Stan Lee, arguably the greatest single contributor to comic book movies, is celebrating his 90th birthday today.  Although most of Lee’s executive producer credits on feature films have come within the last decade or so, he’s been in the TV and movie business since the late 80s.  Oh and he dabbled in comics for a little while too.  Lee boasts co-creator status on the likes of Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Thor, Daredevil and many others.  As a figurehead, Lee led the transformation from Marvel Comics into the multimedia conglomerate it is today.  So send him a birthday wish over @TheRealStanLee and hit the jump to check out all of his cameos in Marvel movies over the years. 

Last week when I sat down with The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb for an exclusive video interview to promote today’s Blu-ray/DVD release, something very cool happened: Stan Lee interrupted the interview.  While Stan came in just to say hi, I decided to use the opportunity to have him pitch Marc Webb on his next Spider-Man cameo since he’s now signed on to direct the sequel.  As you might imagine, Stan had a lot of ideas on how his next character could be a major part of the sequel.  Hit the jump to watch.

Disney/Marvel’s The Avengers recently passed the $1.5 billion mark in worldwide sales…but what if the superheroic characters never belonged to the joint studio in the first place?  That’s what Stan Lee’s former company, Stan Lee Media, Inc., is hoping to prove in their latest lawsuit.  Citing a whole lot of legal mumbo jumbo that I don’t understand, SLMI is basically saying that Lee signed away rights to his creations that he had no right to do, as they already belonged to SLMI.  These rights include the characters of Spider-Man, Iron Man, most of The Avengers, X-Men and more.  And SLMI isn’t looking for much…just the maximum statutory damages allowable and full control over the characters.  Hit the jump for more.

Not unlike their strategy of releasing a bounty of clips before the film opened in theaters, Marvel is now releasing quite a few deleted scenes and featurettes in anticipation of the release of The Avengers on Blu-ray/DVD.  Yesterday we got a doozy in the form of an alternate opening to the film, and today we’ve got another pretty great scene that was left on the cutting room floor.  This one focuses on Captain America (and product placement), and follows Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers before he’s approached by Nick Fury about joining The Avengers.  We see Cap processing this new world and coming to terms with the fact that almost everyone he knows is now dead and gone.  We also see an alternate Stan Lee cameo and the appearance of a character that shows up much later in the theatrical cut.

It’s a really nice scene, but one can imagine it slowing down the momentum of the full film had it been left in.  That said, it’s still a must-watch.  Hit the jump to take a look.  The Avengers hits Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download on September 25th.

[Update: We've been asked to remove the clip at Marvel's request, as this apparently wasn't an official release.]

Last year’s Los Angeles Times Hero Complex Film Festival included screenings of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan & J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, a Jon Favreau-hosted double bill of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, and Warren Beatty opened the festival with his 1990 film Dick Tracy.  The event sounded like a lot of fun and proved more than insightful with some truly swell panels.  The line-up for this year’s iteration of the festival has been announced, and as expected it’s a fun mix of old and new films with special guests galore.  Hit the jump for more info.

In the Disney XD animated action-adventure series Ultimate Spider-Man, premiering from Marvel Animation on April 1^st, 16-year-old Peter Parker (voiced by Drake Bell) has been saving New York City from villains as his alter-ego Spider-Man for the past year while juggling his life at Midtown High School with best friends Mary-Jane Watson (voiced by Tara Strong) and Harry Osborn (voiced by Matt Lanter), who are both unaware of his secret identity. Still in need of the discipline to best utilize his gifts, S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (voiced by Chi McBride) offers Spidey the chance to train with the best and plants Agent Coulson (voiced by Clark Gregg) as the school principal to keep a watchful eye and him and four other teenage superheroes – Nova, White Tiger, Power Man and Iron Fist.

During this recent interview to promote the new Marvel Universe series, Marvel icon Stan Lee, who is both co-executive producer and the voice of Stan the Janitor, talked about how involved he is with this project, how much fun he has doing cameos in the Marvel live-action blockbuster films, that his cameos in The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man are his best and funniest yet, how he’s waiting for the call to do an Iron Man 3 cameo, what it like for him to see his comic book characters last for so long, and what he thinks the most significant changes in the Marvel universe are, over the last 50 years. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

At 89 years young, Marvel icon Stan Lee is as much of a rock star as ever. Known to millions worldwide for his hand in co-creating many of Marvel’s most recognized characters, including Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, The Avengers, Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange, among others, Lee is still as enthusiastic and passionate about comics and the characters that inhabit their worlds as he ever was. Now, he is serving as co-executive producer and recurring guest star on Ultimate Spider-Man for Marvel Universe on Disney XD, for which he provides the voice of Stan the Janitor.

While we will post the portion of the interview where he discusses the new animated series closer to its April 1^st premiere, we did want to run what he had to say about his cameos in the upcoming movies for The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man, which he says are two of his funniest, waiting to get the call for his Iron Man 3 cameo, and how he learns what he’ll be doing in each film. Check out what he had to say after the jump.

Morgan Spurlock took his camera to Comic-Con in 2010 and joined forces with geek icons Stan Lee and Joss Whedon to turn the footage into the documentary Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope.  The trailer was released tonight.  I was struck by the fact that, unlike Spurlock’s other docs, he doesn’t appear on screen in this one.  If the trailer is any indication, Spurlock instead assigned the dominant voice to Kevin Smith, likely as official an authority on Comic-Con can be.

The massive cultural phenomenon is obviously ripe for exploration.  And Spurlock seems most drawn to the aspects of the convention that I as a movie blogger have little exposure to, like the intense costumes or the actual comic industry dealings.  Most of the reviews from festival premieres have been positive, save our own.  All in all, early signs suggest A Fan’s Hope lives up to the title.  Watch the trailer after the jump.

Dan Gilroy (Real Steel) has reached a deal with Magic Storm Entertainment to write The Annihilator (working title), a movie based on the Chinese comic superhero created by Stan Lee.  According to Deadline, the story follows “a young man who becomes a superhero who returns to his homeland to mete out justice.”  The logline is pretty nonspecific, but Lee promises this is “the most incredibly original and unique superhero I’ve created in a long time.”  The Annihilator is the first feature film set up at Lee’s POW! Entertainment.  Gilroy’s most recent job was working with his older brother Tony Gilroy on the script for The Bourne Legacy that Tony is also directing.  The franchise reboot hits theaters on August 3, 2012.

Hit the jump for on Code Entertainment’s new project, Sad Jack.

The Producers Guild of America will honor comic book legend Stan Lee with the 2012 Vanguard Award.  For those who don’t know Lee, he co-created the popular superhero comics Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, The Avengers, Silver Surfer, and Dr. Strange.  You may also recognize him as the elderly gentleman who keeps popping up in Marvel movies.  Lee has become an icon/mascot to the comic book world with his “cool-granddad” demeanor and even his own catchphrase (“Excelsior!”).  But more importantly, his characters have netted producers and studios boatloads of cash and I suppose the award is a nice way of saying “Thanks for the billion-dollar properties.”

Hit the jump for the press release.  Lee will be presented with the award at the 23rd Annual Producers Guild Awards ceremony on Saturday, January 21, 2012.

Just last week we learned that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be venturing to the small screen with some sort of international TV series. Now it sounds like we know what that project is as EW has exclusively revealed the former Governor of California is teaming up with comic book  king Stan Lee for a cartoon superhero series called The Governator. The seed for this show was planted way back in 2003 when Schwarzenegger was only running for office and the affectionate pop culture/political nickname was coined. Schwarzenegger recalls, “When I ran for governor back in 2003 and I started hearing people talking about ‘the Governator,’ I thought the word was so cool. The word Governator combined two worlds: the world of politics and the movie world. And [this cartoon] brings everything together. It combines the governor, The Terminator, the bodybuilding world, the True Lies…”

Details on this crazy new animated series can be found after the jump.

“The Nerd Empire Strikes Back” for season three of The Big Bang Theory and the gang is back and up to their usual shenanigans.  Raj is still too nervous to talk around Penny, Howard is willing to try anything to get laid (even almost get a tattoo), Sheldon is still a hilarious and neurotic mess, and Leonard and Penny are dating.  Wait a minute, that’s a new development…  Now Sheldon has to deal with being the third wheel to Penny and Leonard’s tumultuous and severely awkward relationship.  This season delivers the same amount of laughs as the last two and Sheldon is still the NERD KING, but the flaws of the more standard sitcom jokes and some performances are starting to stick out more this time around.

Comic book legend Stan Lee – creator of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, The Avengers, and, like, the whole Marvel Universe – says his cameo career in the Marvel movies will continue, and he hoping he won’t miss out on an appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger.

“I’ve already done my Thor cameo,” Lee told Collider at Comic-Con. “Captain America, I think, will be filmed in England. I don’t have time to go there but I’m hoping that they’ll film some scenes here so that I can do that.”

More after the jump:

We’ve got a couple clips to share from non-cinematic comic projects in development.  T’Challa (aka The Black Panther) is getting a animated (er, “motion comic”) series titled Black Panther: Who is the Black Panther?.  The first of twelve episodes premieres June 23 on iTunes, Xbox Live, Microsoft Zune, and the PlayStation Network, and we’ve got a trailer to prove it.

On a related note, when we posted stills from the test footage for a live-action Blue Beetle series, commenter Drew quite rightly opined that he “would need to see it in motion to fully realize it.” Well, Drew, you’re in luck: we have a short clip of just that alongside the Black Panther trailer after the jump.  (Note: readers not named Drew should also click through.)

On his official website, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) put out a call for geeks to tell their story in his upcoming Comic-Con documentary, Comic-Con Episode Four: A Fan’s Hope.  As we previously reported, Spurlock is directing with Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Thomas Tull, and Harry Knowles on board to produce.  The film will center on “seven different people from across America, and around the world, as they descend upon and the veritable Mecca of fandom and experience the rapture that is Comic-Con.”

I don’t want to say that this is a casting call for people to be in the documentary even though it looks likely.  There is the possibility that Spurlock will include a person’s story, but they won’t be one of the seven people chronicled in their journey to this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.  The only prerequisite appears to be that you need to be going to Comic-Con already.  So, if you think you you’re the paragon of your fandom, then hit the jump for the details.

The 2010 San Diego Comic-Con will run from July 21-25.