More Marvel Movies

Thanks to Rosario T. Calabria of Your Entertainment Now for collating these two fantastic Marvel movie newsbites over the week!

Firstly, “The Runaways” is set to begin shooting in January 2011 and is expected to last till July. Secondly, Nicolas Cage has confirmed that he will be in the sequel to the critically-panned “Ghost Rider” movie from 2007. I’m not complaining – more Marvel movies never hurt anyone.

Not to be confused with the Joan Jett biopic from earlier this year, Marvel’s “Runaways” is a story about six teenage superheroes who stumble onto a group of supervillains – their parents. Created by Brian K. Vaughan, the same genius behind Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, “Runaways” turned out to be the sole success of Marvel’s foray into manga-inspired comics. What makes it even more fascinating is that though based in the Marvel Universe, it does not rely on Marvel’s six decades of history at all, essentially becoming a stand-alone series.

This makes it an extremely suitable source material for a movie series. With The Twilight Saga finally releasing its unholy grip on young and old by 2012, Marvel Studios might be very timely in swooping in on this massive market with “The Runaways”.

Of equal interest is the news that Nicolas Cage has finalised the deal to appear in the sequel to 2007’s “Ghost Rider”. While the first movie, directed by Mark Steven Johnson, received almost unanimous criticism, Cage seems confident that the sequel’s storyline – a “different trajectory” – will be even more riveting than the first.

Tentatively called “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”, it will be written by the industry’s expert on superhero films David S. Goyer and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the same team that made Jason Statham break out of his Transporter niche in “Crank”. Indeed with such notoriety onboard, there is clearly a lot more expectations riding on this one, pun totally intended.