This year's Comic-Con International took place from July 18-21. A veritable Mecca for film-goers, TV geeks and comic-book fans, it boasted an array of panels, press conferences and events to showcase the big things coming in film and TV over the next twelve months (and further ahead).
Sadly, we couldn't be there this year- all tickets sold out in a mere 93 minutes- but here's a round-up of the biggest news from the event.
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Man Of Steel vs The Dark Knight
The biggest news of the event was the announcement that the sequel to Man Of Steel will feature Superman and Batman on screen together for the first time. As you can imagine, this news sent the Twittersphere alight with comments ranging from 'OMFG best thing EVER!' to '#ruined'. What we know so far is this:
Zack Snyder is back to direct and is co-writing the story with David S. Goyer. Goyer will then write the screenplay. Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas (from the Christian Bale Batman trilogy) are acting as executive producers.
Henry Cavill will reprise his role as Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent. Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne and Diane Lane will also reprise their roles from Man Of Steel as Lois Lane, Perry White and Martha Kent respectively.
The new Batman has not yet been cast.
The anticipated release date is Summer 2015.
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Karen Gillan has a Close Shave!
She has shaved her hair off for her role in the Marvel superhero movie!
It's also been confirmed that she will be playing villainous space pirate Nebula in the James Gunn directed movie alongside Chris Pratt as Peter Quill/Star-Lord, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Michael Rooker as Yondu, Benicio Del Toro as The Collector, Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer, John C Reilly as Rhomann and Djimon Hounsou as Koranth.
Character art and props from the movie (including Star Lord's helmet and Drax The Destroyer's knives) were also shown.
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Marvel's Upcoming Slate
You can imagine that DC's announcement of the Superman/Batman collaboration was a major gauntlet thrown down to their rivals Marvel.In addition to the Guardians Of The Galaxy panel, Marvel also released new posters and showed clips from Thor: The Dark World (presented by Tom Hiddleston in character as Loki) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as well as a one-shot short showing what Peggy Carter- played by Hayley Atwell- did after the events of Captain America: The First Avenger
Joss Whedon announced that his sequel to The Avengers, due in cinemas on May 1 2015, is called Avengers: Age Of Ultron. For those who don't know, Ultron is an evil robot created by Dr. Hank Pym (aka Ant-Man). However, Whedon has played down reports that Pym will appear in The Avengers sequel as Edgar Wright is directing an Ant-Man movie for the third phase of Marvel Studios' cinematic universe.
Ant-Man will be released on November 6 2015 whilst three further as yet untitled movies are scheduled for release on May 6 2016, July 8 2016 and May 5 2017.
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The Best Of The Rest
There were panels for many of the major films coming out over the next twelve months.
Many of the cast members of X-Men: Days Of Future Past attended their panel, where a preview of the film was shown:
New trailers and character posters were shown for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire:
There was a lot of fun at the panel for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, with Andrew Garfield appearing as Spider-Man for the first part of the panel:
There was a press conference for Divergent, based on the first novel in a trilogy by Veronica Roth where a young girl rebels against the restrictive rules of her society. and starring Shailene Woodley, Zoe Kravitz, Theo James and Kate Winslet:
There was also a special poster released for this:
There were also panels for TV shows including Doctor Who, Game Of Thrones, Sherlock, True Blood and Once Upon A Time plus a special 20th anniversary panel for The X-Files!
