Why are the Spider-Man movies so bad? Maybe it’s because the character has become stale, locked down by arbitrary contractual definitions? A leaked agreement between Marvel and Sony shows us why Peter Parker always looks like Peter Parker.
A certain degree of dedication isn't unusual among comics fans, but one Venezuelan man's devotion to the Marvel supervillain Red Skull apparently exceeded his devotion to having a sense of smell.
Do you know who Bucky is? Do you remember a woman from the 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger movie who, now that we've shifted in time to present day, is deteriorating from old age and bad movie makeup?
There's a bigger, better, badder trailer for Marvel's summer tentpole The Avengers. It looks good. It looks so good that every comic book nerd out there (myself included) is popping a tentpole. But the real questions is, will they fuck it up?
Here's a first trailer for the big Marvel mashup The Avengers, which puts together all the superheroes you've seen at the movies in the past few years and, well, the orgy begins.
• The Wall Street Journal has the Times in its sights. The paper is hiring a dozen reporters to cover local news and will launch a NYC edition next year. [NYT]
• As expected, a big round of layoffs at Time Inc. is underway. [Gawker, NYT]
• Harvey and Bob Weinstein may be looking to buy back the Miramax name from Disney now that it's being disbanded. That's the rumor anyway. [Wrap]
• Bloomberg plans to make BusinessWeek "bigger, glossier, and more international." Oh, and it may start charging for access to the BW site. [MW]
• The Oscars will have two hosts: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. [LAT]
Limping back from summer vacation, plumes of smoke hanging over Burbank, Hollywood may be in flames, but for Hollywood the Land of Dreams, nothing gets the brain churning again like erasing the past and starting afresh.
With Disney's big buy of Marvel, America suddenly finds much of its entire animated universe — from Spider-Man to Pluto — in the hands of one media conglomerate. How many cartoon characters must a company own before the FTC acts?
• Get ready for the Spider-Man ride at Disney World: Walt Disney has agreed to pay $4 billion in cash and stock to acquire Marvel Entertainment. [NYT, WSJ]
• Because she was clearly the very best person for the job, Jenna Bush has signed on with the Today show. The daughter of the former president will be contributing stories "about once a month on issues like education." [THR]
• The Final Destination was No. 1 at the box office this weekend with a $28.3 million take; Inglourious Basterds came in No. 2 with $20 million. [THR]
• Newsstand magazine sales continue to fall. Single-copy sales fell 12 percent during the first half of the 2009 compared to the same period in 2008. [AP]
• NBC's new slogan for its fall marketing campaign? "More colorful." [Variety]
• Don't feel too bad if you're staying in the city for the long weekend. Take advantage of the big Memorial Day sales instead. [NYDN]
• Burberry's new Madison Avenue HQ opens on May 28; the building's sign will get switched on then, too. [Hint]
• Today in C-list celebrity fashion news: Alyssa Milano has debuted a baseball-inspired collection; and Heidi Montag is releasing a line of bikinis. [SW, SW]
It's a bad time to be a Marvel movie actor, unless you're Robert Downey Jr. (or Gwyneth Paltrow, who'd be the first to say that it is always a good time to be Gwyneth Paltrow).
