The Week In Geek: The Dark Knight Rises For Two Female Leads, Jon Favs Goes Disney, And Muppets!

Not One, But TWO Female Leads In The New Batman Movie? The Dark Knight Rises Indeed. 

So according to Deadline.com, Christopher Nolan has made a short list of six big name actresses for the part of not just the villain for The Dark Knight Rises, but for another unknown part as well.  Love triangle maybe? Who knows. But the actresses mentioned are Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Blake Lively, Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway, and Keira Knightley. But the question on everyone’s mind is just who will the female villain be? 

Batman Begins had two villains (three, if you count mobster Carmine Falcone) and The Dark Knight had two…given this pattern, it is safe to assume that the recently announced Tom Hardy will play a male bad guy. We know he isn’t the Riddler, it is highly doubtful he is the Penguin, which means whatever villain he plays is going to be a C-Lister to the general  public. Which means Warner Brothers will want a name character for whoever  the female villain is.  And that really only leaves Catwoman.  Poison Ivy is somewhat well known, but her powers make her a little too sci fi for Nolan’s Bat –Verse. Then there’s Harley Quinn, but what good is she without her Mr. J? 

Catwoman is a character that needs brand redemption after the Halle Berry disaster, and as awesome as Michelle Pfieffer Catwoman was (not to mention Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt in the 60’s) none of them really played the comic book version of Selina Kyle, jewel thief without equal.  Of all the Batman villains, the current comic book version of Catwoman could work in a Nolan world with next to no alteration to her character at all, even down to her costume. But maybe Nolan and Co. will surprise us…Talia al Ghul maybe? 

The Rubik’s Cube To Become A Movie. Seriously. 

 In the latest news in just how creatively bankrupt Hollywood is these days, rumors are making the rounds that the latest brand name property to get the big screen treatment will be none other than 80’s icon of frustration and time wasting, the Rubik’s Cube.  This would not be the first time Hollywood has attempted to cash in on the cube; back in the 80’s heyday of the product, producers at ABC made a Saturday morning cartoon called Rubik the Amazing Cube, all about a little latino boy named Paco who finds a Rubik’s Cube, is able to assemble it in seconds (despite the fact that the damn things took hours if not days to do, but ok I’ll go with it) where it would then proceed to come alive and grant wishes or do magic and shit. 

 Freed by changes in the broadcast standards in the early 80’s, cartoons were now allowed to be nothing more than 30 minute ads for toys and stuff, leaving studio execs to snort coke and force narratives onto decidedly NON narrative product like Pac Man, The California Raisins and the Rubik’s Cube.  Those same execs, or ones very much like them, are now using the same formula for multi million dollar tentpole movies.  Yay.

Proof of 80’s Rampant Drug Use

I will say this though; if the movie is a live action remake of the hideous tv cartoon, I will pay to watch it out of morbid curiousity alone. Maybe they can reunite latino boy band Menudo to do the theme song for the movie like they did the show. What is former Menudo star Ricky Martin up to these days, besides coming out of the closet ten years after people stopped caring about him? 

 J. Michael Straczynski Ditches Superman and Wonder Woman Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

Well, that was fast, even by fickle comic book standards.  It was announced this week that after starting two highly publicized runs on two of DC Comic’s oldest and longest running monthly titles this past summer (Superman and Wonder Woman) writer J. Michael Straczynski was gonna cut and run on both titles mid story to focus on “non monthly work” from now on.  Part of this non monthly work is a sequel to his recently released Superman: Earth One graphic novel.

As much as it totally annoys me whenever a creator ditches a book mid story, I can kinda understand DC on this one. His monthly Superman “walks the Earth” story and his re-do of Wonder Woman’s origin and costume have been hit and miss, at best. Meanwhile, his recently released Superman: Earth One graphic novel is among his best work, is selling very well, and is no doubt making the folks at DC want a fast tracked sequel over anything else from him right now. And might I add,  that particular book should be THE template for the upcoming Superman movie reboot.  There is a positive review on the back cover of the book by Man of Steel screenwriter David Goyer, and I hope he loved it enough he feels free to rip it off word for word. Really, it is everything  you could want from and action packed Superman flick. Pick it up.

Magic Kingdom Gets An Unlikely Director

Oh hey, remember that movie version the Magic Kingdom theme parks that I mentioned Disney was developing a few weeks back? And how I said it was a long ways off? Guess it is less far off than they thought. It was announced this week that Disney had found a director, and it appears it will be none other than Iron Man’s Jon Favreau. It looks like this will be his next project after Iron Man 3, which puts this at around 2014 or so. Not much more is known about this project yet, but all I gotta say is if this movie is based on the Orlando park and not the original classic Disneyland, I’ll cut a bitch. Cali represent.

 The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made Maybe More Than Just A Title? 

The cast for Jason Segal’s upcoming The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made is certainly looking to be pretty damn great all right . Not only is the awesome Jane Lynch from Glee joining the cast, but so is Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Donald Glover, Danny Trejo (!),  Eric Stonestreet from Modern Family, John Krasinski from The Office, Ed Helms from The Hangover and freakin’ Lady Gaga (!!!).  This could be epic, or an epic disaster, but I really liked Jason Segal’s script for Forgetting Sarah Marshall so I’m leaning towards just epic right now. Here is the first pic for next year’s flick. So very glad these are classic Muppets, and not some CGI “reimagining”. Don’t laugh, you know someone suggested it over at Disney.