So, what are you guys doing on, oh, say November 6, 2015? Not booked yet? Your iCal is empty? Your day planner doesn’t go up that far? Well, we’ve got plans for you now. In one of the most innocuous press releases ever crafted, Disney has today sent around a listing of some new and updated release dates for some of their most anticipated features, sandwiching in Edgar Wright‘s Ant-Man release date (yup, it’s that November 2015 one listed above) between stuff like like “Disney Animation Untitled” and “Pixar Animation Untitled.” Oh, and also? Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World will both be in 3D. Dimensions and money and stuff! After the break, check out the full listing of new and updated dates for ten new Disney features (including, admittedly, some details we’ve long known). And, never fear, you’ll also soon learn the release date of that Phineas and Ferb feature we’ve all been dying for.

Everyone, you can rest easy, Kat Dennings will be returning to the Thor sequel, Thor: The Dark World, to add her signature stinging charm and wit to the feature. Could you even imagine a film without her adorably calling Mjolnir “Meow-Meow”? No? How about a film where her Darcy Lewis is not there to even out Natalie Portman‘s perhaps overly serious Jane Foster? Got you there. Deadline Hollywood reports that Dennings is indeed coming back for more, and though they don’t have many details, they can report that Dennings’s role has been “expanded from that of the comic relief sidekick.” Sounds good to us! Thor: The Dark World will open on November 8, 2013.

There is exactly one piece of information about Edgar Wright‘s upcoming Ant-Man movie that actually matters. That piece of information is not its release date or where it will film or when it will film or how long that shoot will take or how much Marvel plans to budget for catering. That piece of information is who is going to star in the film. Agreed? Admittedly, there is a certain level of excitement that we can ascribe to most Ant-Man news because, guys, Edgar Wright is actually making his Ant-Man movie and we’re going to get see it. Like, in theaters and stuff. Yet, beyond that, what do we really care about when it comes to the film? Perhaps we can try to care about its possible filming details because that will determine when we get to see it? Perhaps? Maybe? If so, Latino Review has a lead on both when and where the film will supposedly lens, which might also give us a hint as to when the final film will hit movie theaters.

Scheduling conflicts can be a real pain, especially when a sequel gets a greenlight and a studio is forced to round up a cast of supporting characters as memorable as those seen in Marvel’s Thor. For their limited screen time, the Warriors Three and Sif (Jamie Alexander) made quite an impression on audiences. They were more than up to the task of being the God of Thunder’s fondest and fiercest friends, seemingly ripped directly from the comic books and placed on screen. In the first film, the gang included Ray Stevenson as Volstagg, Tadanobu Asano as Hogun and Josh Dallas as Fandral. Now as Thor 2 and director Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones) gear up for production, Josh Dallas’ work on ABC’s Once Upon a Time has gotten in the way and the role of Fandral has been recast. So who’s charismatic enough and without a TV show that can jump in and save the day? How about Chuck star Zachary Levi…

Consider this a bit of serious Hollywood housekeeping after a long, boring holiday weekend. In quick succession, a bevy of release dates (some new, some moved) have been fired out of the Hollywood cannon and straight into Reject HQ eyeballs. Ouch, Hollywood, seriously, those are our eyes. After the break, check out a full round-up of today’s many (too many, really) release date shuffles and announcements, including dates for sequels to both Rise of the Planet of the Apes and X-Men: First Class, along with a new date for Thor 2 and a big move for The Lone Ranger, all rounded out by some fun assorted dates, like so much Fun Size candy of the calendar.

Blood-crying Bond villain and skull crusher Mads Mikkelsen is in talks to play a villain in Thor 2 according to Variety. Great news or greatest news? The impeccable actor is fresh off of a strong showing at Cannes with The Hunt, which is another addition to a growing list of powerful roles he’s taken on. Now what kind of silly costume will he get? Citing rumors that The Enchantress will be in the film, Devin Faraci is opining that Mikkelsen may play the brutish Executioner. If all that comes to pass, Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster isn’t safe at all. However, I still hold out hope that he’ll play his character from Valhalla Rising, making this a sweet cross-over project.  

In a recent interview with Collider, Idris Elba claimed that his schedule was so packed that he moved out of his home without signing a lease anywhere else. It’s all movie set trailers from here on out. He’s probably not exaggerating. He’ll be seen later this year in Prometheus and potentially the Western They Die By Dawn. Next year, he’ll be in the thriller No Good Deed and Pacific Rim. After that, it’s a turn as Nelson Mandela for director Justin Chadwick’s Long Walk to Freedom and what promises to be another Mandela-esque turn as Heimdall in Thor 2. This comes on the heels of Joss Whedon’s massive success with The Avengers and a public suggestion that the sequel will see more female superheroes.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column that is always topical, often timely and ever ready to rock your world with all the great articles you’d probably find yourself, if you had the time. Lucky for you, we’ve got plenty of time. We begin this evening with one of fourteen new images from Moonrise Kingdom, the upcoming film from Wes Anderson. You’ll know him as the guy who made films such as Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This one comes with just as much star-power, including names like Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban. The young man above’s name is Jared Gilman. He’s new.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is all about movie news, it happens nightly, and you should never, ever go to bed without it. Should you happen to do so, we’re most likely going to send someone out to teach you a lesson. And you don’t want to learn any hard lessons now, do you? We didn’t think so. We begin tonight with an image that is sweeping the internet. With a little lightening, this new image of Noomi Rapace in Prometheus reveals a pair of Space Jockeys in the background. It’s hard to tell from this angle, but they look rather large and intimidating. It goes along with a quote writer/producer Damon Lindelof gave to Hero Complex: “The movie is definitely epic in its scope. One of the filmmakers that we ended up talking about to a fair degree of redundancy was David Lean, who directed ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ We wanted to make the movie feel big by having the characters be small in big spaces. That connected to the larger themes we were talking about — that we’re all just these little gnats crawling around on our little planet.”

While Monster director Patty Jenkins would have been a fascinating choice to direct the upcoming Thor 2, she dropped out after some creative disagreements with Marvel. C’est la vie. Now, after a brief search, the job falls to Alan Taylor. According to Deadline Marienville, the Game of Thrones director will be telling Chris Hemsworth where to point his hammer. What else is there to be said here? The first film had a classically trained Irish talent better known for his Shakespearean work (and for his ridiculous mustache-beard combination in Wild Wild West). The sequel now has an extensive television resume in the driver’s seat – work that spans from the action drama of Game of Thrones to the sassy whatever of Sex and the City to the dry wit of Bored to Death. If Taylor’s previous work is any indication, the second film might become something of a true adult drama. Of course, his feature film work to date includes the historical comedy (that was actually pretty damned funny) The Emperor’s New Clothes. Otherwise, it’s mostly dramatic work at play here. The film is scheduled for release in November of 2013, so they’ve got some breathing room. Plus, Thor will be seen next in The Avengers next summer, meaning we can’t go a year without seeing that cape. We just can’t get away from it. It’s also funny how much the feel of this article would change if the headline had been “‘Sex and the City’ Director tapped for ‘Thor

It’s not often that movie news makes you sit up and go “whaa-haa?” but that’s just what happened when this story popped up over on Deadline Mannheim – that director Patty Jenkins has left her latest, and most high-profile film, directing the Thor sequel. Jenkins was confirmed for the gig in October, a job that would have made her only the second female director to helm a Marvel property (the other is Lexi Alexander, who directed Punisher: War Zone in 2008). It’s reported that Jenkins left the project thanks to the always-popular “creative differences” excuse. However, Deadline also reports that “the feeling is that she’ll probably end up working on one of these superhero films, but perhaps not on a sequel,” so it’s possible that those differences weren’t of the knock-down-drag-out variety, though leaving a job that was buzzed about and presumably set in stone for a few months is still a pretty eyebrow-raising move. Marvel is already looking for a new director (duh), as the sequel is working under a set July 26, 2013 (update: whoops, makes that a November 15, 2013) release date. Any ideas on a pick for a new hammer-wielding helmer?

We reported previously that Marvel was close to securing Patty Jenkins as the director for Thor 2, and now Deadline Shackleton has announced that Marvel has made it official. The Monster writer/director will be picking up where Kenneth Branagh left off with Chris Hemsworth as the title superhero. That means that, depending on when they start filming for their November 2013 release, Hemsworth will have worked as Thor for 3 different directors in the span on 2 years. Jenkins is an interesting choice, not only because she’ll be the first woman taking on a comic book movie of this size, but because her resume is short but sweet. Monster was a phenomenal, performance-driven drama, but she’s also directed episodes of Arrested Development and Entourage. It’s a range that’s a mile wide and an inch deep considering that it’s been nearly a decade since directing her only feature film to date. She mirrors Branagh in the sense that she’s more known for working with actors than creating large scale action beats, but her skill set might signal that some darker drama is set for the sequel. Still, bringing on a feature director with one film under her belt, and no big budget experience is absolutely an experimental gamble. It’s fortunate that they chose someone who has displayed a keen understanding of cinematic language, but it’s a gamble nonetheless.

Work on getting a Thor sequel in production seems to be well underway. It was just yesterday the news broke that Monster director Patty Jenkins was getting looked at very closely to direct the hammer-wielding god’s second movie, and now Entertainment Weekly has some quotes from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige about what direction the plot will take. Once this sequel goes into production, Thor will already have furthered adventures here on Earth alongside his Avengers buddies, so according to Feige, it’s time to “take Thor literally to other worlds.” In the Norse mythology that Thor plays around in there are nine different worlds. When I looked up the nine worlds over at Marvel, I learned that three of them share the same planet as Thor’s home Asgard, one of them is where we live (Midgard), and the other four are called Jotunheim, Svartalfheim, Hel, and Muspelheim. That’s a whole mouthful of words, and a whole heap of worlds full of elves, demons, and who knows what for Thor to smash with his hammer.

Sure! Maybe! At this point, it’s within the realm of possibility that anyone could direct Thor 2. It’s not probable, but it is possible. Deadline Zuni reports that Marvel Studios are “getting close” to picking a director for the sequel to the superhero flick starring Chris Hemsworth. With a set July 26, 2013 release date, the studio really just needs to drop the hammer (meow-meow!) and pick a helmer. And the Deadline-rs seem to believe that the studio might be looking in to go in a new and unexpected direction – with Monster director Patty Jenkins. Jenkins directed Charlize Theron to her Oscar for Monster, but has kept a relatively low profile since – directing episodes of television programs instead of jumping back into the feature world, including work on Arrested Development, Entourage, and The Killing. She’s a talented director who should certainly be doing more feature work, but it remains to be seen if she’d be up for (or even right) for this sort of film. If Jenkins does get the job (and Marvel is said to be “pretty serious” about her), she would be only the second female director to helm a Marvel property (the only other is Lexi Alexander, who directed Punisher: War Zone in 2008). Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how this supposed scoop pans out, but it’s certainly an interesting possible choice to think about.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is our nightly promise to keep you on the up-and-up in the world of movie news, interesting links, strange occurrences and developments in the world of Breaking Bad. It is also breaking new ground this evening by defying popular opinion on the new Batman movie and featuring stories about not one, but two pop stars! Tonight’s top story, a first look at pop star Rihanna in Battleship, making her big screen debut as a member of the Naval squad who happen upon some Transformers-esque alien tech in the middle of the ocean and are forced to battle it out via a decades-old board game. B2! Oh, you sunk my interest in her character.

The Thor franchise may have hit a snag when it lost Kenneth Branagh, the director of the first film in the series, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to let one little setback get it down. Heck no! As a matter of fact, right on the heels of that disappointing news springs forth hope for a new day. Thor 2 may not yet have a director, but it does already have a screenwriter. So we can rest assured that the film set for July 2013 is well on its way to being delivered on time. Who did they get to write the continued adventures of our favorite hammer-wielding maniac, you might ask? A guy named Don Payne. There’s some good news and some bad news about Payne doing the scripting for Thor 2. The good news is that he’s had plenty of experience writing in the super hero genre before. The bad news is that said experience was for writing movies like My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I’d try to bring up the fact that he was a Simpsons writer to sugar-coat things, but it was for later years Simpsons, so that’s a no-go. Hey, wait! He wrote an episode of The Brian Benben Show! How about that? Okay, okay, let’s all just try to keep an open mind. [Deadline Chesterton]

So pleased they were with the performance of the first, they’ve decided to make another. Disney and Marvel Studios have set a release date for Thor 2, a sequel to this summer’s Kenneth Branagh directed, Chris Hemsworth starring superhero film. Usually when a sequel to a comic book movie gets announced, it’s immediately time to start speculating on what’s going to happen in the next one. With Thor 2, however, things are a little bit more complicated. Before this movie ever happens, the Thor and Loki characters are already set to appear in Joss Whedon’s upcoming Avengers, so the people in charge of writing Thor 2 are going to have to make sure that what they do jives with the characters’ appearances there. And we’re going to have to wait to see it before really going wild with theories on what’s next for the Odinson.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a little early this evening, but it’s still the same badass nightly movie news column that you’ve come to love and mostly ignore. Tonight it spends time around the globe, traveling to the south of France, the Hindu Kush, the future, the 18th century, the end of the Cold War, Asgard and Sequelville (it’s right between West L.A. and Century City). But it always comes back to you, dear reader, to bring you the goods. And the bads. And well, you know. The most interesting thing at Cannes yesterday might not have been Lars von Trier’s movie, Melancholia (which we reviewed and, as it stands, liked very much), it was von Trier’s comments during the press conference. From sympathizing with Hitler to extremely young naked women, he let it all out. To their credit, Vulture has captured all the best of it and delivered a list of the 10 most controversial things Lars von Trier said at the Melancholia press conference. “Should I talk about Spider-Man now?”

What is Movie News After Dark? Tonight it’s a movie news column stunned by its author’s ability to find all that is cool and interesting in the world of film. Seriously, this might be the best one of these lot that he’s put together in over 150 tries. It’s almost as if he’s ready to graduate to a “mediocre” rating as a news aggregator. Then he can begin acquiring spells and executing more advanced quests before he can join a proper guild and go on raids. Gore Verbinski may finally have found his Lone Ranger in the form of The Social Network star Armie Hammer. He is currently in talks to take the lead alongside Johnny Depp, who’s already been cast as Tonto. He’s got the look (and damn, the voice as well), but the challenge for Hammer will be the fact that there’s only one character to play in the film. Unless Verbinski carries over the “multiple Jack Sparrow” sequences from his Pirates of the Caribbean work.