert Redford said that crazy line it would be incredibly disturbing.

McFeely: I would believe it.

Markus: Like, that’s not the guy who’s supposed to say I’m gonna kill ten million people.

What’s your interaction been like with the Russos? Is it interesting for you guys to work with a co-directing team?

Markus: It’s been really great, very collaborative. It is interesting to work with another team, because I think when there’s two versus one on either side it can feel unintentionally like ganging up. But when there’s four people it just becomes this very free flowing exchange where, you know, one of us and one Russo can side against the other Russo and the other writer.

McFeely: That happens a lot.

Markus: It’s like whole new teams have developed. It’s a different Marvel team-up.

Right.

Markus: But seriously, we had a draft before they came in and they saw everything we were trying to do and, you know, took it to another level and it had all the right reference points.

McFeely: When directors come in and say this scene should be like early Brian De Palma, we go, oh yeah, of course it should.

I understand that you are all working now on developing the story for Captain America 3.

McFeely: The Russos walk out of the editing room to finish this movie at eight and then we take them from eight to ten at night.

Markus: We have a meeting to talk about Cap 3 tomorrow which I think it’ll end at about two and the premiere for Cap 2 is at six, I think.

McFeely: There’s not a lot of rest.

Markus: Yeah, there’s no kicking back your heels and taking a vacation during this.

Are you going back to the comics for the next one and plan to adapt another story, while incorporating the many threads left open at the end of this one?

McFeely: Oh yeah, you can probably predict some of the threads we would like to pick up again that we’ve laid out there. And we always go back to the comics and dive back in and look at anything we’ve missed in the last few years that might be relevant.

Markus: We’ve definitely set out on a more realistic road in the Cap movies, you know. Even more grounded than in the other MCU movies. And so it kind of rules out Cap fighting the Dinosaur Man or something like that. There are some that aren’t gonna start and other ones that -- I mean there’s a couple we’re playing with right now that we really want to take elements from. Which we'll not reveal.

Oh, come on.

Markus: All I’m saying is psychotic 1950s Cap.

Kevin Feige speaks highly of the both of you. You've done both Captain America movies, you're doing the next one, you've helped out with Thor...do you feel like you’ve got like a home at Marvel and are there any other Marvel stories outside of Cap that you’d like to tackle if you get the chance?

Markus: It’s nice that Kevin says that. But we never try to feel too comfortable anywhere because, you know, you can always be fired.

McFeely: But that said, it’s a nice sandbox and we feel really taken care of here. As for other projects, there is a thing that’s already on the table. If ABC were to green light the Agent Carter series, we’d love to do that. It would be really exciting. So, I mean, that’s an actual real thing.

Markus: Then there are other pie in the sky heroes out there that you could make a great movie out of.

McFeely: Moon Knight.

Markus: Yeah, I think you could make an awesome Moon Knight movie. I don’t even know who owns Moon Knight but, you know...

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If you feel like you've already seen all of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, perhaps this latest trailer isn't for you. Clocking in at a hefty two and a half minutes, it doesn't leave much to the imagination. That being said, it's packed full of impressive visuals, and a pretty heavy focus on the relationship between Peter Parker and Harry Osborn. Watch it here...

With the recent revelations that the Rhino only appears in a few minutes of the film, and the fact that even Jamie Foxx's Electro seems like a secondary villain in this trailer, it makes us wonder: was this all misdirection this whole time, to draw attention away from the fact that Harry Osborn's Green Goblin is the main villain of the film? We'll find out on May 2nd when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hits theaters.

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"When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong," says Meryl Streep to Jeff Bridges in the new trailer for The Giver. The upcoming science fiction young adult movie was directed by Phillip Noyce, who also made Dead Calm and Patriot Games.

The Giver is based on the 1994 Newberry Medal winning book of the same name that was written by Lois Lowry. All the kids in middle school read it.

The Giver stars Brenton Thwaites as young hero Jonas. Taylor Swift can barely be seen in the trailer, but she is also featured along with Katie Holmes in the film, which the press release describes: “In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the `real’ world.”

The grown-ups in the movie are Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep – who plays the Chief Elder and Alexander Skarsgard. Also featured are Cameron Monaghan, from the cable series Shameless, and Odeya Rush, who played in The Odd Life of Timothy Green.

Jeff Bridges has been trying to make The Giver into a movie for 17 years. That's longer than Jacob's age in the movie.

The Giver opens Aug. 15.

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We all do bad, bad things, which can make looking in the mirror difficult at times. Yet what if the face looking back is ever so much worse?

In the newest clip for Oculus, Katee Sackhoff faces that horror and more when she fails to recognize that woman in the mirror. The one with an evil smile and even eviler eyes…

Ten years ago, tragedy struck the Russell family, leaving the lives of teenage siblings Tim and Kaylie forever changed when Tim was convicted of the brutal murder of their parents. Now in his 20s, Tim is newly released from protective custody and only wants to move on with his life; but Kaylie, still haunted by that fateful night, is convinced her parents’ deaths were caused by something else altogether: a malevolent supernatural force­­ unleashed through the Lasser Glass, an antique mirror in their childhood home. Determined to prove Tim’s innocence, Kaylie tracks down the mirror, only to learn similar deaths have befallen previous owners over the past century. With the mysterious entity now back in their hands, Tim and Kaylie soon find their hold on reality shattered by terrifying hallucinations, and realize, too late, that their childhood nightmare is beginning again...

Oculus opens in theaters nationwide on April 11, 2014.

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Enter And Win A Muppets Prize Pack

In just a few days, no Muppet fan will have an excuse to be green, because Muppets Most Wanted will be in theaters, and the sequel songs are sure to sunny everyone’s day! We’re certainly excited, and whether your favorite is Gonzo, Kermit, or a frog-obsessed pig, we hope you are too. That’s why we’re ready to give away a Prize Pack of free official Muppet swag to one lucky Jim Henson devotee!

Den of Geek US is partnering with TV Store Online to dole out four Muppet-themed T-shirts that we can assure you truly rock. But don’t take our word for it, check out their showbiz appeal below:

To win, you just have to answer a simple question: Assuming that there is a third Muppets movie, who would you love to see cameo in the franchise for the first time? After all, one of the most appealing and clever aspects of any Muppet movie worth its felt is that the characters interact with great celebrities, who often appear in blink-and-you-miss-it screen muggings. So, this would be a chance to go outside that box and offer up a new face worth having a stare-off with Miss Piggy.

If you want to enter, please send us your best answer for the above question to our Facebook page, Twtter, or Google+account. This contest will close Tuesday, March 25 at 5pm EST. The winner with the best answer will be contacted via their social media platform of choice and have their answer posted on the website. Waka, waka!

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Children and friendly aliens going on adventures are as ubiquitous as found footage and horror. Yet, Relativity Media’s Earth to Echo seems interested in combining the two genres for a unique experience. Often, found footage is the stuff of fear and stupid teenagers, but as nearly every 7-year-old now has access to an iPhone, that storytelling technique can be expanded upon in different ways.

Thus enter the trailer for Earth to Echo, a movie ready to show genre fans a new perspective for when kids have close encounters with the third kind.

Tuck, Munch and Alex are a closely bonded trio of inseparable friends, but their time together is coming to an end. Their neighborhood is being destroyed by a highway construction project that is forcing their families to move away. But just two days before they must part ways, the boys find a cryptic signal has infected their phones. Convinced something bigger is going on and looking for one final adventure together, they set off to trace the messages to their source and discover something beyond their wildest imaginations: hiding in the darkness is a mysterious being, stranded on Earth, and wanted by the government. This launches the boys on an epic journey full of danger and wonder, one that will test the limits of their friendship and change all of their lives forever.

Starring Teo Halm, Brian "Astro" Bradley, Reese Hartwig, and Ella Linnea Wahlestedt, Earth to Echo launches into theaters on July 2, 2014.

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George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels are long. But better known now as the Game of Thrones books, there are still only five of them, and for fans who are keeping score, HBO’s hit adaptation is on Season 4.

So, at the Game of Thrones Season 4 premiere held at Lincoln Center last night, it is unsurprising that the question of what happens when the show catches up remains a persistent query for the American author. While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Martin remained hopeful that he can stay ahead of the TV series, and noted that while there are only seven (currently planned) novels in the unfinished literary series, there are a multitude of avenues that the adaptation can travel to continue the saga. There could even be a movie…

“It all depends on how long the main series runs,” Martin said to THR.“Do we run for seven years? Do we run for eight? Do we run for 10? The books get bigger and bigger (in scope). It might need a feature to tie things up, something with a feature budget, like $100 million for two hours. Those dragons get real big, you know.”

Aye, Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons do get very big, but we suspect those books are getting condensed. While the upcoming Season 4 will primarily be adapting the last half of Martin’s third Westerosi novel, A Storm of Swords, it will also bleed into events from both Martin’s fourth and fifth novels (which occur simultaneously in different parts of his universe), A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons. For those who have read those expansive books, there would appear more than enough to condense events into a single fifth season, particularly with a solid head start in Season 4.

Martin’s suggestion that HBO is considering a theatrical finale that would bring Tryion Lannister, Arya Stark, and other fan favorites to the big screen is an enticing one. Yet, we’re still more inclined to believe series co-creator and showrunner David Benioff when he said that the show will likely end after seven or eight seasons. Benioff further elaborated with a more definitive answer that the aim is to conclude it in seven seasons, the number of choice for most Westerosi citizens.

But what about you? Would you like to see Drogon bringing Fire and Blood to the Whitewalkers in a multiplex within a few years? At the very least, Martin still has Tales of Dunk and Egg, three prequel novellas set 90 years before Game of Thrones, which are apparently being considered for big screen adaptation.

The fourth season of Game of Thrones premieres April 6, 2014.

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There are a lot of questions surrounding The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and director Marc Webb is prepared to answer at least some of them. Webb was on hand earlier this week on the Sony Pictures studio lot to introduce around a half-hour of footage from the new film to an eager group of journalists, including your faithful reporter for Den Of Geek. Webb took questions after the screening, discussing the scenes we were shown, the rationale behind the choice of villains in the movie, and how The Amazing Spider-Man 2 impacts the future of the franchise – and his own involvement with it.

But first, you want to know all about the footage, of course. We were shown three sequences, starting with the opening 10 to 12 minutes of the film. Surprisingly, the movie begins with Richard and Mary Parker (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidz), Peter’s parents, leaving their son with his uncle and aunt – sort of a restatement of a scene from the previous film. Richard leaves a recorded message (online?), and he and Mary are next seen on board a private plane, where Richard is fixated on uploading a file associated with the name “Roosevelt.” But the plane is a trap, someone has boarded the plane to kill them, and the couple get into a fight with their enemy that ends in a fiery plane crash.

That’s just the first half. We cut immediately to Peter (Andrew Garfield) swinging happily through the city in his Spider-Man costume before hearing of a truck full of plutonium that’s been hijacked from Oscorp. Behind the wheel is one Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti), screaming and ranting in a thick Russian accent. As the truck careens through the city, police cars follow in hot pursuit and pile up in massive crashes behind it. Finally Spidey catches up, takes a minute to save poor Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) from getting run over, fastens himself to the top of the cab and goes into battle with Sytsevich. The scene ends with Spidey pantsing a howling Sytsevich and leaving him raging, while Peter leaves the scene and makes it to his high school just in time to pick up his diploma – it’s graduation day.

The second sequence is the complete Times Square attack that we’ve seen pieces of in trailers and clips. It begins with Peter and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) meeting for the first time in what appears to be a while, hiding their emotions behind banter until Peter admits he’s been following Gwen and making sure she’s safe even when they were not together. But soon enough his spider-sense starts tingling as Max, now fully in Electro mode, makes his way into Times Square and begins sucking power from a conduit under the street. Mass destruction ensues as first the cops and then Spider-Man engage with Electro, with Spidey first trying to reach out to him by recollecting the time he saved his life. But then a police officer takes a shot at Electro and turns the scene into carnage. Webb uses slow-motion tracking camera shots to give us a sense of how Spider-Man sees the action, which work effectively in the 3D image.

The final sequence gives us Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) as he visits Electro – restrained in some sort of lab at Oscorp – and commences a long dialogue scene in which he convinces Electro to team up with him and go after Spider-Man. Harry breaks Electro out of his restraints just as security officers show up, and we see that Electro’s powers have now expanded to the point where he can turn himself into pure electricity, disperse and reassemble at will. This last scene was followed by a trailer-like montage of shots from the rest of the movie, including several of Harry in Green Goblin mode, additional footage with Peter and Gwen, the Rhino armor (although we don’t see Giamatti himself in it), and more.

Footage strong points: Garfield’s Spider-Man is wittier and funnier this time around. Jamie Foxx looks pretty cool in the new Electro designs they’ve come up with. The action sequences feel massive – more so than the first movie – and really pile on the chaos and destruction. Footage weak points: the action sequences tend to get a little too busy and quick with more of that ADD editing that plagues so many modern films. Overall, there seems to just be a LOT going on in this movie – we’re not sure how this script is going to balance Electro, Harry, Rhino, Oscorp, Gwen, Peter, and the potential set-up for future films even if it does run two hours and 20 minutes.

After the lights came  up, Webb reappeared and took questions for about 15 minutes. Here are the highlights:

On incorporating more classic elements like the Daily Bugle and Norman Osborn: “Yeah, we’re developing The Daily Bugle. Obviously, you’re going to get a little hint of Norman Osborn in this film. TheDaily Bugle is part of it. The big thing that I wanted to nail this time was the suit, and I wanted to return to the iconography that we knew from the comic books, and The Daily Bugle is an emerging force to be reckoned with, and that’s one of the fun things about delving into a universe like this. You can take more time with these things, and we really did think about this in a longer format, so things like TheDaily Bugle and Norman Osborn’s story, we were very selective about how to tease that out."

On making this film a bigger spectacle:“There is always a 12-year-old kid inside of me that just wants more. More cop cars. I want 10, no 50, no, let’s get 80 cop cars and trash them all. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend you do it. But there is also the playfulness of it… I wanted to start off the movie in a more playful way, especially given the opening situation with the plane, because I wanted to bring it back into this playful part of Spider-Man that also felt big and action driven. There’s opportunities in action for certain kinds of comedy that you just don’t get anywhere else.”

On bringing more comedy into the movie:“Something fundamental about Spider-Man is his wit and his quips, but it’s also part of his character. It’s how he provokes villains, particularly it’s how he puts them on their heels. I think with Rhino, it’s particularly convenient because he’s such a dumb villain that he can provoke him that way, and we always try to think about it in the nature of the scene and the nature of the character. That’s where the comedy emerges. We did something that sometimes, you know, big comedy movies do, which is you get a roundtable of comedians and you just have them spit jokes out, and we’d use that and try them out with Andrew and see what worked.”

On Electro’s motivation:“To understand Electro is to understand Max Dillon…Jamie’s been really a great component of this and he was a great partner in trying to generate this in the movie. Max Dillon’s character has been sort of ignored by the world, forgotten by people and he’s an outcast, much in the way that Peter Parker is an outcast, and he chooses to react to that in a little bit of a different way. There is a wonderful pathos that Jamie enables at the beginning of the film and you really feel for him, but there’s also a psychosis. There’s something mad about him and that eventually gets the better of him.”

On how much he’ll be involved with the Spider-Man franchise beyond this film and the third one:“Myself and my partners at Sony, and [producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach], we’ve been trying to figure out how to develop a larger universe and there are some very exciting things coming around the corner with the Sinister Six, and Venom, and future Spider-Man movies. I want to be involved in any way I possibly can, and we’re already talking. We’ve had these really wonderful discussions and there’s already been some announcements, with Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob [Orci], and Drew Goddard, and a lot of these really brilliant minds who are young and emerging are helping us develop something a little bit more elaborate and exciting. It’s just been a blast. It’s sort of a dream come true. We’ve had fantasies about what we could do, and they’re slowly coming to reality. I’m really excited about that.”

On revealing the fate of Peter’s parents:“We had a plan about how to let that unfold. It was sort of the long shadow that was cast over Peter Parker’s life, and we knew how this was going to emerge. We had ideas about the pathways of these characters, but we didn’t want to blow everything out in the first movie, because again, it’s about creating a more elaborate universe, which is developing into more and more interesting and nuanced things that the fans are really going to enjoy.”

On expanding the universe and introducing elements like the Sinister Six:“Originally, it was conceived as a trilogy. We were thinking about three movies, and then we started messing around with the second movie, and there was such an enormous wealth of information, and we were just like, 'We can’t cram them all into one movie!' There’s too much richness there, and so when we were talking about the beginning of the second film, trying to plan out all of the emerging storylines, it just started to make sense to invest in other stories, and then in particular, the Sinister Six is something we’d always talked about, just like how do we plan this out. So, that’s where it started, beginning of the second movie, in terms of developing the universe.”

On whether we’ll find out the identity of the mysterious figure talking to the Lizard in his cell at the end of the first movie:“Yes.”

And there you have it. With this preview and today’s arrival of the final trailer, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is now entering the homestretch as it hurtles toward its May 2, 2014 release. Will this be Spidey’s greatest battle, as advertised? The footage we saw this week certainly hints at it. We’ll find out in six weeks…

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Doug Liman will direct the Splinter Cell film adaptation starring Tom Hardy as Sam Fisher, a black-ops operative working for the U.S. government. Liman is best known for his 2002 novel-to-film adaptation The Bourne Identity, which is basically Splinter Cell already without all the high-tech gear. 

My opinion (as if you asked for it) is that they chose the right man for the job. 

Liman's recent efforts include Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005), Jumper (2008), and Fair Game (2010). He's currently working on this year's Tom Cruise scifi epic Edge of Tomorrow, which hits theaters in June.

Eric Warren Singer, who previously The Internationaland the Academy Award-nominated American Hustle, is writing the script.

Tom Hardy, who's been all the rage in action movies of late, just wrapped up the new Mad Maxmovie, FuryRoad. Could he bring some big-screen complexity to Fisher, the ultra super mega spy of few words? 

Nothing is known about the story as of yet, but I reckon it'll have something to do with the early days of Fisher's career. Personally, I'd love to see Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory come to life in some way. Not a direct adaptation, but taking a few notes from the less-cinematic games in the series would be a great way to go.

Ubisoft undoubtedly hopes that a film will bring back the love to the video game series. The most recent installment, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, did not meet expectations in terms of sales despite a return to its espionage roots. 

This isn't the only Ubisoft franchise being poked at for a film adaptation. The Assassin's Creed series has been on Hollywood's radar for quite some time. God knows we need more of that series. Maybe Jake Gyllenhaal can star as a Persian assassin?

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There has been much made in the press as of late about whether this weekend’s Divergent is the next Hunger Games film franchise. There has also been an equal amount of hand-wringing over whether Divergent’s Tris Prior is another Katniss Everdeen. Well, I can safely say that I’ve seen The Hunger Games, I know The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games was an enjoyable blockbuster experience of mine, and Divergent, you’re no Hunger Games.

With that said, for fans of the Veronica Roth source material, Divergent will be as comfortable as form fitting leather garments (all the rage in the movie’s dystopian Chicago). Unfortunately, at least in the film’s hands, there seems to be something very off about that said material.

Set well into the future, an unknown war has apparently left most of North America ravaged and desolate, save for a supposed utopia of peaceful coexistence behind “the Fence” in the ruins of Ditka country. It is there that society has been divided into five neat categories meant to starve the populace out of any sense of individual identity or achievement, thereby creating an orderly citizenry. At the age of 16, every boy and girl is given an aptitude test to gauge which faction they belong to: Abnegation (selfless), Amity (peaceful), Candor (honest), Dauntless (brave), or Erudite (intelligent). Beyond acting like a beautiful five-starred SAT prep question, the factions are also color-coded and helpfully divided like high school cliques in the cafeteria during feeding hours. Abnegation are the hippies in flowing gray robes, the Erudite are the nerds in their navy blue suits and blouses, Dauntless are the rebel greasers and punks in black leather and tattoos, and so on. You just don’t want to be “factionless,” because those losers don’t get a color and aren’t allowed to sit at anyone’s table.

It is in this world that Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) is born and where at the age of 16 she must choose. However, an inconceivable anomaly occurs when she takes the aptitude test and discovers that she is not defined by one thing, but by many: she is Abnegation like her save-the-earth do-gooding parents (Tony Goldwyn and Ashley Judd in thankless roles), Erudite like the faction her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) ultimately chooses, and finally Dauntless. She is divergent. On the big day, where every local 16-year-old kid is forced to make a choice by cutting their hand with the same knife above five pots (this unsanitary ceremony must be great way to induce population control), Beatrice’s brother leaves his folks to become Erudite, and Beatrice chooses to become Dauntless, despite her nice aptitude test taker (Maggie Q) marking her down as Abnegation. Immediately whisked away from a mom and dad, who she’ll never be allowed to see again, much of the rest of the film is Tris (her new name) being schooled in the matters of soldiering by Dauntless Uber-Hunk “Four” (Theo James), and then being schooled in other extracurricular activities by the naughty teacher. Also, there is a mysterious villain, but as Kate Winslet’s Jeanine Matthew, the leader of the Erudites, all but cackles in the wings as she rubs her hands together, it’s not really that much of a mystery.

The ultimate hurdle that Divergent spends its complete 139-minute running time mightily struggling against is that the entire world it builds, a collage of a hundred other pop culture images, never quite makes a satisfying whole. Worse still, Divergent never convinces the uninitiated to buy into this dystopia in spite of its indulgent and meandering pacing, which is at least a half hour too long. There is an argument to be made that the oft-contrasted Hunger Games bears more than a passing resemblance to the Japanese cult classic Battle Royale (and at least a dozen pre-Star Wars science fiction films). But for all of the criticisms posited at author Suzanne Collins, as well as director Gary Foster, for the first picture, that movie creates an immediate and mesmerizing illusionary reality from its very first shaky, lived-in rustic frame. Conversely, Divergent opens on an exposition dump delivered in breathless monotone voiceover by Woodley’s Tris, yet never actually grounds its clichés—including Christopher Nolan-styled dream machines and a “Fence” that would do George R.R. Martin proud—in anything more than obligatory dialogue delivered by a supporting cast barely preventing their eyes from glazing over.

The all-under-30 Dauntless faction does not conjure up the iconography of warriors so much as a co-ed fraternity that’s watched a lot of Fight Club and Tony Hawk video games, and has taken what they’ve learned to the streets. This isn’t a dystopian vision of a socialist collective stripping away the individual’s independence and identity; it’s freshman year at a college dorm. The effect is that rather than emulating the obviously influential novel The Giver by Lois Lowry (which will also be hitting the big screen later this year) where children are horrifyingly categorized into life-defining niches, the factions are instead little more than akin to being saddled with a really lame summer camp.

It is difficult to pinpoint whether this fault lies in Veronica Roth’s prose, which I have admittedly not read, or in Neil Burger’s workmanlike direction. While the visual banality does the picture no favors, nor does its already dated pop song-oriented soundtrack, it still feels ultimately rooted in a story that borrows a thousand ideas, but never has a unique one to offer in binding them together.

Shailene Woodley, who was a revelation in her Golden Globe nominated role for The Descendents, and who offered appealing star potential in last year’s teen dramedy The Spectacular Now, neither hurts nor helps Divergent. She serviceably provides a protagonist with whom the target demographic can relate, and one who is reliably rebellious in her refusal to conform or bend to authority. However, if this is meant to be her launching pad to superstardom, it may have more to do with the franchise’s demographic appeal than her requisite performance that does not glimpse the light she has radiated in past work. Indeed, in her all-too-brief confrontations with Winslet’s wolfish Jeanine, the movie finally comes alive as Winslet takes her one-dimensional villain and fleetingly imbues this movie with something approximating entertainment.

While exiting the theater after my screening, two clearly avid fans of Roth’s writings were debating the merits of the film as they headed for the door. They seemed to both like the movie, but found a point of contention over whether Tris’ drug-induced nightmare sequences worked or not, because in the book Tris showcases seven phobias, while in the film she appears to have merely four. If this marks an issue of great importance to you, Divergent is probably exactly what is desired, too few nightmare sequences notwithstanding. However, many more moviegoers will find themselves factionless as this cinematic wasteland sprawls out for the inevitable sequel.

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