If nothing else, a new trailer for James Mangold‘s The Wolverine serves one purpose – to remind us that the Hugh Jackman-starring film is coming out during the already-crammed summer blockbuster season. No knocks on the clawed one here, but am I the only one who can’t seem to remember that we’re getting a brand new X-Men tale within the next two months? That can’t be good, right? Especially when this one involves Logan going to Japan, getting all emo, and meeting up with a bunch of cool Marvel characters, including the Silver Samurai. Shouldn’t this be more on our radar? Wait, did we say an emo Wolverine? Oh, that might be the problem right there. Snooze. After the break, check out the newest trailer for The Wolverine, you know, if you’re still interested.

Following the release of the first trailer for James Mangold’s The Wolverine, it wasn’t hard to tell that we weren’t impressed. We even found 6 scenes copied from earlier X-Men movies. Based on the comments we saw, you weren’t very impressed in what you were seeing from The Wolverine, either. After the abysmal ride that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, who can blame us? Today the folks at Fox have set out again into the cold wilderness of comic fandom on the Internet with another minute-long trailer for the Hugh Jackman-led quasi-sequel. It’s clear that they don’t want us to know the story yet, but they would like to remind us that Wolvie is still the only superhero on the block who’s interested in “screaming in someone’s face as he stabs them to death.” That’s our buddy. And in this new trailer, put together with footage shown at the recent CinemaCon exhibitors convention in Las Vegas, has plenty of action, less of the terrible CGI and a better look at the Silver Samurai. All of these are good things.

Why does HBO get indie bands to do music for Game of Thrones? Where can you go if you want to smell Tony Stark inside his Iron Man suit? What kind of a world would we live in if Wolverine vs. Velociraptors existed? All this an more in tonight’s Movie News After Dark.

It’s almost time for sunscreen, something you won’t need to purchase if you plan on staying in the cool, dark space of the movie theater from June through August. But what are you going to see? How could you possibly know what’s coming out and when? Did you even know there’s a Superman movie on the way? Of course you did. Geoff and I have combed through studio press releases, had a lot of secret meetings in parking garages, and decided to talk about 6 Limited Release Summer Movies that might have slipped under the cape-filled radar. Plus, our big interview is with Cheech and Chong, who review Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines and promise to make Up in Smoke 2 if their new animated movie makes $100m in its opening week. For more from us on a daily basis, follow the show (@brokenprojector), Geoff (@drgmlatulippe) and Scott (@scottmbeggs) on the Twitter. And, as always, we welcome your feedback. Download Episode #15 Directly Or subscribe Through iTunes

The trailer for The Wolverine hit last week, and everyone who loves violence in their comic book movies got pretty excited since Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is the only superhero appearing in movies right now who isn’t afraid to scream in someone’s face as he stabs them to death. But after you watch the trailer, you might get a sense of deja vu. That’s because almost everything in The Wolverine trailer has already happened in an earlier X-Men movie. I’m talking about stuff like…

That’s right. Two Wolverine trailers have dropped, and they’ll both make you long for the Darren Aronofsky version that never was. The international trailer has a bit more footage (including what appears to be a bar fight that gets pacified just when it’s about to get going), but both it and the domestic version are severely lacking in anything resembling energy or impressive action. That train fight near the end? Ersh. Flat, mopey line readings? It’s now down to blind optimism that this thing has any life to it. Check both out for yourself, and keep repeating “It’s only a trailer, it’s only a trailer”:

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s back in the saddle again, bringing you plenty of movie news and notes from around the web. Can’t get enough of the world of the moving picture? Let this nightly diversion be your guide. Red 2: Plaid Boogaloo - This has been hanging around a while, but there is now a plaid-filled official first look at Red 2, the follow-up to the Bruce Willis, John Malkovich-led “old guy spies” movie based on a comic by Warren Ellis. The first was a fun pic, full of Helen Mirren in an evening gown shooting a 50-caliber machine gun. If the second has any of that, we’ll be in good shape.

Here comes the rain again indeed. If there was any doubt that James Mangold‘s The Wolverine wasn’t going to be a seriously emo(tional?) outing for Hugh Jackman‘s eponymous mutant, please direct your eyes to the above motion poster from the new X-Men film. Lighten up, Wolvie, good God. At least Logan’s got his bone claws all shined up nice? Want to see the motion poster actually, uh, in motion? Just give the poster a click! The Wolverine opens on July 26, 2013. [Facebook]

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the thing that will comfort you during the storm. In this case the storm is Hurricane Sandy, who is currently laying down a ravaging to our beloved readers on the East Coast. And the comforting is in the form of the eight best links of the day, all of which will lead you to great reads, listens, watches and otherwise marvelous, nerdy things to look at. 1. We begin this evening with a calculated takedown of the weekend’s biggest new movie, Cloud Atlas. For well over a week, I’ve been struggling to come to terms with my own feelings on the latest from Wachowski Starship. It’s complex, grande and full of moments that are worthy of awe. But it’s also a big mess. And Zach Baron at Grantland’s Cloud Atlas is an overscrambled mess article is perhaps the most adept explanation of the balance between the great and the not-so-great.

“Nice to see that boutique collectible poster design is starting to influence actual studio posters.” This quote, from the Twitter fee of industry pal John Gholson (@Gholson), is indicative of my own initial thoughts when first looking at this new poster for The Wolverine, which was released following an online live-stream conversation with star Hugh Jackman and director James Mangold. It’s artful, gorgeous and could very well end up on my wall next to one of my many non-studio prints from Mondo or Gallery 1988. You can have a look at the image and a few highlights from the live chat just after the jump.

Fox hasn’t always been the most successful studio, as far as adapting Marvel comic books is concerned. Though their 2000 film version of X-Men is largely responsible for launching the current comic book movie boom, their more recent mutant movies haven’t been all that hot, and their takes on the Marvel-created Daredevil and Fantastic Four franchises haven’t been able to produce anything remotely up to snuff. Their treatment of their superhero movies has gone so far off the rails that they’re even set to lose the rights to the Daredevil property, as their attempts to get a new film together haven’t kept pace with the end of their contract. That doesn’t mean that Fox’s days of making Marvel movies are over, though. They’ve still got two more X-Men movies in the works in James Mangold’s The Wolverine and Matthew Vaughn’s  X-Men: Days of Future Past, and they’ve made a new commitment to taking another crack at the Fantastic Four franchise by bringing Chronicle director Josh Trank on for a reboot. That’s some powerhouse talent paired with some potentially lucrative material. And today Fox announced their next step toward getting their Marvel properties back under control: they’ve hired veteran comic book creator Mark Millar to come on as a creative consultant for all of the House of Ideas characters that are still under their control.

Welcome to the first installment of the CriterionCast takeover of Movie News After Dark. While Neil spends the week singing karaoke, or whatever it is that you kids do at Fantastic Fest, I’ll attempt to fill his manly, bearded shoes with my own geeky art-house sensibilities. Speaking of Fantastic Fest, the folks handling the PR have been releasing a ton of great material for all of us non-attendees, to soothe the pain. Apparently Rian Johnson (Looper, Brick, Brothers Bloom) joined in on the nerd karaoke fun that everyone was talking about this weekend, and they sent out a hefty pack of high resolution images, to help prove what we already know to be true: Rian Johnson is the coolest.

The Wolverine has had a long and storied production history. It’s had changes of shooting locations, changes of directors, and probably a handful of other stumbling blocks that we’ve all forgotten put in front of its eventual release. But work on the film has finally been underway for a while now, and some real progress toward its July 2013 release must actually be being made, because the film’s official Twitter account has just unveiled its first official still. So, how does it look? It looks like what one would expect. It’s long been understood that this new Wolverine adventure will take the character to the land of the rising sun, and, sure enough, this poster features Hugh Jackman looking jacked, sporting Wolverine’s adamantium claws and scruffy facial hair, and standing in front of an out-of-focus shrine that looks vaguely Eastern religion-y. That pretty much nails the whole checklist for advertising a Wolverine in Japan movie. Check out the full version after the break.

It was recently reported that Hugh Jackman’s upcoming solo run at a superhero movie, The Wolverine, was looking to include the green-haired, Hydra-trained, poisons expert Viper as one of its main villains. The talk at the time was that Jessica Biel had been offered the role, but soon after word broke that negotiations with the actress hadn’t gone so well, and she probably wasn’t going to be an option going forward. This, of course, left those in charge with a conundrum. Word had gotten out about one of their big villains, but they didn’t have an actress to announce as playing the part. What to do? Well, according to Twitch, they’ve moved their focus over to a Russian actress named Svetlana Khodchenkova. Though she’s mostly done work in her native country up to this point, many English-speaking audiences will remember Khodchenkova from her role in last year’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, where she received the great honor of getting to smooch on Tom Hardy.

UPDATE: Collider now reports that “talks have broken down” between Biel’s people and the studio, so Biel is no longer in the running for the role. After a handful of announcements came out a few days ago filling the roles of Hugh Jackman’s new love, father-in-law, partner, and arch-enemy for his upcoming Japan-based adventure The Wolverine, it looked like all of the big parts in this film were probably close to being taken. But some new casting news that hit today might be the biggest yet. Twitch reported earlier in the day that director James Mangold and company had offered Jessica Biel the role of the villainous Viper, and Deadline Madripoor has since taken things a step further and reported that she’s officially been cast. So, who is the Viper? She’s a Marvel villain with a long history and complex relationships with several of the other characters who appear in this story. Part terrorist, part secret agent, Viper was an operative trained by the evil organization Hydra, who you might remember as appearing in last year’s Captain America: The First Avenger. She has no real superpowers, but she’s ridiculously good at all things deadly, with poisons being something of a specialty. Think of her as a more evil, less Russian version of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.

UPDATED: ComingSoon throws a real wrench in (some of) our awesome speculation with news that Will Yun Lee has joined The Wolverine as Kenuichio Harada, otherwise known as the Silver Samurai. Read on, though, as we can still have a lot of fun with our initial thoughts. Casting appears to be underway for James Mangold’s upcoming entry into the X-Men franchise, the Japan-set solo story of the world’s scruffiest mutant, The Wolverine. Of course, we already know that Hugh Jackman is on board to once again star as the title character – that’s pretty much the only thing that’s been set in stone about this project since development began an eternity ago – but now ComingSoon has some scoops on the names that will be making up the gaijin’s supporting cast, and if you know anything about Wolverine’s Japanese past, these are some big roles. Ralph Lauren model Tao Okamoto is set to play Mariko Yashida, a young Japanese girl who Wolverine falls in love with and becomes engaged to, while relative newcomer Rila Fukushima is on board to play Yukio, a sort of ninja-trained thief who often works as the clawed Canadian’s ally. The next bit of news is a little bit confusing. Listed as being cast are two more characters, one named “Shingen” and one named “Yashida.” In the Wolverine comics, the young bride Mariko has a father who is named Shingen Yashida – the head of a once great clan who disgraced their name by turning them into

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column about movie news. That is all. We begin this evening with a look at Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby in Dredd, the revival of the Judge Dredd franchise. First impressions: Karl Urban’s helmet is huge and Olivia Thirlby needs more leather. Or something along those lines. Either way, it’s a good conversation starter.

What is Movie News After Dark? As of this evening, it’s a nightly movie news column that’s just happy to have a place to call home. It’s thankful for hard working code monkeys and developer-types who worked countless hours to put Humpty Dumpty (that’s actually what we call our server — coincidence, perhaps) back together again. Now it’s time to do the news. We begin tonight with the best pumpkin design I’ve seen thus far, a Dalek from Doctor Who. It was sent to me by our spooktacular Managing Editor Cole Abaius this afternoon in an email titled “Just in case we have a website ever again…” It’s been a stressful weekend.

He hasn’t even started shooting yet on the next Hugh Jackman-starring superhero movie The Wolverine, but director James Mangold has already got his next project ready and waiting. Mangold and his producing partner Cathy Konrad have procured the remake rights to an Icelandic film called City State, which was something of a crime film, and Mangold intends on directing said remake himself. I don’t even think that City State has been released in the States, so I don’t know anything about it, but it was made by a filmmaker named Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, and according to the Mangold story that appeared on Deadline Heimaey it tells the story of four lives that intersect when foreign drug lords try to take over the Icelandic drug trade. The four characters include, “ … a crooked police captain in love with a prostitute, an aging crime boss with a heart condition looking to get out of the game alive, a mechanic determined to avenge the death of his unborn child, and a female cop who is attacked by thugs and takes matters into her own hands.” Probably my favorite thing that Mangold has done is Copland, which was also a character piece set largely in a criminal underworld, so it sounds to me like this project would be a good fit for him. The Wolverine I’m still kind of worried about though, because his work on Kate & Leopold did NOT convince me that he could direct Hugh Jackman as a believable

During a little sit down meeting of the minds with MTV, Hugh Jackman and one of MTV’s interviewers talked turkey about the upcoming X-Men spinoff The e and what sort of rating Jackman and director James Mangold would be shooting for. The big, headline grabbing news is that there is actually talk of an R-rated Wolverine on the table. During their discussions, Jackman and Mangold have acknowledged that, “There’s such great temptation to make an R-rated Wolverine. I’ve always felt that. I know a lot of fans would like that. I totally get it. If there was ever a superhero that was going to be R-rated, it’s Wolverine.” These are going to be exciting words to hear for a lot of comic book fans, and many will probably come away from the interview spreading the word that an R-rated The Wolverine might happen, but I’d like to throw some cold water on that. When speaking further on the subject Jackman says that the problem with making an R-rated superhero movie is that, “In the last ten years I’ve also met many 12, 13, dare I say 10, 14, 15-year-olds, who for them Wolverine is not just cool, you see it in their eyes, he’s everything to them … you’d need to have a really good reason to exclude those fans.” Despite the quality of the reason I just don’t think there is any way that any studio anywhere would ever exclude the teen and tween crowd from a Wolverine movie.