X-Men and Tony Stark will be recast, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige reveals
Following 2027's Avengers: Secret Wars, several key characters in the MCU will be recast, including Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and the full team of X-Men, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced during a Friday press event, Variety reported.
Feige said the company is "utilizing" Secret Wars "not just to round out the stories we've been telling post-Endgame, just as importantly — and you can look at the at the Secret Wars comics for where that takes you — it very, very much sets us up for the future... Endgame, literally, was about endings. Secret Wars is about is about beginnings."
Marvel has slowed the pace of MCU releases from the franchise's point of greatest saturation, the mid-to-late 2010s, in which three, even four films were released per year.
The company released only one film in 2024, Deadpool & Wolverine, and though three are slated for this year — Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*, both previously released, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, coming next weekend — there's just one film apiece pegged to 2026 and 2027: Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
Secret Wars represents a critical reorienting juncture for the franchise, Feige indicated, but hesitated to call it a reboot.
"'Reboot' is a scary word... Reboot can mean a lot of things to a lot of people," he explained, describing the film instead as a "reset" for the MCU. "Reset, singular timeline — we're thinking along those lines."
"X-Men is where that will happen next," he added.
It's no surprise that Feige is is pegging a "reset" to the X-Men, given the company's years-long effort to buy the characters back from 21st Century Fox, which finally came to fruition in 2019 when Disney, Marvel's parent company, acquired Fox.
In 2024, Feige teased "a new age of mutants and of the X-Men," and this past March, Marvel finally announced that after a smattering of X-Men teases in MCU films — the original films' star Kelsey Grammer appeared as Beast in The Marvels, while Patrick Stewart's Professor X showed up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — Avengers: Doomsday will officially mark the MCU's first full showing of X-Men characters.Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, Rebecca Romijn, and James Marsden have all been confirmed to reprise their roles in the MCU. Channing Tatum, who finally brought X-Men fan-favorite character Gambit to the big screen in Deadpool & Wolverine, will also join them.
"There've been more X-Men movies than there were Spidey movies or Fantastic Four movies, so a lot has been done," Feige noted, while speaking at a recent Fantastic Four roundtable, ScreenRant reported. "But again, because it's almost a comic legacy unto itself, there's so much more to tap into it and there's so many sagas within sagas for X-Men."
The last time the X-Men franchise saw a major cast overhaul was for 2011 prequel film X-Men First Class. The new cast included James McAvoy as Professor X, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, and Nicholas Hoult as Beast. Old then met new in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past, in which Hugh Jackman's Wolverine from the original films goes back in time to collaborate with the prequel films' stars, while the film cuts between the two timelines and their different casts, including Halle Berry as Storm, Anna Paquin as Rogue, Famke Janssen as Jean Grey, among other stars of the original films.
X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016 and Dark Phoenix in 2019 also starred the McAvoy- and Fassbender-led prequels cast, though the later films did not enjoy the same enthusiastic critical reception the first two films featuring the prequel cast did.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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Geek Tyrant
2 minutes ago
- Geek Tyrant
Hot Toys Reveals Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, Sue Storm, and H.E.R.B.I.E. Action Figures — GeekTyrant
Hot Toys has revealed several new collectible action figures from Marvel Studios movie The Fantastic Four: First Steps . The first round of reveals include Regular and Deluxe versions of Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm, The Thing, and H.E.R.B.I.E. We already shared the massive Galactus figure, and the Johnny Storm figure, which is seen in some of the photos, will be offered at a later date. The Deluxe releases add a H.E.R.B.I.E. figure to make it a set. See full details and the new photos below. The Fantastic Four: First Steps – 1/6th scale Invisible Woman Collectible Figure 'I'm not giving up. We will face this together. We will fight it together… as a family.' – Invisible Woman Welcome to the family. Marvel Studios is set to introduce its First Family in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, a stylish, 1960s-inspired reboot that blends retro-futurism with thrilling superhero adventure. Set in an alternate Earth, the film introduces the Fantastic Four as they come together to face cosmic threats like Galactus and the Silver Surfer, while balancing their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond. Sue Storm, aka Invisible Woman, is the emotional and intellectual backbone of the team. Sue is not only a brilliant scientist and expectant mother, but also the strategic team leader who holds her family and mission together amidst chaos. As the 'most emotionally intelligent person on the planet', Sue's ability to blend compassion with strength and lead with her force-field and invisibility powers makes her the anchor of the Fantastic Four. Hot Toys is proud to present the 1/6th scale Invisible Woman Collectible Figure. The figure features a newly developed head with rolling eyeballs and meticulously sculpted icy-blonde hair to reflect Vanessa Kirby's likeness. She is dressed in her retro-futuristic Fantastic Four uniform with a coordinating belt and boots. The figure offers nine pieces of both gloved and ungloved interchangeable hands, allowing collectors to showcase her in relaxed stances or ability-using poses. Accessories include a translucent holographic force-field effect to recreate her energy shields, a baby Franklin Richards with slightly articulated limbs and nestled in a cradle covered by a removable lid, and a specially designed figure stand. A Special Edition only available in selected markets will include a specially designed The Fantastic Four: First Steps metal collectible card with display case. Complete the Fantastic Four: First Steps lineup by adding Invisible Woman to your collection, because every team needs leadership and a mother's love.


USA Today
32 minutes ago
- USA Today
'Happy Gilmore 2' is absolutely wonderful
The legacy sequel has transformed itself into one of the ugliest reanimations in modern Hollywood, the crass puppetry of a once-beloved corpse dancing to the same song-and-dance that made it so cherished in the first place. Shame-soaked nostalgia dollars flutter about like ugly butterflies in a trash garden, destined to put on the same "dead dog and dead pony" show for fearful audiences afraid of any ounce of originality until the unforgiving entertainment machine runs out of caskets to mine and the whole movie world falls off a cliff. And then there's Happy Gilmore 2. Leave it to Adam Sandler, perhaps the most beloved American entertainer this side of Mickey Mouse and Tom Hanks, to putt the golf ball through the most byzantine mini-golf fun house from Hell and nail the shot to keep himself under par. Happy Gilmore 2 is just baked with too much love to reek of what dooms its colleagues. In one way, you could view Happy Gilmore 2 as a triumph of affable stupidity, a sequel so awash in the hallmark Sandler rage-man physical comedy that it manages to feel fresh... if only because Hollywood has practically abandoned the genre entirely for "comedic" superhero movies that smirk at the screen as if any insinuation of comedy at all is some sort of naughty cooke jar-snatching that big daddy corporation didn't see while reading the newspaper... the kind that would make even Wade Wilson blush. Last summer's Deadpool and Wolverine actually owned its identity of being a straight-up comedy as opposed to something dreadful like Thor: Love and Thunder (shutters in Zeus), but even then, it was still a Deadpool and Wolverine movie. Marvel putting out the biggest comedy of the decade so far just feels wrong, even if the movie was indeed funny. Yes, a Happy Gilmore Netflix movie in 2025 replete with countless cameos from golf professionals, Sandler regulars, podcast hosts and sportscasters plays to the broadest audience possible. The humor is wack-a-mole wide, the callbacks to the original so plentiful and obvious that you can almost count this as a double-bill on Letterboxd with just one sit on the couch. However, everything feels hand-stitched, as if an entire community of people who love Happy got together and crafted a big quilt to wrap themselves in nearly 30 years later. The warmth radiates from the screen. Unlike a big-budget Hollywood legacy blockbuster where nostalgia cuts the checks and the corporate "reverence" for what came before feels AI-generated to appeal to the most shameless part of our brains' art-processors, Happy Gilmore 2 feels pleasantly overstuffed out of adoration. Sure, most of the film is flatly ridiculous, the lowest-hanging fruit basket being passed around for everyone to take one and pass it down. Characters punch and choke each other out of sheer glee; another drinks hand sanitizer to get a buzz. One man on a beach thinks he's watching a Happy Gilmore golf match on television, but in reality, it's just a rock in a makeshift box. One character goes to the bathroom in a mailbox. Like all of Sandler's movies, the cheap joke is the best joke, and the school cafeteria belly laughter is real and wonderful. Think about the star for a moment and where he is now. After years and years of pushing it away, Sandler's recent forays into auteurism have fulfilled the tantalizing promise of Punch-Drunk Love and Funny People. Even in his screwiest of comedies, he showed off the volcanic range and crestfallen heart of a truly generational actor. Uncut Gems in particular felt like an answered prayer. Watching the Sandman getting sandbagged down with heartless 2010s Netflix comedies made you question if he had finally just settled. The grand pleasure is that Happy Gilmore 2 shows that even a new Sandler Netflix comedy can make you scream-laugh to the point of waking up your dog and bothering your neighbors. By plowing shamelessly into the original film beat-for-beat but still awakening something oddly profound on the passage of time with how so many of the 1996 film's actors have departed from this golf course for the other, Happy Gilmore 2 plays as both a Happy Madison fan convention smorgasbord and a group hug for the past, present and future. Happy Gilmore 2 also arrives like a godsend in a world where studio comedies have fallen to the wayside. Consider that modern comedy has mainly shifted into other genres and into the indie space, where witty banter and situational ironies tend to rule the day. They're incredibly funny, but the other side of the spectrum, the kind that studios used to pump out in the summer with the Sandlers of the world for mass appeal, have nearly gone extinct. Perhaps that makes a big, doofy Happy Gilmore sequel all the more commendable with its themes of mourning the people we've lost and saving the traditions we care about while we have them. The film's villain is a tech-bro who wants to turn golf into a glitzy rizz-fest with color-run fireworks and brash stunts to appeal to the TikTokers and Twitch streamers who don't have time for the love of the game. As much as you absolutely cannot read any supremely deep text in a movie where a honey-drenched Travis Kelce gets attacked by a bear in Bad Bunny's "happy place" dream, you feel the Sandler-dad wisdom trying to slap around the young'uns a bit to appreciate the old ways and cherish the familial bonds that keep them aflame. Happy Gilmore 2 is the funniest movie of the year so far by default, if only because no other movies really try to go for laugh-a-minute comedy like this any longer. The new Naked Gun movie will surely challenge it, but why can't the audiences of today get their own Happy Gilmores and Frank Drebins to cherish anew? It's an unfortunate irony that the surest bet at getting a major comedy project off the ground in 2025 is to dust off an old character and put a new shine on them to appeal to nostalgic business sense. No, Happy Gilmore 2 can't stand shoulder-to-shoulder with its predecessor because that's outright impossible. However, it can bundle in the laughter in equal measure and mess around so much with the very nature of a legacy sequel that some of its most shameless callbacks feel inspired, almost a parody of its serious brethren. Yes, there is infinitely more integrity with Chubbs Peterson having a son who works at a mini-golf course who also has a fake hand than whatever the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning hook was with Shea Whigham being Jon Voight's kid out of nowhere. Those two movies mirror each other. Tom Cruise's sacrifice-for-the-movies adrenaline and Christopher McQuarrie's James Cameron/Brian De Palma-tinged set-piece excellence go blow-for-blow with Sandler's ageless comedic timing and immaculate facial expressions and his and co-writer Tim Herlihy's masterful ability to mine nonstop gags out of the most ludicrous visuals. Watching Cruise's underwater submarine ballet in the latest Mission: Impossible is incredible; watching golfer John Daly try to drink booze out of an antique cuckoo clock is, too. Where Happy Gilmore 2 succeeds and the latest Mission: Impossible fails all has to do with the approach. The latter is bound to sincerity in its most cringey throwbacks because it's downright, well, impossible to wink a bit at the audience at how silly this all is. A Sandler comedy has the freedom to have its nostalgia cake and throw it across the room to instigate a food fight. During a scene at a graveyard, headstones of characters long gone from the original start popping up in spades. A few of those would have induced eye-rolls; a bunch of those, even of the most random side characters, makes for great meta-humor. Comedies give you the ability to check yourself a bit, as the wedgie-giving ombudsman comes in to readily acknowledge a lot of this is looney tunes. A streak of sadness dyes the current, as the reason Happy falls off the golfing map is the kind of shock revelation a Happy Madison production probably doesn't aim for 10 years ago. The world kept spinning while Gilmore was swatting golf balls with a hockey goon's might, and it wasn't always kind to our favorite golfer like we might have hoped. Dad-Sandler has always been the most sentimental version of himself, and his kids aging right in front of his eyes and starting to leave the nest seems to weigh on him and his renewed take on Gilmore. This and Wes Anderson's excellent The Phoenician Scheme both dive into similar subject matter with equal gusto, of a father reckoning with his children and his place in providing for them. There's a world-weariness to Happy this time around in the way Sandler carries him that both compels the film's most jarring narrative choice and grounds some of the film's far, far sillier antics. That approach gives Sandler's performance added gravitas and the entire film around him a paternal watchfulness that would've played as unearned earlier in his filmography. There is no doubting Sandler's commitment to the project as you might could have in the past; he's all in, and so is everyone around him. The older Sandler has gotten, the more his traveling-theater approach to making movies has taken on new meaning. Even in his biggest comedic misfires, the community Sandler keeps with him on his Happy Madison projects has always endeared. He takes care of his own, and that love shows through here more so than in any other project he's ever worked on. The rampant cameos would be gratuitous if the people staffing them didn't seem so genuinely thrilled to be there. Christopher McDonald's Shooter McGavin getting dragged back into the fold would feel forced if McDonald didn't treat the role like it was the true opportunity of a lifetime. There's no way in heck Verne Lundquist wears that blazer in the film's third act if he's not tickled to be back in this world. Heck, all of the brand-name golfers in the cast seem to relish the chance to act with Sandler and actually buy into the material. Do you know how much of a comedic achievement it is that three of the funniest people in this movie are Daly, Scottie Scheffler and Will Zalatoris? Daly plays with the kind of comedic fire that we sometimes praise to the extent of pushing them into awards talk; he's really that inspired with his fearlessness to be as zany as possible. Sure, Happy Gilmore 2 is still a legacy sequel at its core, replete with brand endorsements and adorned with Super Bowl-commercial rascality. However, it's the rare legacy sequel that feels purposeful and human-driven. The film reaches for real profundity, as much as you can find in a Happy Madison movie. It's a movie with a good soul, as affably crude and dingy as Sandler's landmark works and operating with the same level of zeal. Does all of it work as well as it could? Nah. Does every joke land? Probably not. Is it messy? Most certainly; all of Sandler's comedies have been to a degree. However, it's still so much better than so many other films like it. The world is a better place when Sandler is making comedies like this. Hubie Halloween felt like a nice change of pace, and Happy Gilmore 2 feels like the grand return to that high-wire fire hydrant style of Sandler funny business. It's painfully fully and surprisingly wistful for its place in time. We need Sandler to keep tapping into his dramatic potential; it's why his decision to work with Noah Baumbach again on Jay Kelly is so encouraging. However, we also need Sandler firmly planting his feet in the comedic worlds where he's the smartest idiot in the room with a heart of gold, and we all love him for it. Watching Sandler succeed with everyone cheering him on as those signature Happy Gilmore needle drops hit might make you just a wee bit misty... and not because it's an uncaring algorithm programming "Nostalgic Feelz" for the most basic audience possible. When it's earned and it's real, there's nothing like going back to your happy place with the people you love.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Rare Hulk stretch toy sells for thousands of pounds at auction
A stretch toy of Marvel's The Hulk, which has been described as one of the 'rarest stretch toys in existence', has sold for thousands of pounds, according to Excalibur Auctions. The figure, which appears to be one of only 30 known examples of the original Hulk stretch figure from 1979 known to still exist, was sold to a private collector on Saturday at the Excalibur Auctions Vintage Toys, Diecast Models & Model Railways auction for £3,900. Originally estimated between £3,000 and £5,000, the final sale set a new record in the UK for 'a figure of its kind', according to the auction house. Jonathan Torode, from Excalibur Auctions, said: 'We were excited to offer this rare piece of nostalgia today, which set a UK auction record for a figure of its kind. 'We saw competitive bidding on the phones and internet, with it finally winning out to a UK private collector, where we hope it will be as cherished by its new owner as much as it has been by its previous one.' The character the toy is based on was created by the American comic book writer and producer Stan Lee and comic artist Jack Kirby, appearing in comic form for the first time in May 1962 under the Marvel name. He was later portrayed across TV, film, cartoon and video games as The Incredible Hulk – the alter ego of the physicist Dr Bruce Banner, who transformed into the superhero when he was angry or under extreme stress. A range of actors have since portrayed the character over the years, including Eric Bana in The Hulk (2003), Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers (2012). The toy was described as being in 'mint' condition after being kept out of the light, upright, and in its original packaging over the years. The Hulk figure also came with its original instructions and has never been offered for sale since it was bought in 1979, according to the auction house. Produced by renowned toymaker Denys Fisher (1918-2002), the figure came directly from its original owner who had begged his mother for one as a child. It was originally part of Kenner's 'Stretch Armstrong' line and was later licensed under Denys Fisher in the UK. Fisher, who developed the Spirograph, grew up in the Leeds area and later lived in Dumfries and Cumbria. The Hulk stretch figure was filled with corn syrup to enable it to stretch and was made using the same latex and gel moulds as those used for the Stretch Armstrong figure. However, its green skin colouring, the Hulk head and the Marvel branding set it apart from the Stretch Armstrong toy. Manufactured in Thorp Arch, Wetherby, the toy was sold in limited quantities only in the UK, through select mail order catalogues and a handful of shops.