The first trailer has been released for Bong Joon-ho‘s sci-fi thriller, Snowpiercer.  The story is set in a new ice age caused by a failed experiment to stop global warming that killed virtually all life on the planet.  The sole survivors live on a train called Snowpiercer—powered by a perpetual machine—who struggle with the class system implemented on the train.  The trailer showcases a lot more action than I was expecting as the lower-classes, led by Chris Evans‘ character, attempt a revolution by taking control of the train’s engines.  It looks exciting, although I had some difficulty making out Tilda Swinton‘s dialogue partly because of the character’s accent and partly because of the heavy, operatic trailer music.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  The film also stars The film also stars John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Alison Pill, Ed Harris, Ewen Bremner, Octavia Spencer, Kang-ho Song, and Ko Asung.  Snowpiercer opens on August 1st in South Korea, but no U.S. release date has been announced yet.

A new batch of images from the Cleveland set of Marvel’s sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier has made its way online.  We recently got our first look at the villainous Winter Soldier and his bionic arm in another set of images, but this new photo grouping highlights the titular baddie facing off against Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers.  There’s no shield to be found here, so it looks like Cap will have to go it alone using only his fighting skills in this particular sequence.

Hit the jump to check out the images.  The film also stars Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Georges St-Pierre, Frank Grillo, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Emily VanCamp, Maximiliano Hernández, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on April 4, 2014.

We’ve got a few interesting casting stories to share today.  Briefly:

• Sean Penn is in talks to join the increasingly impressive cast of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film, Inherent Vice.
• Looking to expand outside of the Marvel world, Chris Evans is eyeing a starring role in the Stephen King adaptation The Ten O’Clock People.
• Li Bingbing (Resident Evil: Retribution) is the first Chinese actress to join the cast of Michael Bay’s sequel Transformers 4, which will feature a host of Chinese stars.

Hit the jump for more on each project.

[This is a re-post of my interview from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.  While I rarely re-post interviews, this was one of my favorite interviews of 2012 and with the movie now playing in limited release, I decided it was worth another post.]

Every once in awhile you land an interview that you can’t wait to share. The one you’re about to watch with Chris Evans is one of those. At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, I got to sit down with Evans for over twenty minutes (we were scheduled for a lot less) to talk about his great work in director Ariel Vromen‘s The Iceman. As you can see in the trailer, Evans plays a killer and is nearly unrecognizable in dirty long hair as Richard Kuklinski’s (Michael Shannon) friend and partner.

I’ve spoken to Evans a lot over the years, and one of the things I love about him is his honesty and willingness to talk about everything. If you ask him a question about his career, or even his contract with Marvel, he’ll talk about it. Most actors will try and deflect the question, or give a politician’s answer. That’s not how Evans operates and it’s very refreshing. So besides talking about The Iceman and working with Michael Shannon, Evans talked about how his career has blown up, the intricacies of his Marvel contract, the business of Hollywood, playing a critical character of the Marvel universe, Captain America 2 (Captain America: The Winter Solider), whether he knows anything about Captain America 3, the success of The Avengers, Joss Whedon, Thor 2, Bong Joon-ho‘s Snowpiercer, the greatness of Hayley Atwell, his upcoming anti-romantic comedy A Many Splintered Thing with Michelle Monaghan, and so much more. Hit the jump for more.

Filming is underway on Joe and Anthony Russo‘s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  The upcoming sequel sees Captain America (Chris Evans) teaming up with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) to track down the nefarious Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).  We saw the first set photos a couple weeks ago, and these new ones show Cap and Black Widow in their civilian outfits, but still on a mission, or at least hopefully on a mission.  I’m not comfortable with the idea of Steve Rogers going around during his downtime and randomly seizing people by their lapels.

Hit the jump to check out the set photos.  The film also stars Cobie Smulders, Georges St-Pierre, Frank Grillo, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Emily VanCamp, Maximiliano Hernández, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on April 4, 2014.

Over the last several months, we’ve been getting glimpses of Bong Joon-ho‘s upcoming sci-fi film, Snowpiercer.  Today, the first footage has been released via an international behind-the-scenes featurette.  The story is set in a new ice age caused by a failed experiment to stop global warming that killed virtually all life on the planet.  The sole survivors live on a train called Snowpiercer—powered by a perpetual machine—who struggle with the class system implemented on the train.  The featurette is dubbed in Korean (or at least I assume it’s Korean since Joon-ho is South Korean), but you can still see that there’s going to be some action involved, especially on the part of an axe-wielding Chris Evans.

Hit the jump to check out the footage.  The film also stars John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Alison Pill, Ed Harris, Ewen Bremner, Octavia Spencer, Kang-ho Song, and Ko Asung.

The first set photos from Captain America: The Winter Soldier have leaked online.  These images are sure to be the just the beginning of the many, many, many set photos that inevitably leak when filming on a blockbuster is underway.  At least these show us the main characters as opposed to something bland like sets that are still under construction.  As we previously reported, the upcoming sequel will not only feature Captain America (Chris Evans) but Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in what sounds like a co-lead role as the two hunt down the mysterious Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).

Hit the jump to check out the set photos, and click on the respective links for comments from co-star Anthony Mackie and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.  The film also stars Cobie Smulders, Georges St-Pierre, Frank Grillo, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Emily VanCamp, Maximiliano Hernández, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on April 4, 2014.

Nine international character posters have been released for Snowpiercer, the English-language debut of Korean director Bong Joon-ho (The Host).  The story is set in a new ice age caused by a failed experiment to stop global warming that killed virtually all life on the planet.  The sole survivors live on a train called Snowpiercer—powered by a perpetual machine—who struggle with the class system implemented on the train.  The posters all provide the first hint of a release date by listing “Summer 2013″.  However, since these are international posters, we don’t know if that’s summer for the U.S., other countries, or both.

Hit the jump to check out the posters.  The film stars Chris Evans, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris, Ewen Bremner, Octavia Spencer, Kang-ho Song, and Ko Asung.

Marvel has sent out a press release announcing that filming has begun on Joe and Anthony Russo‘s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Few details about the film are known, but the press release provides a brief yet informative logline: “Captain America: The Winter Soldier will pick-up where Marvel’s The Avengers left off, as Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) struggles to embrace his role in the modern world and teams up with Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka Black Widow, to battle a powerful yet shadowy enemy in present-day Washington, D.C.”  That’s a lot of new information, including the large role for Black Widow, and the setting, although we know there will be flashbacks to World War II.  Also, for those who don’t know, the “shadowy enemy” is the eponymous Winter Soldier, a.k.a. Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan).  The press release also confirms our earlier report that Hayley Atwell will return to play Peggy Carter.

Hit the jump to check out the full press release along with the first image, and click here for recently released concept art.  The film also stars Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Georges St-Pierre, Frank Grillo, Toby Jones, Emily VanCamp, Maximiliano Hernández, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens on April 4, 2014.

New images have been released from Snowpiercer, the English-language debut of Korean director Bong Joon-ho (The Host).  The story is set in a new ice age caused by a failed experiment to stop global warming that killed virtually all life on the planet.  The sole survivors live on a train called Snowpiercer—powered by a perpetual machine—who struggle with the class system implemented on the train.  Appropriately, these images are in the form of Korean passports for the cast and Joon-ho.

Hit the jump to check out the passport images.  The film stars Chris Evans, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Alison Pill, Ed Harris, Ewen Bremner, Octavia Spencer, Kang-ho Song, and Ko Asung.  Snowpiercer currently doesn’t have a release date, so it should really get on that.

Marvel finally released the massive Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One box set earlier this week, and included in the collection is a bounty of extras from the studio’s past and future films.  We’ve already shared a collection of images, video, and concept art for a few of the Phase Two films, and today quite a few deleted scenes from The Avengers and Iron Man 2 have surfaced online.  The Avengers scenes are minor bits and pieces that were nipped out of the finished film, but the Iron Man 2 footage is fascinating because it reveals an alternate ending for the film that involves Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash kidnapping Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper.  It’s rather anticlimactic and it’s not hard to see why Jon Favreau went back and reshot the ending that now concludes the final iteration of the film.

Hit the jump to watch the deleted scenes from The Avengers and the alternate ending for Iron Man 2. [Update: We've added the "And Then Shawarma After" featurette after the jump, which takes a brief look behind the scenes of the Avengers tag.]

The Avengers was the highest-grossing film of 2012, so it’s no surprise that some of its cast would be presenting at this year’s Academy Awards.  The film is nominated for Best Visual Effects (although the momentum seems headed in the direction of Life of Pi), and the Academy has sent out a press release announcing that most of the superhero team will be presenting this year’s awards.  Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, and Mark Ruffalo will be presenting together, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re presenting for the technical categories (Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing).  I assume Chris Hemsworth and Scarlett Johansson were unavailable.  In any event, I hope the guys will have some witty banter, and even if they don’t, I’m sure Downey will make it entertaining anyway.

Hit the jump for the press release.  The Academy Awards will be held on February 24th at 7pm (EST) on ABC.

We’ve got the first official image from The Host director Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer today.  It features star Song Kang-ho and a collection of unhappy extras apparently passed out in the interior of a train.  The sci-fi pic is during a new ice age with the world’s sole survivors living on the titular train and who struggle with the class system that arises. Snowpiercer also stars Chris Evans, Song Kangho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner, Alison Pill, John Hurt and Ed Harris in Bong’s English-language debut, which opens later this year.

We’ve also got a couple of new images from the animated Escape from Planet Earth picture, which features the voices of Brendan Fraser, Sarah Jessica Parker, James Gandolfini and Jessica Alba.  The film opens February 14th.  Hit the jump to check out all the images. 

A new trailer for the thriller The Iceman has landed online.  The film stars Michael Shannon and chronicles the life of Richard Kuklinski, a professional hitman who kept his work secret from his family. The contract killer received the nickname “The Iceman” because he froze the bodies of his victims in order to disguise their time of death and throw the authorities off track.  This trailer makes the film feel a bit more dramatic than the action-oriented first trailer, but it looks like it might reveal a tad too much of the film’s plot.  Matt caught the film at the Toronto Film Festival and was not impressed by director/co-writer Ariel Vromen’s shallow take on Kuklinski, saying the pic is “about a hitman and nothing else.”

Hit the jump to watch the new trailer.  The film also stars Chris Evans, Ray Liotta, Winona Ryder, and James Franco.  The Iceman opens on May 3rd.

Director Bong Joon-ho’s (The Host) English-language debut Snow Piercer has secured distribution.  Per Deadline, The Weinstein Company has acquired U.S. rights to Joon-ho’s sci-fi thriller.  The film boasts an excellent ensemble cast that includes Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, and Octavia Spencer and centers on a group of train passengers learning to co-exist in a new ice age.  The ice age is a result of a failed experiment to stop global warming that killed off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of a train called Snow Piercer, which travels the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine” The conflict in the story comes from a revolution that brews as a result of the class system that forms on the train.

Though nothing has been set in stone, Deadline adds that a wide summer release in 2013 is likely.  It would be a smart move for TWC, and the intriguing concept, heady social issues, and stacked cast definitely make this one to look forward to.  Click here to see what Evans had to say about the film during his recent interview with Steve.