Welcome to another installment of Geekly News Roundup. Here, you’ll find all of the past week’s biggest and coolest geek culture news in one convenient place.
This week’s News stories are listed below. You can click on any news story to be taken directly to it.
- Batman Vs. Robin Trailer
- The Marvel Universe is Coming to an End
- Fear the Walking Dead Details Leaked
- X-Men: Apocalypse Casts Young Storm, Marvel Girl, and Cyclops
- Simon Pegg to Co-Write Star Trek 3
Batman Vs. Robin Trailer
Good news, Batman fans! IGN has posted the first trailer for DC Animated’s upcoming film, Batman Vs. Robin. Thanks to the powers of embedding, we have it here for you guys.
This trailer features Dameon, Bruce Wayne’s son, who is now the current Robin. As the name of the movie suggests, it has Batman fighting Robin who appears to be at odds with his father. I guess being raised by the League of Assassins will make any kid a bit screwed up.
The movie seems pretty cool to me but the focus on the fight between Batsy and The Boy Wonder does strike me as a bit odd. Why focus on that when the villains in this movie are The Court of Owls? As far as I’m concerned, this movie should just be called Batman: Court of Owls and it should have been an adaptation of THAT story instead. But, the title Batman Vs. Robin is more eye catching (especially to casual superhero fans) so I can understand why they went down that route. A missed opportunity since a full blown Court of Owls movie would have been amazing.
Batman vs Robin will be released later this year.
The Marvel Universe is Coming to an End
You read that title correctly, true believers. The Marvel Universe as we know it is about to go bye-bye. People have speculated about this happening for a while now but it was made official this week by Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso and Senior Vice President Tom Breevort at a press event held at Midtown Comics in Manhattan. The news is pretty significant to say the least.
This “end” will affect the regular Marvel Universe as well as the Ultimate Universe which will both be mashed together to form a new one. By the beginning of the Secret Wars cross over, both universes will be no more and instead be part of Battleworld which itself will have pieces of other Marvel Universes like Age of Apocalypse, Future Imperfect, and Armor Wars. “Once we hit Secret Wars #1, there is no Marvel Universe, Ultimate Universe, or any other. It’s all Battleworld,” Brevoort said.
After Secret Wars is over, there will be an All-New Marvel Universe which will have pieces of all of the universes in Battleworld. And yes, All-New Marvel is its official moniker. Marvel is taking the best pieces of these worlds and seeing how well they work together. The possibilities for new stories are limitless and characters which have been dead, such as Gwen Stacy, may now be alive. Anything goes.
All ongoing story lines will wrap up just before Secret Wars begins. The creators on these books however will continue to work on other series which will be happening during the event. “Every creative team has known this was coming,” said Breevort. “We’ve had a line of demarcation in the sand. Get your most immediate business done by this point because we’re going into Secret Wars and it’s going to have an impact on everything.” The creators will be working on other books during Secret Wars but they may not be working on the same books they were previously on.
This is obviously a huge step for Marvel to take so we’ll have to keep an eye out on how this event unfolds.
Secret Wars #1 will be released on May 01.
Source: Newsarama
Fear the Walking Dead Details Leaked
Thanks to Bleeding Cool and their sleuthy ways, we some news about AMC’s planned The Walking Dead spin-off series which is now called Fear the Walking Dead.
This series will follow a whole different set of survivors in Los Angeles. Actually, “survivors” may not be the appropriate term since this series actually takes place just as the zombie outbreak begins. The general public doesn’t know about “walkers” but some do. Rumors of the dead coming back to life are spreading (much like the zombie plague itself) and the government is trying their best to keep this whole thing a secret.
The focus will be on two families. Madison and Travis are two teachers who are soon to be married. They each have children from their previous marriages: Alicia, Ian, and Christopher. Travis’ ex, Liza will also be a character. The families are said to be dysfunctional and they deal with things like drugs, illness, and self-harm. The way the show is set up, the audience knows more than the characters do, and they’ll know the horrible fate awaiting them.
One interesting thing to note is that one of the characters from this series will appear on The Walking Dead proper. The Nerdist is reporting that during season six, there will be a 6-episode story arc with one of the characters from the spin-off. This is obviously a way to get people to check that show out. Although it will mean that if this character is ever in danger, the audience won’t be on the edge of their seat since we know they will eventually survive.
Source: Bleeding Cool, The Nerdist
X-Men: Apocalypse Casts Young Storm, Jean Grey, and Cyclops
X-Men: Apocalypse will take place in the 1980s. Because of this, younger versions of our favorite mutants will be needed. We’ve heard casting rumors for some time now but this week we finally got official confirmation as to who will be filling in the roles thanks to director Bryan Singer. Twitter never fails to bring us juicy news, eh?
Meet our new and brilliant young mutants: @Alexshipppp as #Storm @SophieT as #JeanGrey and @TyeSheridan as #Cyclops. #XmenApocalypse
— Bryan Singer (@BryanSinger) January 23, 2015
Storm will be played by Alexandra Shipp who you may know from Aaliyah:The Princes of R&B, and House of Anubis. Jean Grey will be played by Sansa Stark herself, Sophie Turner. Finally, Tye Sheridan from Joe and Mud will be playing the ruby quartz enthusiast, Cyclops.
From a purely visual standpoint, all of the actors look like younger versions of their respective characters so that’s good. Brian Singer has promised a leather jacket, Mohawk wearing Storm which is definitely cool news for X-Men fans. I’m wondering if Jean Grey will be calling herself Marvel Girl in this and if she is in a relationship with Cyclops at this point in time.
X-Men: Apocalypse will be released in theaters on May 27, 2016.
Source: Nerdist
Simon Pegg to Co-Write Star Trek 3
Although they’re both box office success, the J.J. Abrams helmed Star Trek movies leave a lot to be desired, especially for fans of the TV series. This movie franchise could use some fixing so perhaps its ironic that the greatest engineer of all time, or at least the guy who plays him, will help co-write the upcoming Star Trek 3.
Deadline brings us news that that Simon Pegg will help write the movie along with Doug Jung. Simon Pegg is no stranger to co-writing films that he stars in (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End) so this will be natural to him. He will of course reprise his role as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the film. If Scotty is suddenly the hero of the movie, you now know why.
To be honest, I’m really worried about this upcoming movie. It’s previous director Roberto Orci was replaced by Justin Lin and Pegg is being brought on-board to re-write the script. I wasn’t a big fan of what Abrams was doing with the movies but losing the person who was steering the ship and having things (seemingly) falling apart like this doesn’t give me much confidence that Star Trek 3 will turn out good. Hopefully Pegg will help write a great movie but right now, I’m taking a “wait and see” approach to this film.
Source: Deadline
