By Kim Filchak

Good morning! This is Rampant Speculation, here to sift through all of the rumors that have been flying around the web like red spheres of death in a middle school game of dodge ball and present them a semi coherent manner so that you can decide what’s real and what is the result of the abuse of bath salts.

Ant Man: First up let me get the latest on Ant Man out of the way. As I reported in one of my earlier posts there were three standouts among the names Marvel Studios was looking at to replace Edgar Wright. As of May 31 we can take at least one of them off the list. Variety has reported that front runner Adam McKay (Anchorman, Anchorman 2) has passed on the project.

Star Wars: Good god, where to start?

Let’s begin with the rumors going around about the character being played by Daisy Ridley (Mr Selfridge, Silent Witness). Many sources think she is going to be playing Han and Leia’s daughter, Jaina Solo, but absolutely nothing has been said about who or what her role is by the people in charge of making the film. I repeat absolutely nothing has been said. The first rule of Episode VII is you do not talk about Episode VII. Everyone involved in the production is remarkably silent, with the exception of one chatty mystery extra who popped up with some dish and even he had nothing to say except “Today was very exciting, very exhausting, but really awesome. It was all about action today, explosions were awesome,” and “Daisy amazing like always, light on her feet, sharp face, beautiful, quick and very polite,”

The actual source of rumor about her characters parentage seems to be nothing more than the fact that Daisy was seated between Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in that infamous first cast photo that hijacked the internet a few weeks ago (And honestly, who can blame her? It’s the coolest seat in the house). If she is playing Jaina Solo it would be completely contrary to Disney’s previous announcement that they were doing away with the “Extended Star Wars Universe”, which is made up of the comics, books and video games that have come out since the first trilogy ended, to make room for the story Abrams & co want to tell. So if Daisy playing that role would make them all lying liars who lie. Which I honestly would not put past Abrams, as he has done it before (aka: Cumberbatch Kahn), but I would like to think better of his mouse overlords at Disney.

There is also a rumor that Daisy may be playing a Sith or some other type of bad gal. This is all born of a leaked video that shows someone who is claimed to be Miss Daisy practicing stunt work and falling on her face. The basis of the Sith/evil character part of the rumor are the provocative hashtags that accompanied it: #episodevii #daisyridley #darkside. The provenance of the video has not been revealed so it could just end up being an elaborate prank being pulled by a truly dedicated troll.

Finally in Star Wars news writer of the first stand alone Star Wars movie Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli) tweeted a photo along side director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) with Darth Vader Looming over them as their “new boss”. I leave it to the conspiracy theorists to divine what this may mean to the plot the film and how it connects to the on going plot for world domination by the Illuminati and/or lizard people.

Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice: Despite the fact that they have begun filming it’s a been a slow week for rumors about the upcoming Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice. Apparently Wonder Woman may be wearing pants in the new film? Maybe? Eh, that’s all I got. After getting a name, a new logo and tweeted pics of Batman, the Batmobile and the playing card that broke the internet, rumors have sort of dried up regarding the upcoming movie. The only real new piece of gossip is from the site KpopStarz who posted a photo of what could be be a mock up of what Gal Gado will be wearing as the Amazon Princess. Which apparently includes pants. The outfit appears to be based on Jim Lees redesign from “The All-New Wonder Woman #600” and was also her look in the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us and we do know how much big business’s love their corporate synergy. However the picture was not released by Warner bros. so there is no way to know if it is real, it could be a very well done fan creation that got miss labeled somewhere long the line or it could be the real thing.

Also in costuming news Batman V Superman director Zach Snyder spoke to Forbes in an interview where he dropped the news that the costumes for the iconic trio were ready and waiting to go.

“MH: Fans are wondering, because there have been some reports that it could be much later this summer or even next year before the suits are revealed. Can you tell us if we really might have to wait six months to a year to see them, or could it be sooner?

ZS: Unfortunately, I don’t even know the timeline… Because the movie takes place so far from now, it’s hard to know exactly. That all gets tied to marketing and strategies for the movie. It’s not just a free-for-all, which I’d love it to be. Because I take a picture of the suit with my camera– I’m actually staring at one right now in my office. And it’s just massive on my wall in my office and it’s epic, let me tell you! And I’m like, “God, I want to send this to the Internet immediately.” But I know I’m not allowed to [laughs]! I do value the sort of excitement of the way the film is [revealed]… the pieces that are released and sort of trickle out to everybody, and those reveals are exciting milestones for us.

MH: People are always looking for the set photos and things. Feel free to tell fans, “Wait for the official release, it’ll be epic and that’s the way to experience this.” They’ll only get to go through this once, where you see Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman for the first time together like this, and it should be something better than a cheesy picture on an iPhone.

ZS: The one nice thing is that, the schedule is designed carefully so that I don’t know that that’ll be [a problem]– but who knows, these cats are pretty good at getting the drop on us with these photos. But, when we finally do show it, it’s gonna be real fun. And it’s true, you gotta make sure– you’re gonna want the real shot…”

Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D.: Clark Gregg talked to Movie Pilot about his new film Trust Me, which he also directed. He also discussed Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. and speculated on his potential participation the upcoming lineup of Netflix series based on Marvels “street level heroes” (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist,  & Jessica Jones).

Is there any chance Coulson could cross over to some of the Marvel Netflix series?

I’d be really disappointed if I don’t get to show up in New York for Daredevil, or Iron Fist was a huge favorite of mind in comic books as a kid. I’ve had more than my share so I shouldn’t be greedy but it would be a huge geekout moment for me if I got to meet Daniel Rand.

And also if Agent Coulson will be making an appearance in the currently filming Avengers: Age of Ultron.

How about The Avengers: Age of Ultron? Is Joss Whedon going to hook you up?

I don’t think so. I think I would have heard about it by now, but I must say as a qualifier, the only way I ever hear about stuff like that is I get a weird phone message with not the right number of numbers on it and somebody says, “We need to talk to you.”

X-men: Age of Apocalypse: Writer Simon Kinberg (X-men Days of Future Past, Fanststic Four, xXx: State of the Union) talked with The Daily Beast about plans for the next film.

There’s an after-credits scene with Apocalypse building the pyramids. What was your approach to that, and reasoning behind it?

At some point in making the movie we talked about what the potential next film would be, and we all really gravitated towards Apocalypse. We really wanted it to be more for the core fans than for the broad audience; to be something that was a genuine tease, and almost mysterious to mainstream audiences who don’t know the comics well, so they’re thinking, “What’s that?”

Is the sequel, X-Men: Apocalypse, going to just feature the younger generation of characters?

It will focus primarily on the First Class cast, but it will certainly have some of the original cast involved, too.

Kinberg also discussed where Gambit fits into the X-men universe.

You’re also a writer/producer on Gambit, which recently cast Channing Tatum in the lead. How did you arrive at him as your Gambit, and why did you decide to move away from Taylor Kitsch?

Gambit is still in-motion and being figured out. Channing made it known that it was a character that he loved and would love to play, and all the people who work on the X-Men movies are huge fans of his, so the notion of him playing it is exciting. I’m more fascinated by anti-heroes, and Gambit is one of those. I don’t know why he wasn’t explored in the original X-Men movies. Maybe the reason why was because they wanted to focus on Rogue/Bobby or the platonic Rogue/Wolverine relationship, and maybe there were too many similarities between Wolverine and Gambit, so in order to make it a Wolverine-centric franchise they had to cut him loose.

Fantastic Four: In less awesome news Kinberg also talked about his current project, The Fantastic Four, and the words grounded, real, and gritty came out of his mouth because those are the words I want to hear when talking about a family that has super science adventures and features a really stretchy guy and a guy made out of rock who’s signature phrase is “It’s clobbering time!”.

You’re in the midst of shooting The Fantastic Four reboot now. I gotta say… the original films were very bad.

[Laughs] It’s a double-edged sword because you don’t have people saying, “Why are you rebooting something good?” and you also have people saying, “Why bother?” The core fans were not wild about the original movies, and nor was I. Last summer, Emma Watts at Fox called me on the set of Days of Future Pastand said, “We really want to do a new Fantastic Four.” I said to her, “I’m interested but it depends how you want to do it.” She said, “Talk to Josh Trank.” We were shooting the Washington D.C. finale sequence in Days of Future Pastand I talked to Josh, and he had such a clear vision of what he wanted to do with the film that was so different from the other movies—it was grounded, real, gritty, and what it would really be like if you went through a transformation and lost control of your body. That, coupled with him wanting it to be a coming-of-age movie, felt fresh to me.

What’s the tone going to be? The first Fantastic films were very slapstick and stupid.

The tone of this movie will feel as unique as when you saw Iron Man, X-Men, or Batman Begins for the first time. It’s not as goofy as the first movies; it has humor in it, but the humor is much more real and comes from character, not pratfall jokes. It’s a much more dramatic film than it is a comedy. I would say it falls somewhere between Raimi’s first couple of Spider-Man movies and Chronicle.

Also in “Fantastic Four” news reports are circulating that Marvel Comics plan on cancelling the “Fantastic Four” comic for sinister reasons. Bleeding Cool was the first to report on the story.

Marvel are intending to put the Fantastic Four comic books on hold, both Marvel Universe and Ultimate. The characters will still appear, but in other folks’ books such as Inhuman and Avengers. And that artwork featuring the Fantastic Four is even being taken down in the company offices.

Carly Steel had “massive respect” for the stars and asks perhaps the most obvious, amusing — and perhaps a little TMI — question of the day. How did Tom and Emily take bathroom breaks wearing those things?

“We just peed our pants,” quips Emily. “It was real in the trenches.”

With his trademark grin, Tom interrupts, “No we didn’t — come on — now we’re going to have to be going to the next [interview], like, “No, no no, Em was joking.”

The full interview is at etonline.

Jurassic World: Clearly being a total tease Jurassic World Director Colin Trevorrow tweeted a picture of a veterinary patch. What does it mean? Is this going to end up being a version of Pet Rescue only with velociraptors instead of puppies and kittens?  

Left Behind: There is a poster out for Nic Cages new film based on the “Left Behind” book series by Timothy Lehay called Left Behind which is about the rapture. I can not say anything about the film as I have not seen it but the poster does not fill me with confidence.

Divergent: Insurgent the sequel to the successful YA distopian movie Divergent, which performed way better than expected at the box office, began filming on May 27th. The Lionsgate Studio has put out a press release, please read it. Some poor intern probably worked all week to put it together and got a coffee cup thrown at their head for their trouble.

“Santa Monica, CA – May 27, 2014 – Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF) announced today that principal photography has commenced in Atlanta on the feature film adaptation of INSURGENT, the second installment of the blockbuster DIVERGENT action adventure franchise, starring Golden Globe® nominated Shailene Woodley, Theo James, and Academy Award® winner Kate Winslet. Academy Award® winner Octavia Spencer joins returning cast members Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Maggie Q and Mekhi Phifer. Based on author Veronica Roth’s New York Times best seller, the film is being directed by Robert Schwentke from a screenplay by Brian Duffield and Akiva Goldsman. Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher are producing the film through their Red Wagon Entertainment banner along with Pouya Shahbazian. Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman are executive producing through their Mandeville Films banner along with Neil Burger and Barry Waldman. Lionsgate will release INSURGENT theatrically in North America through its Summit Entertainment label on Friday, March 20, 2015.

INSURGENT raises the stakes for Tris as she searches for allies and answers in the dystopian ruins of a futuristic Chicago. Tris (Woodley) and Four (James) are now fugitives on the run, hunted by Jeanine (Winslet), the leader of the power-hungry Erudite elite. Racing against time, they must find out what Tris’s family sacrificed their lives to protect, and why the Erudite leaders will do anything to stop them. Haunted by her past choices but desperate to protect the ones she loves, Tris, with Four at her side, faces one impossible challenge after another as they unlock the truth about the past and ultimately the future of their world.”

Star Gate: The Latino Review has reported that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros. will be rebooting the movie that spawned the beloved series and all of it’s progeny with original director Roland Emmerich at the helm and original writer Dean Devlin doing the honors of updating the story of alien gods, allergy plagued archaeologists, grim face soldiers, a universal love of candy, and an nuclear device. Sadly,  I do not think Teal’c will be in the reboot.

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