International Avengers poster (image via CBR)

To the left, my brother, to the left is the international movie poster for The Avengers, which will be closing out the Tribeca Film Festival on April 29th. When reached for comment, writer/director Joss Whedon said, “I’m thoroughly psyched to be closing the festival with our intimate little think-piece.” That got me all kinds of psyched for the whedonesque wittiness levels this Marvel joint’s surely gonna deliver. In other Avengers news, it’s looking like ScarJo’s Black Widow won’t get caught in the death grip so many Whedon characters succumb to, since she’s already slated to appear in Ironman 3. (via The Chicago Tribune and Movie Web)

In other Whedon news, there’s a new gallery of stills up for The Cabin in the Woods. Co-written by Whedon and Drew Goddard, the film will hit theaters April 13th and, according to its PR monkies, is “a mind blowing horror film that turns the genre inside out.” Hm. I don’t want to repeat myself or anything but it sounds like it could also be pretty whedonesque. (via ComingSoon.net)

Returning to The Avengers for just a sec before moving on to other matters of import, here’s a great behind the scenes of pic of Senor Whedon rocking a Captain America shield….

In other comic book movie franchise movie happenings, Warner Brothers has confirmed that Liam Neeson will be reprising his role as Ra’s al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises (via Comingsoon.net)

Another week, another overflowing slushie of Image Comics development news: Rosario Dawson will be working with The Walking Dead Executive Producer, Gail Anne Hurd, to develop her Image comic series, O.C.T.: Occult Crimes Taskforce for A&E, while an outfit called Content House will be developing two Image published properties by Raffaele Ienco, the 2008 graphic novel Devoid of Life and the upcoming series Epic Kill. (via Spinoff Online)

In other graphic novel development news, Kamala Films has acquired the rights to the popular Japanese manga, Lone Wolf and Cub (via Deadline)

Now it’s on to Westeros, bitches! For those nerds among you who’ve been living under a rock on the wrong side of The Wall, Game of Thrones returns to HBO this Sunday for its eagerly anticipated second season. Read no further, if you haven’t seen Season One and haven’t read A Clash of Kings, there’s SPOILERS AHEAD! Entertainment Weekly celebrated early this week with four variant covers of your favorite returning characters –  Daenerys Targaryen with one of her baby dragons, fan favorite Tyrion Lannister, my boyfriend Jon Snow and my absolute favorite cover of Jamie and Cersei Lannister looking super incest-y, yet kinda sexy and less child murder-y than usual. 

This week EW also spoke to Jack Gleeson, who plays the boy king everyone loves to hate, Joffrey Baratheon. Gleeson says Joffrey will be engaging in some epically “malicious deeds” this season, as readers of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series already know. For your reading enjoyment, here’s some older (as in a couple of weeks) EW interviews to get you amped, pumped and psyched for season 2. Like this one with Peter Dinkalage (Tyrion Lannister) and this one with Emelia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen). Oh, and here’s another interview from E! Online with series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (via EW and E! Online)

And with that I’m out. Enjoy your weekend, people. I know I will with Westeros waiting at the end of it. Although if that’s the light at the end of my week’s tunnel, maybe I need to get an actual life or something? (Author’s note: That’s a rhetorical question and your comments and thoughts to it, while probably interesting, aren’t really necessary) Till next week!

1 COMMENT

  1. Goddamn it! You put “spoiler warning” before the Game of Thrones thing, but NOT before the Dark Knight casting thing?! Hopefully Ras just shows up in flashback, or many more angry comments will be forthcoming.

  2. These “movie news” posts are really a scourge. Also, how come on google reader it shows the full length of every Beat post, instead of just the first couple lines it gets from every other RSS feed? It’s particularly annoying for those epic-length sales breakdowns you post every single month.

  3. Its been no secret about Ras being back. If you went on IMDb site its been listed a long time. IMDb always updates the cast list.

  4. @Steve and @arrowshaft, i have to weigh in here – casting news does not constitute a spoiler. spoilers give away plot points and story arcs, and there’s no way you can determine a specific plot point or narrative arc from casting news. the general DIRECTION of an arc perhaps but no major plot points can be discerned from casting news.

  5. @Steve – Sweet Heavens. If Liam Neeson is appearing in the movie you can pretty much guarantee he’s going to be in the previews, anyway.

    Seriously, everyone needs to get over this spoiler thing. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. It only “ruins” things in your mind. If you just decide you don’t care about spoilers you’ll quit yelling at people on blogs and you’ll just enjoy the movie. Just as much.

    Either way, there was no need for Heidi to put a spoiler warning on the news that one of the biggest actors in the world is going to be in one of the biggest movie franchises in the world.

  6. @BradyDale – Here here! Except for one thing – I’m not Heidi! I’m The Beat’s Entertainment Editor, Shannon O’Leary and I contribute this column on a daily basis. Heidi is the Editor in Chief and her writing is easily distinguished from mine because her brains and experience dwarf my own.