Stan Lee Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The following post contains the descriptions of two scenes in Iron Man 2 (possible spoilers), so read on at your own risk ...

In the fictional Iron Man world, Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) helps to save many lives -- but this latest bit of news actually takes place in the real world, and involves the heroics of the actor who plays Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr. While shooting a scene involving "a group of people running away from a group of robotic villains," an extra was knocked to the ground by a stuntman in a robot suit. With chaos ensuing during the scene, Downey Jr. was the only one to realize that the man was actually injured as he called for help while on the ground. The actor then jumped into the scene and yelled "Cut! Cut!" while the cameras were still rolling, then stayed with the fallen extra until paramedics arrived. The injured man was taken to a nearby hospital where he was diagnosed with a broken hip. We here at Cinematical wish him a speedy recovery ... and, um, we're now dying to learn more about this robot villain stampede scene. [IOL]

UPDATE: Paramount contacted Cinematical to say that the above story is not true. No one was injured on the set and no one was saved.

In other Iron Man 2 news, the website Nuke the Fridge claims to know who (or what) Stan Lee will be playing in the sequel. Fans of Marvel are already well aware of the fact that Stan Lee makes a cameo in some Marvel-related movies (based on the characters he had a part in creating), and so who will he be playing in Iron Man 2? Head after the jump to find out ...

Last spring, Stan Lee and Disney struck up a deal to develop three superhero-ish projects: Nick Rachet, Blaze, and Tigress. It was all very hush hush, with no indication as to what these new heroes would be other than potential comic books and franchises. But whatever they were, they had lured in the talents of Richard LaGravenese, Gary Goldman, and Zoe Green.

But now we know who and what Nick Rachet is. According to The Hollywood Reporter,
Rachet now has the Douglas Cook and David Weisberg at the keyboard. While we haven't heard much from them since Double Jeopardy, they've been busy writing Captain Kidd and Vespers for Disney.

Not surprisingly, Nick Rachet is an action star ... kinda. In real life, he's a mild-mannered and bumbling police officer but in an online game, he's a tough, sneering badass named Nick Rachet. His avatar ends up escaping from the game and usurps the real life of his player. THR describes it as a "lighthearted mystery thriller" with a "Jekyll and Hyde struggle" which is a plotline we've had an awful lot of recently.

The similarities to Gamer probably shatters my goofy 2008 theory that LaGravenese might lure in his Scottish P.S. I Love You star. But since there will likely be two actors in this Grand Theft Auto version of Jekyll and Hyde, maybe I'll prove prophetic and we'll see Gerard Butler in the mild-mannered half. That'd be fun.

With Hollywood types running out of superhero ideas, it would appear the Showtime network has taken the next logical step: how about the gay superhero? And they're certainly not alone on this one; Variety reports that the hourlong project comes from Stan Lee and is based on the book Hero by Perry Moore. The story is said to focus on an "up-and-coming superhero who struggles to hide his secret identities." If anything, it certainly ups the ante and raises the stakes, and, in my opinion, is a pretty interesting idea. Like any superhero, gay men and woman across the globe often hide who they really are for fear society will punish them in some way, shape or form for being different. With the recent Prop. 8 debacle over in California, now is probably the perfect time to combine a popular mainstream genre with a topic more people need to not only come to terms with, but understand and support.

But is there room for a gay superhero amongst today's testosterone-fueled, run-and-gun box office blockbusters? Is this an idea that has potential, or do you see it slipping into territory that makes you feel too uncomfortable? Showtime is a network that likes to take risks with their programming, and so are you afraid the show would spend more time in the bedroom than out fighting crime? And would it be a bad thing to focus more on living as an individual with many secrets versus living as a superhero who loves to kick ass and take names?

Sound off below ...

Everyone seems to have superheroes on the brain this summer, so it's the perfect time for Edgar Wright to pop out of the woodwork to remind us about Ant-Man. In an interview with PiQ magazine about the DVD release of Spaced, the topic drifted to Ant-Man on the big screen.

Wright confirmed that the second draft of the script is still underway, and that the film will be a, "different way of seeing a superhero origin, because you've seen so many of them and we really tried to figure out a fresh take on that story. So it's definitely a Marvel film but it's got a little twist on it in terms of the way that it plays out."

Ok, I am much younger than Stan Lee, and trying to keep up on all his production deals has me utterly exhausted. How the hell does he have the energy to keep inking them? I want whatever energy drink he's on.

According to Variety, Stan Lee has just agreed to pen a new stable of superheroes for Virgin Comics. There's going to be ten (count 'em, ten) new faces joining the world of comic books, through a series of graphic novels that Lee will pen and edit himself. Further character details will be revealed early next year, but the characters and books will also be tied into a series of short animated films that will be released online.

Virgin Comics is really growing by leaps and bounds. (Sir) Richard Branson formed it in 2005, and has inked deals with everyone from Ed Burns, Deepak Chopra, John Woo, Terry Gilliam, Nicolas Cage, Hugh "comic addict" Jackman, and Duran Duran to create properties for the label. (Duran Duran? Ok, I want that one right now. Please tell me it will explore the epic sci-fi story behind their song Planet Earth or reveal what, exactly, the Union of the Snake is.) Virgin is also aiming to make films out of most of the star properties -- no doubt Lee's 10 superheroes will eventually be among them.

Stan Lee is one of the busiest guys in the world. He has to be. He's just involved in everything, and still manages to cameo in any Marvel movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lee is now paring up with Brighton Partners and Rainmaker Entertainment to launch Legion of 5, a new superhero property.

Legion of 5 is being planned as a series of CG animated films, but will be expanded to include games, online and mobile releases. Basically, wherever you go, there will be something Legion of 5. It could be ... like air!

Details of the storyline and the characters are all being kept under wraps. There isn't expected to be any kind of further announcement at New York Comic Con, where Lee is receiving the New York Comics Legend award.

It is so hard to make any judgment call on these projects when there's so little to go on. There's always part of me that wonders if these deals will actually come to anything, or if the $24 million being raised by all partners will just be spent on failed design concepts. Plus, anything with CG that isn't Pixar does little to excite me -- for some reason, I'm just seeing a superhero version of Space Chimps. I think I'm drinking too much caffeine these days.

During Thursday's Comic-Con International in San Diego, I sat in on a pretty interesting panel comprised of some of the most talented and successful screenwriters, comic book writers and producers working in the business today. The panel was called Adapting Comics for the Screen and the list of people offering opinions and insight were the perfect group to be asking about this topic.

On the panel were Mark Verheiden, Kevin Feige, Mark Fergus, Don Payne and the legendary Stan "The Man" Lee who even at his age, was just as sharp, funny and charming as he could be and shows no signs of slowing down. As a writer myself, I was particularly interested in this panel of experts and how they have taken comics and translated them for the big screen.

First off each of the panel was introduced by moderator Jeff Goldsmith of Creative Screenwriting magazine and as he read the list of the assembled people's credits, films like Iron Man, Children of Men, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Battlestar Galactica and most of the major characters of the Marvel Universe, I grew even more interested to hear what these very accomplished men had to say.

While I have to give Stan Lee props for making me Incredible Hulk-obsessed in the 80's, my favorite bit of Lee will always be his stint in Mallrats. Lee vs. Lee. I mean, how many old names out there would have a melodramatic talk about love and superhero genitalia with Banky? The Spider-Man creator has just signed on the dotted line for a new collection of projects, and while I'm sure genitals won't be on the docket, it sounds pretty cool to me -- Disney has made a deal with Lee and his POW! Entertainment for a multi-year contract for the epic creator "to develop and produce all forms of entertainment for Disney divisions."

What's fresh about this concept is that he won't be rehashing the worlds of his previous, Marvel-owned creations -- the Hulk, X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer and Daredevil. Instead, he is going to develop a bunch of new and original projects -- for movies, television, DVD and publishing. Lee says: "I can only say we're working on a number of things, and the one common denominator is they're all high-concept projects, and hopefully, they'll all lend themselves to being great franchises. Also, they're all going to be new and original. The whole purpose is to come up with new things, and Marvel owns the old characters anyway. That's what makes it fun for me; if it was just resuscitating old things, I wouldn't have been that interested." In our ever-spinning sea of remakes and sequels, it's pretty cool to hear that anyone is dedicated to new creations. At the ripe age of 84, do you think Lee has got it in him?

You'd think that Spider-Man creator Stan Lee would receive privileged information about Spider-Man 4, but apparently he doesn't even know what is going on in the comics, let alone the movie scripts. Still, he is smart enough to know what should happen in the next installment of the series: Dr. Curt Connors, who we've briefly seen in parts 2 and 3, should finally turn into The Lizard. Of course, an appearance from the scaly villain has been expected since Connors was first alluded to in the first film. In addition to suggesting that The Lizard should be the next villain, in a video interview with Reelz Channel's Dailies, Lee also discusses the possibility of Peter Parker ending up with Gwen Stacy rather than Mary Jane in part 4.

Lee's suggestion is simply that, a suggestion, as long as he has no real creative input, but he is right to say The Lizard is a logical next step. Certainly such logic makes it less of a surprise when we hear rumors about the villain already being a lock for the film. However, expecting a villain because of onscreen allusions means we should also logically predict that Man-Wolf and Robot-Master will show up at some point, too. Anyway, Lee probably wants to see another one of his own creations like The Lizard on the big screen instead of any of Spidey's newer villains, like Carnage, who is also being talked about for #4. For me, either villain or both is fine, just as long as Spidey doesn't team up with Venom to fight them. I actually stopped reading the comics following the Maximum Carnage storyline (though I did give the good-guy Venom series a fair shot), and I'd probably stop watching the movies at the same point. I know the end of Spider-Man 3 suggests this couldn't happen, but you never know -- either with comic books or the movies.

Joking among friends about the impending release of Spider-Man 3, someone – it may have been me – started talking about "Spider-Man Friday" – suggesting it was like Good Friday, but for dorks. And like most jokes, it had a kernel of truth. This film was going to be a finale of sorts, and a celebration of the work director Sam Raimi and his cast and crew had done to capture on film the superhero, his secret identity and nearly 50 years of comic-book history – the spider, the man and the franchise's spirit, if you will. And there was no reason to worry – hadn't Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 both been excellent? And wasn't the continued participation of Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and the return of Spider-Man 2 scribe Alvin Sargent a good thing, in an age when directors and stars drop off (or get killed out of) repeated installments of comic-book material? Sure, the film had not one, not two, but three separate villains – a worrying sign of excess -- but surely Raimi and his cast and crew would pull it off.

Watching Spider-Man 3 is different from hoping about it, though. And watching Spider-Man 3, I was amazed – and appalled – that the people who had given us two of the best comic-book movies ever made could wind up giving us something as lazy, as slip-shod, as tedious as Spider-Man 3 actually is. It's not like you have to wait for the bad news, either. As anyone who's seen a trailer, a bus ad, or one of the thousand merchandising tie-ins knows, much of Spider-Man 3 revolves around one of the comic's '80s story lines – with a fluid alien life form finding Spider-Man, literally becoming his costume and enhancing his abilities while degrading his spirit, making him more powerful as a super-hero, but less noble as a man. And how do the writers – the screenplay credit names Ivan and Sam Raimi, as well as Sargent – introduce this concept to the film? By literally dropping it from the sky in a meteor, which happens to land with 20 meters of Peter Parker (Maguire) as he's spending some time in the park with his girlfriend Mary-Jane (Dunst). Sitting in the theater, I think I may have actually thrown my hands up – the universal movie-watcher's sign language for "Really? That's all you got?"