Guardians of the Galaxy

WHO
Directed by James Gunn
Written by Nicole Perlman, Chris McCoy, and James Gunn

I know nothing about the GotG, so I'm just putting up the info available. I don't really have any input at this point, except that this cast looks awesome.

Cast:

Parks and Rec's Chris Pratt as Peter Quill/Star Lord, a half human/half alien. He beat out Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zachary Levi for this role, so.... he's probably gonna be pretty good.

WWE Wrestler and MMA fighter Batista as Drax the Destroyer. A resurrected green human... he's basically the Hulk.

Star Trek's Zoe Saldana as Gamora. A green humanoid who's the last of her species.

The Walking Dead's Michael Rooker as Yondu.

Pushing Dasies' Lee Pace as the unspecified villain.

Damages' Glenn Close as the director of Nova Corps.

Doctor Who's Karen Gillan as the lead female villain. Holy shit I am so excited. This is going to be a beautiful, beautiful movie. I love this woman. I will marry her.

Ophelia Lovibond in an unspecified role.

Wreck-it Ralph's John C. Reilly as Rhomann Dey, the human go-between for the Guardians and SHIELD.

Alan Rickman, Hugh Laurie, and Ken Watanabe have been offered the role of Rhomann Dey's liason to the Guardians. No word yet on who's got the part.

WHAT

"It's much more of a standalone film," said Kevin Feige. "It takes place in the same universe. And when we've been the other side of that universe in other movies, you might see those characteristics in Guardians, but the Avengers are not involved with what's happening out there at this time." Feige also stated that 95% of the film would take place in space.



Again, I've never even heard of GotG until now, so this is just straight up available info.

WHEN
GOTG is the 10th film chronologically in the MCU. Look out for it on August 1, 2014.


I don't know much about this but I'm kind of excited now. I'll keep up with this one.

UPDATE: Whedon Says He Isn't Backing Down to Sony

As many of you know, X-Men DOFP just added Quicksilver onto their roster. This character is highly fought over, as he is owned by both Marvel/Disney and Fox/Sony. Whedon announced 2 weeks ago officially that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver would join the Avengers in the next movie. A few days ago, Bryan Singer, director of DOFP, tweeted "Before he was an Avenger, he was just a guy who could run REALLY fast" followed by an announcement about American Horror Story's Evan Peters joining the cast as Quicksilver. A few hours later, the tweet was edited, and the mention of the Avengers was gone. It was disputed for a few days whether Whedon would rewrite his draft of Avengers 2, but he officially announced yesterday that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will stay in the movie no matter where else they are used first. Whether he will cast Evan Peters as Quicksilver for A2 is still up in the air.

Side note, in A2, because of stupid, stupid copyright laws, there can be no mention of the word "mutants." In addition, no one can mention that the siblings are Magneto's children. Which is dumb... that's like their whole thing.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

WHO

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo
Written by Christopher Markus and Steven McFeely

Starring:

Returning Cast:

Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier
Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
Haley Atwell as Peggy Carter
Toby Jones as Arnim Zola
Maximiliano Hernandez as Jasper Sitwell
Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark
Gary Shandling as Senator Stern

New Cast: There's a lot of these guys so buckle down.

Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/The Falcon. His abilities include flying and speaking to birds. He may make an appearance in Avengers 2. He was the first black Super Hero, so he's pretty important. Black Panther came a bit later and was the first mainstream black Superhero.

Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow/Crossbones. One of the Captain's biggest enemies, Crossbones had to make an appearance sometime. Normally he works for Red Skull, so we'll see how they play it out.

Heavyweight wrestler and lifter Georges St-Pierre as Georges Batroc, a French mercenary.

Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce, Fury's right-hand man.

And finally, Revenge's Emily VanCamp as Agent 13, a rogue assassin and Cap's love interest.

WHAT

 From Wikipedia

Following the events of the The Avengers, Steve Rogers struggles to adjust to the modern world and must partner with Natasha Romanoff to fight a powerful yet covert enemy in Washington, D.C.

 That's all we know. Crossbones will serve as the villain. The Winter Soldier, Cap's best friend from the 40's, is brainwashed into becoming an assassin bent on destroying him.

WHEN
April 4, 2014. I'm pretty pumped for this one, the 1st one was a hundred times better than I expected.

Doctor Strange

Not much is known about Doctor Strange, so I'll just give you what's available. Kevin Feige confirmed it's happening, that the movie will be his origin story, the movie will be part of Phase 3, and that he is tentatively lined up to be in Avengers 3.

As far as casting goes rumors include Peter Dinklage, Patrick Dempsey, Liam Neeson, and Hugh Laurie. However, Marvel is paying attention to one man in particular, Justin Theroux, the main who wrote Iron Man 2 (I hope his acting is better than his writing).

We can expect this movie in April 2016, chronologically following Ant-Man the previous November.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron

This is the big one. Most of this is rumors and speculation, but here we go.

WHO
Directed, written, and produced by Joss Whedon (aka god)

Confirmed Returning Cast:

Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man/Tony Stark
Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk
Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye (See below)
Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
Cobi Smulders as Maria Hill
Tom Hiddleston as Loki (minor role)

Unconfirmed Returning Cast:

Chris Hemsworth as Thor (same as above)

Rumored new cast:

Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. This is the source of most of the hype. While Spiderman is owned by Fox/Sony he can easily appear in the Disney Marvel Universe, and several prominent members of Marvel and Sony have tweeted to say the same. Apparently they've worked out a mutually beneficial deal, involving corporate fat cats on either side making bank. I don't really care how they do it honestly, I'm in a very "Shut up and take my money" kind of mental state about this movie. Now I'm not saying he will be there 100%, but at this point he's as likely as any other candidate. One thing that points to Spiderman appearing is a Marvel insider stating that Oscorp would play a role in Avengers 2. I, for one, would probably cry true tears of joy if this happened.

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Also owned by Fox, but same deal as above. An anonymous Marvel insider stated that Wolverine may have a cameo role, as he's a well known Avenger and deserves to make an appearance.

Evan Peters as Quicksilver. Not confirmed for Avengers 2 yet, but he's playing the same character in X-Men: Days of Future Past because Fox and Disney both own it (yep). Hey may very well be recast for Whedon's movie though, to keep him completely seperate.

Vin Diesel as Vision (probably.) He'll definitely be playing a villain in the movie, and he isn't Thanos, and he isn't Ultron... so it's pretty evident who he'll be.


So now the casting notes. Hemsworth has not stated yes or no to whether he'd be returning, and is awaiting an offer of more money from Disney. While you make think that's greedy, in order to be Thor, this man has live on basically an all egg white diet with 3 hours of workout a day. That deserves some more money. He enjoys playing Thor and is planning to return, but has not confirmed it for anyone  yet. So fingers crossed. I'd hate to have a new guy playing Thor.


Renner is a definite yes. There were for some reason rumors running around he'd not return, but he recently debunked them in an interview.


The big X-Men issue is scarlet witch and quicksilver being used first by Days of Future Past. Whedon confirmed that the siblings will appear in the Avengers 2 but cannot say the word "mutant " nor mention their relation to Magneto. So that's pretty dumb.

WHAT
So Thanos will not be the main villain, and it will of course be Ultron with his minion Vision the android. Good news is that Tom Hiddleston will return as Loki in an unspecified way. I'm thinking like a Silence of the Lambs thing where he's in prison and he knows something about Ultron and they have to question him. I'd really enjoy that.

Whedon stated that he has turned in the script to Disney execs for review, so we'll see what happens.

Anything else comes up, I'll let you all know.