We are now under two months away from the anticipated release of the next DC Universe animated original film, Green Lantern: First Flight! Warner Brothers has been great with providing several Q&A sessions with the cast and crew of the film and I am very excited about the most recent one; the legend himself, Michael Madsen! Madsen plays Kilowog, the legendary Green Lantern Corps trainer, in the upcoming film. Being the Hollywood tough man that he is, it is the perfect fit. Check out the incredibly genuine Q&A with Madsen below and be sure to pre-order your copy of Green Lantern: First Flight!

Check out the excerpt below and then check out the full interview here!

QUESTION:

Do you have a real-life human character that you possibly inspired your portrayal of Kilowog?

MICHAEL MADSEN:

I guess, perhaps, I thought of my father. My father a very forceful man, a bit of a brute, and stubborn. Yet I remember when my first son was born and my father met me at the airport, and I let him hold the boy. I saw a little tear come down from his eye. It was one of the only times I ever saw him break emotionally – and I knew there was something in there.

QUESTION:

Kilowog uses the word “poozer” frequently in describing other individuals in a variety of situations. Can you define that word by Kilowog’s standards?

MICHAEL MADSEN:

I’ve heard that it’s closely associated with somewhat of a bungler or a misfit or someone who’s annoying … to put it mildly (laughs).

QUESTION:

Was there anything particularly special or enticing about playing Kilowog?

MICHAEL MADSEN:

I don’t want to go off here into another planet, but when I was younger, I read a biography of James Cagney and he said that if you ever play a dark character, you need to find something noble within that guy; and if you ever play someone who’s very noble, you need to find something dark within him. Otherwise, your character’s going to be one-dimensional. I knew exactly what he was talking about, even though I was probably about 14, and it’s always stuck with me. Having a character with duality always appeals to me – I never like to do something straight down the road.

Source – SHH!

On Wednesday, Ain’t It Cool News posted this teaser poster for Spider-Man 4 that is on display at the Licensing International Expo in Las Vegas this week. While we no doubt believe that the poster is hanging at the Expo (to not discredit AICN’s story), official sources are telling us that this poster was not created by Sony Pictures or Marvel Studios for the fourth film. It is indeed fake and no official artwork has been released yet for the movie.

Well, considering the similarities to the Spider-Man 2 poster that were blatantly obvious, this doesn’t surprise me… what does surprise me is that Sony would allow something like this to be hung at a Licensing Expo in Vegas… or if they didn’t allow it… who made it and hung it up? Meh, whatever. It’s fake. Story over.

Rich Johnston (formerly of Newsarama’s Lying in the Gutters and currently at Bleeding Cool) is reporting that Brian Blessed has been cast as Odin, the All-Father, ruler of Asgard, and most importantly Thor’s father.

I’m terribly delighted by this. His small contribution to the Star Wars movies always delighted me and his dialect in that film even created some lingo in a small circle of friends I find creeping out to this day.

Also, he was King of the Hawkmen.

But this is really good news. He’s a classically trained Shakespearean actor under the deft direction of Kenneth Branagh. This bodes well.

Ain’t it Cool News has posted several pictures from the 2009 International Licensing Expo for some pretty big time movies!

At this first link, you can check out some artwork for Iron Man 2, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America, The Avengers, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Rango, How to Train Your Dragon, and Despicable Me.

At this second link, you will find artwork for Shrek Forever After, Oobermind, Iron Man 2 again, and the teaser poster that we already posted for Spider-Man 4 (and pointed out the similarities to the Spider-Man 2 poster).

The posters are all pretty much teaser posters and don’t reveal much, but are kind of fun to see none-the-less!

Out of some licensing show in Las Vegas comes the official first teaser poster for Spider-Man 4, which doesn’t come out until May, 2011. Of course, like you would expect, not a whole lot to see this early… but I do have one particular problem with it…

Couldn’t they have at least used a different New York skyline for the new poster?

I shit you not:

[Universal Studios] picked up the movie rights to the popular children’s books series from Classic Media with the aim of making a live-action family film to be produced by Chris Meledandri’s Illumination Entertainment.

…
The books began life in the U.K. in the late 1980s, where he is called Wally, before becoming a worldwide sensation. The books became more thematically complex, with Waldo traveling in time or landing in supernatural settings, and a nemesis was introduced, an anti-Waldo named Odlaw.

The book series was previously set up at Paramount and Nickelodeon, where John Schultz was attached to direct a script that had been worked on by scribes such as Adam Rifkin as well as Adam Cooper and Bill Collage.

The plot of that project revolved around Waldo, now 30, ending up traveling through time after accidentally activating a malfunctioning travel machine.

Paramount recently put the project in turnaround, and the rights to “Waldo” have been bouncing around between entities.

Several studios were in the running for the rights, but over the course of several months, Meledandri spearheaded the push to bring it to Universal, where Illumination is based.

-THR

Really?! “Several studios were in the running for the rights,”?!

Hollywood. Stop. First, news about a movie based on gum, now a movie based on a PICTURE BOOK!? I would imagine that there are literally 100’s or 1000’s of up and coming writers out there with good, original ideas that deserve to be made into movies, but instead, studios are going to war over the rights to gum and picture books.

Awesome. Way to go.

HitFix.com recently spoke to Reynolds about the Deadpool spin-off movie during an interview about his new movie coming out, The Proposal.

“Well, I’m intimately involved with it.  We’re just trying to break a story right now and figure out who the villain is going to be and all that stuff.  But, it’s going to be just like the comic books.  I’m gonna have a messed up face and you may see some flashbacks of Wade earlier in his life, but primarily what you see is what you get in the comics and that’s the goal.  And there is no better place to draw material from then the comics which are incredible.”

God, I really hope that they stick to the comics as source material… though, Fox seems to have different perspectives on what “using the original comics as source material” means than the rest of the world, it seems…

The past 7 years Sam Raimi has graced Spider-Man fans with his knack for creating truly human characters thrown into extraordinary worlds of the impossible. Evil Dead fans can rejoice; Raimi’s taken a step back from the web-slinger to dive back into the supernatural macabre with Drag Me to Hell. Raimi is at full form, crafting what has got to be one of the best horror films in the past 5 years. It’s the perfect Sam Raimi blend of terror, blood, guts and humor has you laughing your ass off one second and reeling from fright the next. It’s his take on a Jacques Tourneur 1940’s b-film; a tale of the consequences when good people have one tiny moral lapse. Allison Lohman is wonderful, able to jump from endearingly compassionate to terrified to flat out hilarious with ease; think of Bruce Campbell’s Ash, just not as studly. Chock full of exact amonts of slime, scares and dead kittens, Drag Me to Hell is a damn fine horror movie.

BY GRABTHAR’S HAMMER!!! A free copy of Galaxy Quest?!?! The most perfect movie ever made?!?!

By the sons of Worvan, yes, you read correctly. I am horribly drunk, but you read correct-a-mundo.

Here’s how to enter to win:
1) Make a pictogram, photo essay, picto essay or comic strip regarding anything about Galaxy Quest; why it’s cool, a tribute to a certain character, a rundown of an episode you made up, etc. It could be with stick figures or drawn on computer. Here’s my bad example made more horrible by Swanks terrible scanning job (that’s me passing the buck) :

2) Either post it in the comments section or email your entry to Pencilbot4prez(at)gmail(dot)com . BE SURE to include your address and contact info. YO.

3) All entries are accepted from today, May 29 2009 to June 17 2009

Comingsoon.com had the chance to talk to director Sam Mendes about his newest film Away We Go which is opening in limited releases throughout the summer. Towards the end of the interview the topic turned briefly to the possibility of Mendes directing a Preacher movie, check it out:

CS: I’m personally very interested in the idea of you doing “Preacher” because I was a big fan of “Road to Perdition” and I’m a fan of those comics as well. How’s that been progressing in terms of John August developing the script?

Mendes: I think it’s an incredible piece of material and I’m very hopeful about John’s script, so let’s keep our fingers crossed.

CS: I think it’s pretty cool, since it would tap into some of the things you have done over the years – it has dark humor and interesting things to work with. As far as the theater stuff, do you generally go along with the plays whenever they tour, at least to start off?

Mendes: No, obviously we rehearse in New York and that’s where I live, then I’ll go to London. Then I tend to go on maybe one or two dates on the road this year I went to Madrid and I’ll go to Greece with them as well. So I like to stay in touch with them.

CS: Do you have any idea if you’re going to try and condense the entire series into one movie or are you going to jump around use portions of it?

Mendes: Oh, he wouldn’t do the entire series in one movie. It would be impossible to do all nine volumes in one movie, that would be one long movie, and it wouldn’t do justice of it. It will not attempt to do all of it, but there’s so much wonderful stuff that I wouldn’t know what to leave out.