Lots of excitement in the world of Monty Python as the iconic comedy group announced that they would be reforming for a giant stadium concert next summer. But in the middle of the group’s press conference this morning came a bit of news concerning one of the group’s film projects that almost got overlooked – The start date for Terry Gilliam’s long in development The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Bleeding Cool caught Gilliam’s answer in response to a question about the project, which he had just announced that he was gearing up for another try at. According to Gilliam, the plan is now the shoot the film “in the Canary Islands next Autumn.”

Having a general time frame and location set certainly sounds like things are a bit further along than the “just trying to scrounge up the funding” stage that most of his previous attempts seem to have stalled out on. And hopefully the Canary Islands location will prove more hospitable than the Bardenas Reales desert locations in Spain where he made his 2000 attempt at shooting the film were.

Of course, as we learned from the documentary made during the aborted 2000 attempt to make the film, Lost In La Mancha, we can’t even be sure that we’ll be seeing the film even after filming starts. History cautions us to wait until the film is actually in cinemas. Here’s hoping it can make the entire journey.

Fox has created multiple franchises from its deal with Marvel over its mutant characters. They also have a number of potential franchises they can employ from their Fantastic Four license, if that reboot ever gets up and running. And Disney has made billions from its Avengers series of films. It’s only natural that Sony would want to parlay its Spider-Man license into a universe of related films as well, and it looks like that is what they are going to do.

The Wrap is relaying the comments Sony Pictures Entertainment Co-Chairman Amy Pascal at a presentation the studio made for investors today.  Naturally, the discussion turned to the studio’s Spider-Man franchise, and Pascal said that Sony was “going to access Marvel’s full world of Spider-Man characters, so be on the lookout for new heroes and villains.”

This could mean that we will be seeing a whole lot more characters from the comic books appearing in the Amazing Spider-Man films, but it also sounds like there is an eye towards spinning said characters off into films of their own.

Sony might not have as easy a time as Fox and Disney has in expanding its brand. The Spider-Man universe has a number of interesting characters, but few would work well in solo films.

The two most obvious choices would be Venom and Black Cat. Both were adversaries that turned into allies and both are popular enough in the comics that they could draw comic fans into films starring them. However, a Venom film has been planned dating back to before he appeared in Spider-Man 3, and it has yet to appear. Odds are that he’ll have to be introduced in the new franchise first, so a Venom film appears a ways off. And Black Cat is a girl and studios are horrifically adverse to throwing action films up on the screen with female leads, no matter how well The Hunger Games does.

And while Spider-Man has one of the best rogues galleries in comics, films starring out and out villains are a hard sell. And from what we’ve seen so far, Rhys Ifans’ Lizard doesn’t seem to have what it takes to carry a film on his own. Maybe Jamie Foxx’s Electro will be presented in such a way that his character would be able to headline a film.

When it comes to allies that have appeared in Spider-Man books, the possibilities range from “it could work” (The female mercenary Silver Sable, the African-American thief turned hero Prowler) to the “Ah, hell no!” (the suped-up skateboard wielding Rocket Racer, the clumsily comedic Frog-Man).

There is also an issue of who owns the rights to consider. The Spider-Man books were some of the most popular comics marvel published, and a lot of characters appeared in its pages in an attempt to raise awareness and sales for their own books, many Sony does not have rights to. Some are obvious, like Iceman, Human Torch and Nightcrawler. Others of lesser renown, such as Moon Knight, Nova and Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, appeared in other mags first and are probably owned by Marvel.

Even some characters that first appeared in Spidey books are off-limits for Sony. The most famous is the Punisher, which was licensed individually and has had two films this name already. His rights recently reverted back to Marvel. Cloak and Dagger were one of the most interesting teams to get their start in the Spider books, but their rights are also owned by Marvel, who were pursuing a TV series for the characters. And the Kingpin was originally a Spider-Man villain, but later became more known as a Daredevil villain.  Since he appeared in Daredevil, his rights are tied in with that characters, and is now back at Marvel as well.

If I could make a suggestion? If Sony wants to make a Spider-Man spin-off, may I suggest an adaptation of “The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man” story.It is arguably my favorite Spider-Man story, would fit into the film’s continuity, and is a unique approach to the license. You don’t see other studios doing human interest films where the superhero is a supporting player. Just throwing that out there.

I have to hand it to Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci. Unlike other film rumor mongers, when he gets tentative scoop, he sells it as such, not making it out as a certainty. And today he has a scoop about one of DC/Vertigo’s most important works making another run at the big screen.

Faraci claims that David S. Goyer has pitched a version of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman to Warner Brothers with Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached in some function and with the support from DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns. Being that the pitch has come from Warners’ go-to guy for comic book adaptations, has one of the hottest actors in the world attached to it, and has the blessing from one of the comic book arm’s head honchos, Warners is said to be “very receptive.”

Sandman was a DC character that dated back to the World War II era, where he appeared as a pulp inspired adventure (later turned costumed superhero). Neil Gaiman was tapped in 1988 to reboot the concept from the ground up, and the character became Morpheus. the Lord of Dreams, ruler of the Dreaming. The series quickly became the best comic book series to come out of the rather dreadful late 80s,early 90s, earning many awards, a lot of mainstream praise and cult following from both longtime comic fans and new readers alike. The series ran for 75 issues until 1996. Gaiman recently returned to the concept with The Sandman: Overture, which is in stores now.

Taking that under consideration, it should be no surprise that attempts were made to bring the Sandman to the big screen before. Unfortunately, it was attempt by Jon Peters during his “there isn’t a comic book property that I couldn’t screw up” phase. There was a rather faithful 1996 script put together by Pulp Fiction’s Roger Avary and Pirates of the Caribbean’s  Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio that got replaced when Peters fired Avary over the direction the film was going. The direction Peters wanted is evidenced in a script by William Farmer–who would later go on to write Jonah Hex--and that direction was stupid action film more reminiscent of Terminator 2 that the original source material. That script was the impetus for one of the most scathing reviews ever on Ain’t It Cool News and even compelled Gaiman himself to call it “not only the worst Sandman script I’ve ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I’ve ever read.” So I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t do backflips thinking this film will ever get made, or if it does that it will be any good, because the precedent isn’t all that reassuring.

It’s assumed that Gordon-Levitt is attached as the star of the film, which I can see working from a physical standpoint at least. However, he is a hyphenate now, and his involvement could also include writing or directing the film as well. Or, it could be like every other comic book film he is supposedly attached to and he will deny involvement and a conflict will pop up to support the denial.

Faraci takes pains to say this is all in the very early stages and nothing has been set in stone. No green lights have been given, no scripts written, no sets constructed and no casting has been done. But Warners seems to really like Goyer, and the really want to exploit all their DC/Vertigo Comics properties. And if they were willing to develop a Sandman film with a Dream Lord prone to fistfights trying kill a girl to stave off the millennial apocalypse, there’s a pretty low bar for Goyer to get over for Warners to move forward on this on this.

Developing.

It looks like if Beetlejuice 2 actually comes to fruition, it won’t just be Tim Burton and Michael Keaton coming back to to property. It looks like Lydia Deetz might also be making a return appearance as well.

Winona Ryder spoke with The Daily Beast on Monday, surely promoting her latest film, Homefront, and pretty much confirmed what Michael Keaton said earlier this month that the sequel is in the works–and that she will have a part in it. “I’m kind of sworn to secrecy.But it sounds like it might be happening,” said Ryder.

The role of Lydia in the first Beetlejuice was the role that launched Ryder into the national consciousness and lead her to a career of Oscar nominations, Golden Globe wins, and tabloid stories about her high-profile boyfriends and brushes with the law.

Ryder even let a bit of Seth Grahame-Smith’s plot be known:

“It’s not a remake,” Ryder revealed. “It’s 27 years later. And I have to say, I love Lydia [Deetz, Ryder's teenage goth character] so much. She was such a huge part of me. I would be really interested in what she is doing 27 years later.”

The actress states while she’s interested in the role, her involvement is tied to Burton and Keaton’s involvement. “I would never go near [a sequel] if it was not Tim and Michael. Because those guys, I love.”

With Keaton and Ryder on board, you have the two characters he would most need to tie the two films together. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis played a ghostly couple who took a shine to Ryder’s Lydia, but if they come back you’d have to explain why they aged 27 year when their characters have been dead all the time.

So they’re making a sequel to the holiday classic It’s A Wonderful Life. Yup, you read that right, the Jimmy Stewart-starring classic about a man who learns the true meaning his life has when an angel shows him how worse things would have been had he never been born is getting the sequel treatment from producers Allen J. Schwalb and Bob Farnsworth, with the unimaginative title It’s A Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story.

Variety has all the details.

Karolyn Grimes, who played George Bailey’s daughter “Zuzu” in the original, will return for the “Wonderful Life” sequel as an angel who shows Bailey’s unlikeable grandson (also named George Bailey) how much better off the world would have been had he never been born.

(Why not just It’s A Wonderful Life: The Next Generation?)

Wait, what? “How much better off the world would have been had he never been born”? The suggests to me that the film either ends with the grandson deciding to stay dead so the world can be a better place or he makes the selfish decision to stay alive and let the world be a worse place for it.

Farnsworth tries to explain away what they are attempting by stating, “The storyline of the new film retains the spirit of the original – every life is important as long as you have friends.” So even though your very existence makes the world worse, it’s OK as long as you have someone to share the misery with? In the history of really bad ideas, this is definitely one of them.

I imagine that there is going to be howls of protest as the news of this gets around, and given the premise, I can’t say as I blame people. But it is not like this is the first time that It’s A Wonderful Life has been re-envisioned. In 1977, the film was remade for television as It Happened One Christmas, with Stewart’s role of George Bailey being gender-bent to Mary Bailey Hatch for actress Marlo Thomas. Today, this version is mostly forgotten, as I expect that history will do to this new version, should it go ahead.

As of right now, the producers are still looking for the actor to play George Bailey’s grandson with the hope of getting in front of cameras in February for a holiday 2014 season release.

More release date changes from Twentieth Century Fox. Following up on their announcement of dates for their Fantastic Four reboot and their Assassin’s Creed and Secret Service adaptations for 2015 earlier today, they’ve moved their biggest anticipated film, Independence Day 2, out of 2015 to 2016.

The move, from its previously announced date of July 3, 2015 to July 1, 2016 places the Roland Emmerich-directed flick on the 20th anniversary plus one day of the release of the original film. I have to admit that that makes me smile.

There is still no word as to whether original film star Will Smith is returning for the sequel and perhaps the move back a year is being made to accommodate the actor. The movie does put the film opening opposite Sony’s Angry Birds, based on the popular video game. It remains to be seen if a further domino will topple and Sony will move their film.

One Ghostbusters 3 rumor pops up, another one is almost sure to follow.

Quick on the heels of the report that Jonah Hill and Emma Stone have been offered roles in the long talked about sequel, comes news that the film may start shooting next spring in Cleveland. Coming Soon has spotted a report on NBC Cleveland affiliate WKYC that claims -

A Sony Pictures Entertainment executive confirms that Cleveland is being considered as a filming location for Ghostbusters III.

Now Cleveland substituting for New York doesn’t seem as far-fetched as one might think. The Avengers shot there for a portion of its climactic New York City fight sequence and no one seemed to raise any objections as to the final product. More recently the upcoming Katherine Heigle rom-com Miss Meadows wrapped production.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that there has been news about a possible production start date for the threequel. the movie had previously been reported as going in front of the cameras this past summer, spring of 2011 and the winter of 2009.

As to whether this is true or not, perhaps we’ll get some confirmation if Dan Aykroyd is spotted at the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame visiting his old Blues Brothers sun glasses on display there.

Justin Lin, the director who re-energized the Fast & Furious franchise by turning it from a series about car racing into one of high-speed international crime capers, has been signed to direct the fifth installment of Universal’s Bourne spy thriller series.

According to Deadline, the new, as-yet-untitled film will continue to follow Jeremy Renner’s character Aaron Cross, who took over the franchise from Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne character in last year’s The Bourne Legacy. Invictus and Sherlock Holmes scripter Anthony Peckham is already on board as the pen the new film. There is no official date set for the release, but Deadline is reporting that the studio is eyeing the already over-crowded summer of 2015.

Lin displayed remarkable talent at bringing new life to a franchise when he assumed control of the Fast & Furious series with its third installment Tokyo Drift. By expanding the scope of the films, and their quotient of outrageous action set pieces, Lin has turned the series into a big moneymaker for the studio. The last three installments have collectively grossed over $1 billion at the box office. Universal is obviously hoping he can work similar magic on the Bourne franchise, which many fans say stumbled with last year’s Legacy.

Thor: The Dark World has been seen by preview audiences on Tuesday and has been open to the general public since last night. Many other news outlets have already spoiled film’s the mid-credits scene already, but we decided to give you a fair chance to see the film first before we delved into deconstructing that scene. However, there might be many of you out there that have yet to see the film. So be forewarned, anything past the “spoiler alert” sign will contain, well, spoilers. If you haven’t seen the film, I’d recommend stopping here, bookmarking this page, and coming back after you’ve seen the film.

Okay, here we go.

The MacGuffin of Thor: The Dark World is a superpowered force called the Aether. The evil bad guy Malekith wishes to use the Aether to destroy the universe and turn it into a dark energy universe where he will be all-powerful. Naturally, he fails, and the Aether ends up in the hands of the Asgardians.

The mid-credits scene consists of Sif and Volstagg meeting with the Collector to give him the Aether. When he asks why he was given such a gift, the Asgardians say that they already have the Tesseract in their armory and keeping two “Infinity Stones” in the same place is a bad idea. After Sif and Volstagg leave, the Collector whispers to himself “One down, five to go.”

The “Infinity Stones” and “One down, five to go” calls to mind in many comic book fans the Infinity Gems, six immensely powerful oval gems, each of a different color and each with a different power. They are:

• The Time Gem: An orange gem that allows its user control over time, including time travel, aging and de-aging people and objects, and knowledge of events that happen in the past, present and future.
• The Space Gem: A purple gem that allows it wearer to travel into any space, anywhere, including alternate realities, from universe to universe, or to be in two places at the same time.
• The Soul Gem: A green gem that allows its owner the power to collect souls, which will reside inside the gem itself.
• The Reality Gem: A yellow gem that gives its user the power to warp reality to his wishes.
• The Power Gem: A red gem that provides unearthly amounts of power to any object, and can duplicate any form of power or energy in the universe.
• The Mind Gem: A blue gem that gives the user great mental powers.

The gems have been part of Marvel comic book continuity for over forty years and have been owned by a wide variety of characters. However, their most famous wielder might be Thanos, who collected all six and mounted them all in a golden glove called the Infinity Gauntlet. It was the culmination of  Thanos’ quest for power and his courtship of Marvel’s personification of Death. As a gift to Death, an Infinity Gauntlet-wearing Thanos killed half the living organisms in the universe just by thinking it. That’s how powerful the six gems are together.

How does this apply to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Does it apply to the Marvel Cinematic Universe at all? Well, let’s take a look.

I think there has to be a connection, or, at the very least, Marvel wants you to think there is. Why call them the Infinity Stones and say that there are six of them if not? But it’s not easy to draw a straight line comparison between the film world’s Infinity Stones and the comic world’s Infinity Gems.

The Tesseract, which many comic fans thought was an analogue with another powerful talisman from the comics, the Cosmic Cube, appears to have the same power as the Power Gem.  It is portrayed as an inexhaustible source of energy in the films. The Aether has elements of time control to it (Malekith wanted to use it to return the universe to the dark era before the big bang), so maybe that could be the Time Gem? But both “Stones” also have elements of the Space Gem to them (The Tesseract opened a wormhole for the Chituari forces and the Aether accidentally caused Jane Foster to travel through the Nine Realms).

More should be come clear in August when Guardians of the Galaxy debuts. That film’s plot revolves around another superpowered MacGuffin, which now appears to be the third Infinity Stone. Once we see what powers that particular MacGuffin has, we’ll be able to see if the Infinity Stones correspond with the Infinity Gems at all, or are just six really powerful items.

Also further explained then will be the true motives of the Collector. Will he be like his comic book incarnation and be gathering these items to use against a powerful foe (say, Thanos), or is he gathering them for a powerful being (say, Thanos) so they can be used by him?

Another question is when will we see the remaining three Infinity Stones. Conventional wisdom says that Thanos will be the villain in Avengers 3, and that all Infinity Stones should make their appearance before then. Assuming that Disney keeps to the “two Marvel films a year” schedule and Guardians of the Galaxy introduces a third stone and Marvel keeps with an Avengers film every three years, this means the remaining three will have to be introduced before May of 2018.

Judging on the announced films, we can assume that GotG will introduce a stone, but it seems unlikely that Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Ant-Man will introduce another stone. Both films seem to take on a more down-to-Earth approach to super heroics (although, it must be said, that the Tesseract made its first appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger, so we can’t completely rule out that a stone will be revealed in these films). It seems likely that a big weapon will be needed to fight Ultron in The Avengers: Age of Ultron, so we might see another Infinity Stone there.

After that, the remaining stones will have to show up in the four as yet unnamed Marvel films of 2016 and 2017. Since more “cosmic” or “sci-fi” elements lend themselves to the Infinity Stones, could this mean that the oft-talked about, never confirmed Doctor Strange and the never-talked about, yet still in development Inhumans be a lock for Phase III? An Infinity Stone could be part of Strange’s collection of mystical artifacts and a Stone could be the thing that gives the Inhuman’s Terrigen Mists their superpower giving abilities? Or maybe the planned Black Panther film will have a mystic/sci-fi bent, as many of the character’s comic book stories had. The Infinity Stone as King Solomon’s Frogs, anyone?

If you’re disappointed that Daredevil, Iron Fist and the other heroes announced in yesterday’s deal for Marvel Studios and Netflix to produce five television series that would premier on the streaming services won’t be appearing on the silver screen, there is still hope.

Speaking on a conference call with Disney stockholders (via Bleeding Cool), Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo stated that the heroes’ adventures could not be just confined to the small screen.

Marvel has thousands of characters… and it is not possible to mine them all with filmed entertainment. While these characters are attractive characters they are not among the most popular… it’s not likely we would have made feature films about them… though if they are popular on Netflix, they could become feature films.

Marvel looks to be taking their model for establishing individual franchises that would then crossover in a superhero team story when it was announced that they would produce four 13-episode series featuring Marvel characters Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, all characters with roots in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen area, as well as a five-part mini-series where they would team up as the Defenders.

Rasulo’s statement implies that these new series will also be a part of Marvel Studios’ overall interconnected Cinematic Universe, a point not addressed in the original announcement yesterday. Marvel’s ABC series Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. has a number of connections back to its big screen progenitor.

Daredevil has been a property that fans have been looking forward to seeing back on the big screen, after the 2003 film version from Twentieth Century Fox starring Ben Affleck was met with only lukewarm enthusiasm and reviews. Many were hoping that the return of the characte’s rights to Marvel last spring would have lead to a big screen announcement. (Though at the time I did note that a television series was a possibility for the character.)

Luke Cage and Iron Fist are other properties that have been reported as being in some form of development at the studio as well. Jessica Jones, a former superhero-turned-private eye who prefers not to use her powers, was previously in development as a television series. Over the years, all four characters have interacted to a large degree, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw them meeting up before the five-part Defenders mini-series.