Marvel’s ‘The Avengers’ cast mates Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo will present together on the Oscar stage, show producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced last week.

“We are happy to re-unite the ‘Avengers’ cast to present on our show,” said Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. “Audiences who enjoyed the year’s biggest box office hit will be excited to see these terrific actors back together again.”

Downey has twice been nominated for an Oscar, for his leading role in ‘Chaplin’ (1992) and for his supporting role in ‘Tropic Thunder’ (2008).

Evans, who will be making his first Oscar show appearance, will be seen in the upcoming ‘The Iceman’.

Jackson was nominated in 1994 for his supporting role in ‘Pulp Fiction’.  He can also be seen in this year’s Best Picture nominee ‘Django Unchained’.

Renner was nominated for his leading role in 2009 Best Picture winner ‘The Hurt Locker’ and for his supporting role in ‘The Town’ (2010).  Renner had roles in this year’s ‘The Bourne Legacy’ and ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ (2011).

Ruffalo received his first nomination for his supporting role in 2010 Best Picture nominee ‘The Kids Are All Right’.

Oscars for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on Oscar Sunday, February 24, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and will be hosted by Seth MacFarlane live on the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries worldwide.

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are producers of critically acclaimed and award-winning feature films, television movies, series, and Broadway productions. Their feature films include ‘The Bucket List’, ‘Footloose’, ‘Hairspray’, and ‘Chicago’, which won six Academy Awards including one for Best Picture. For television, they’ve produced films of ‘Steel Magnolias’, ‘Life with Judy Garland’, and ‘A Raisin in the Sun’, among many others and the series “Smash” and “Drop Dead Diva.” They recently returned to their roots in live theater by producing Broadway revivals of the Tony-winning “Promises, Promises” and the Tony-winning 50th Anniversary revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

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Los Angeles, U.S.A. – IMAX Corporation, Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Studios have announced that the epic Super Hero adventure Marvel’s The Avengers will be released in the immersive IMAX 3D format in 451 digital theatres worldwide. Domestically, the film will be released in 275 theatres beginning Friday, May 4.

The international debut of Marvel’s The Avengers got off to a record breaking start in IMAX theatres last weekend, significantly outperforming previous IMAX releases of Marvel films. More territories are launching in tandem with the North American release this week, including China. Domestic IMAX pre-sales are also strong and significantly ahead of any previous Marvel releases.

Marvel’s The Avengers, based on the well-known Marvel comic book series, is directed by Joss Whedonand stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Tom Hiddleston, with Stellan Skarsgard and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Distributed by The Walt Disney Studios, Marvel’s The Avengers: An IMAX 3D Experience marks the third Marvel Studios film presented in IMAX, following the releases of Iron Man 2: The IMAX Experience in 2010 and Thor: An IMAX 3D Experience in 2011.

The IMAX release of Marvel’s The Avengers will be digitally re-mastered into the image and sound quality of An IMAX 3D Experience with proprietary IMAX DMR (Digital Re-mastering) technology. The crystal-clear images coupled with IMAX’s customized theatre geometry and powerful digital audio create a unique environment that will make audiences feel as if they are in the movie.

About Marvel’s The Avengers
Marvel Studios presents “Marvel’s The Avengers” — the Super Hero team up of a lifetime, featuring iconic Marvel Super Heroes Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins.

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Tom Hiddleston, with Stellan Skarsgard and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and directed by Joss Whedon, “Marvel’s The Avengers” is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series “The Avengers,” first published in 1963 and a comics institution ever since. Prepare yourself for an exciting event movie, packed with action and spectacular special effects, when “Marvel’s The Avengers” assemble in summer 2012.

“Marvel’s The Avengers” is presented by Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures. The film is being produced by Marvel Studios’ President Kevin Feige and executive produced by Alan Fine, Jon Favreau, Stan Lee, Louis D’Esposito, Patricia Whitcher, Victoria Alonso and Jeremy Latcham. The story is by Zak Penn and Joss Whedon and the screenplay is by Joss Whedon. The film releases May 4, 2012, and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

http://marvel.com/avengers_movie

Marvel’s The Avengers has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, and a mild drug reference.

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The Tribeca Film Festival (TFF), presented by American Express, on March 28 announced that Marvel’s The Avengers, presented by Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures, will close its 11th edition on Saturday, April 28. Closing night will take place at Tribeca BMCC PAC and is sponsored by BOMBAY SAPPHIRE Gin.

Honoring the spirit of the Tribeca Film Festival, the screening will allow the opportunity for Marvel’s The Avengers to celebrate everyday heroes from police agencies, fire departments, first responders and various branches of the U.S. military.  These local heroes will have an opportunity to attend the screening and meet the cast.

Marvel Studios’ producer Kevin Feige says, “We are proud that Marvel’s The Avengers is the closing film of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and we are excited to welcome local heroes to the screening as special guests. We all know and love our iconic Super Heroes, but when it really counts, it’s our real-life heroes who save the world every day by making it a better place for all of us.”

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Tom Hiddleston, with Stellan Skarsgard and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and directed by Joss Whedon, Marvel’s The Avengers is an engaging, character-driven story packed with action, adventure and special effects.

When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins to assemble the iconic Marvel Super Heroes Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow.

Marvel’s The Avengers is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series “The Avengers,” first published in 1963 and a comics institution ever since.

“Marvel’s The Avengers is an exciting ride that absolutely transports audiences,” said Jane Rosenthal, Co-Founder of the Tribeca Film Festival. “It is the perfect way to end our 11th Festival.”

Comments director Joss Whedon, “Showing at Tribeca is both an honor and a double homecoming for me, who grew up in Manhattan, and for the movie, which wrapped production there.  I’m thoroughly psyched to be closing the festival with our intimate little think-piece.”

“Marvel’s The Avengers” is produced by Marvel Studios’ Producer Kevin Feige and executive produced byAlan Fine, Jon Favreau, Stan Lee, Louis D’Esposito, Patricia Whitcher, Victoria Alonso and Jeremy Latcham. The story is by Zak Penn and Joss Whedon, and the screenplay is by Joss Whedon. The film releases May 4, 2012, and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

The 11th annual Tribeca Film Festival will take place from April 18-29, 2012.

Visit www.tribecafilm.com/festival for more information about TFF’s 2012 programs and the full line-up of films.

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Comic Con is considered the biggest pop culture event in the East Coast. It is where some of the biggest names in Comics, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, toys and movies are hosted. This huge event kicks off on Thursday, with an introduction to the main panels.

Thursday’s special event will begin with a concert featuring Tom Morello, guitarist of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, as his Nightwatchman acoustic solo act. He will be accompanied by the Freedom Fighter Orchestra, and if that’s not enough, DJ.Z-Trip will perform along with Tom Morello.

Things will start to pick up on Friday, with a selection of panels to choose from, ranging from animations to movies and graphic novels. Locke and Key, which was such a big success at the San Diego Comic Con, will be premiering this year in NY. It will not be airing on Fox, airing instead at NY Comic Con for a one-time screening.

Later that day EA will display its new massive multiplayer online game, The Secret World, where characters will explore and discover dark cultural secrets, while also gaining skills that will be unique to the player itself. Comedy Central will be there to celebrate South Park’s Year of the Fan, in which a trivia game will give fans a chance to win South Park themed memorabilia.

Also showing up are Kevin James and James Mewes for a live performance of their podcast Jay & Silent Bob Get Old. The event will be ending with Corbin Bernsen, David H. Lawrence XVII, Diamond Dallas Page, Joe Eckardt, Marco Mannone, Vitaly Bokser and FrankieMuniz speaking about a family super hero, the Pizza Guy.

Saturday continues with DC: Talent Search, where professionals will explain what requirements are needed to become a DCE artist. Marvel will host a panel featuring all the biggest games to be released from Activision in 2012, which includes trailers, surprise reveals and a Q & A with the creators.

We expect to see the premier of the new Johnny Depp/Tim Burton film too. Lyndsy Fonseca, Maggie Q, and Shane West will speak about season two of Nikita, where Nikita and Michael are on the run with a black box full of dark government secrets. Attending is also the producer of the Marvel Vs. Capcom Franchise, Ryota Niitsuma, to discuss the launch of the new game next month.

The Death Valley cast, along with producers of the show, will discuss the difficulties of combining horror and comedy in one. Later that evening, cast members of AMCs The Walking Dead will talk about season one, and what to expect for season two, along with a sneak peak at said new season.

Saturday night will finish with sneak previews, and never before seen footage for two of the most anticipated movies of the fall and summer, respectively: Boy Wonder, and Marvel’s The Avenger.The Sunday introduction includes meeting the stars of Conan the Barbarian: Jason Momoa, Rose Mcgowan and Stephen Lang.

Also, the franchise that began in the 1980’s, Voltron, will feature all new toys and merchandise, plus an inside look at the new Voltron video game. There will also be a chance to get an exclusive look at some of Capcom’s upcoming releases: Dragon’s Dogma and Asura Wrath. There will also be a chance to hear about the latest on Dead Rising 2.

There is still a lot more coming up at comic con, so stay tuned for the latest news and updates.
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Marvel’s newest film, Captain America, released on July 22, joins the list of great movies that Marvel has produced these last two decades.  With action, and a balance of humor, sadness, and romance, director Joe Johnston delivers the goods straight to the door.

Amidst all the fun, the first 30 minutes is most memorable not for Captain America’s feats of strength but rather feats of bravery and physical weakness.  That’s right, Captain America had to start somewhere.  The effects teams came up with a unique and long process of creating “skinny Steve” Rodgers out of the buff and massive Chris Evans.

At first the plan to create a skinnier Chris Evans was to film a body double and digitally paste Evan’s head on the double’s body.  This technique was primarily used in David Fincher’s films, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button when using Brad Pitt’s head on an older man’s body.  The technique was also used in The Social Network when creating one of the Winklevoss twins.

However, when the time came for the double to re-create Evans’ movements, there was a problem.  He could not seem to mimic Evan’s body movement correctly.

“Chris moves in such a unique way; he doesn’t move like anybody else,” Johnston said. “The body double could not move like him. As hard as he tried to watch Chris and duplicate the movements, it just wasn’t the same.”

This led to a conundrum of what the crew should do to create the skinny Steve Rodgers. Apart from some, Evans liked that the body double would not be used.

“The beginning part of the movie is so crucial to get the audience invested in who Steve is, I didn’t want to share that part of the performance with another actor,” Evans said.  “I talked to Joe about it and thankfully, he agreed.”

With this bump in the road the crew had to figure out a different way to “unenhance” Evans’ body.

The final plan was to digitally shrink Evans’ muscles, jaw line and body to look like the 90-pound Rodgers.  This worked but left the digital effects team with a problem.  After shrinking the body, it left empty space in the background that Evan’s body previously covered.

To fix the problem, the crew had to shoot using green screens and superimpose the background into the picture to cover the empty space.  This turned out to work well but became a long and trying process.  Taking up some of the production time and all of post-production, the effects team had to alter about 250 shots to create “skinny Steve.”  However, sometimes the artists would catch a break in scenes when Evans’ was laying or sitting down because the head replacement became possible.

Captain America: The First Avenger pulled in a lot of attention in the time leading up to its release: Joe Johnston did not disappoint.  With a movie pulling off difficult special effects as well as keeping the characters and the story in mind, Captain America blew audiences away.

Many movies get carried away with special effects but Captain America, even with the overwhelming amount of effects, stayed true to what really makes a movie great, the story and the characters.

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Since 1998, Marvel Productions has been releasing superhero movies after the other- but how could this once bankrupt company, grow to such a colossus?  In 1997, Marvel, a once vast comic book company collapsed. Forced to re-organize, the newly formed Marvel Enterprises started their movie production division. In 1998, they created Blade with Wesley Snipes, and the rest is history. Now, after considerable success at the box office Marvel is releasing one of their biggest projects: The Avengers.

The Avengers is a team assembled by S.H.I.E.L.D leader, Nick Fury. S.H.I.E.L.D. is a law-enforcement/ espionage agency that keeps the peace throughout the world.  With Captain America coming 4 issues later the team of superheroes first consisted of Wasp, Ant Man, Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk.

With release scheduled for May 4, 2012, the movie started production on April 25, 2011. Crafting a star studded cast together, Marvel will be bringing most of the actors back that they used in their other movies, such as, Chris Hemworth Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson and Paul Bettany as the voice of Jarvis. Along with these old faces come new ones. Jeremy Renner will play Hawkeye, and Cobie Smulders will perform as Maria Hill.

If you know the Avengers, then you are probably wondering, “where is the Hulk?” Well, after Edward Norton’s falling out with Marvel, they replaced him with Mark Ruffalo. What is exciting about this new Hulk is that it is not all CGI. Mark Ruffalo will put on a motion-tracking suit and, in post-production, artists will draw on the Hulk according to Ruffalo’s movements. Oh, and Lou Ferigno is voicing the Hulk, no big deal.

The original writer of The Avengers is Zak Penn. He has written movies like X2, X-men: Last Stand and The Incredible Hulk but bringing all these characters into one movie proved a challenge to Penn. He told Craveonline.com, “My job is to kind of shuttle between the different movies and make sure that finally we’re mimicking that comic book structure where all of these movies are connected… There’s just a board that tracks ‘Here’s where everything that happens in this movie overlaps with that movie.’” However, though Zak Penn made the original script, the official writer is the director, Joss Whedon.

Joss Whedon, has written many hit movies like Toy Story, as well as underground cult TV classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer—he also directed part of the series. With his reputation, many cult followers believe he will stay true to the comic’s story. Whedon was a fan of the comics as a kid, and has given a hint of what the movie will focus around. Whedon, had said at the 2010 Comic-Con,”these people shouldn’t be in the same room let alone on the same team — and that is the definition of family.”

In an interview for IamRogue.com, Tom Hiddleston, playing Loki, alluded to how each character interacts with each other.  “These are seven big egos, and I’m referring to the characters not the actors. They all want to be the alpha male, or in Black Widow’s case the alpha female. So he has made a virtue of that by having them all compete for the top dog slot,” Hiddleston said.

It seems like Loki will not be the only obstacle the Avengers need to overcome.  They will have to learn how to work together for the salvation of Earth. Its one large dysfunctional family of superheroes that the world relies on, they will need to learn how to rely on one another in order to make their team work.

Considering the fact that The Avengers has been in the works since 2005, it’s safe to say that this hero ensemble is long overdue and maintains its position as one of the most anticipated Marvel pictures yet.  With Joss Wedon behind the wheel and still riding the wave of Marvel Enterprises’ success in comic adaptations, movie fans can look forward to being blown away in summer 2012.

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