With the success of Iron Man and the rebooting of the Batman franchise comic books have become the hottest property in Hollywood with producers and studios racing around to snap up the next big thing. This has seen Hollywood enlist mainstream, well known characters like Thor, Captain America and the Green Lantern along with some of the lesser known, independent or underground characters like Jonah Hex or The Goon. What it means is we can't go a day without some piece of comic book movie news hitting the web and today I've got a bit of a collection of information for you.

Ryan Reynolds Interview- First up there's an interview with Ryan Reynolds over at MTV. The bulk of that interview happens to be about the actors roles in not one but TWO comic book films, DC's The Green Lantern and Marvel's Deadpool. Read the interview to see what he has to say, apparently the Green Lantern costume is pretty damn cool.

MTV: When you take a look at this year, does it feel like, in the scheme of things, it's a landmark year, personally or professionally?

Reynolds: It's been probably the most unbelievable year of my life. Starting with setting some goals that I didn't think would be possible several years before, running a marathon, getting married -- the year has been incredible, all across the board. The fact that "Green Lantern" is something that's about to get going full-steam pretty soon, and then there is "Deadpool" on the horizon as well. If you asked me if this would be happening three years ago, I would have kick-f---ed you back to where you were from.

MTV: All these things we're talking about are things you set in motion. You pursued them, you kind of went after them. Does that make it a little bit more gratifying?

Reynolds: It's incredibly validating and gratifying when you can see that you can manifest something that you desperately want or a goal that you have. This is a difficult industry to get anything made, let alone a passion project, so when you see people understand what your vision is and come aligned with that common goal, it's pretty cool. I'm including all the creative types that are actually involved with "Deadpool" and "Green Lantern," because those guys want to make an authentic movie, and that's something a few years ago studios disregarded.

MTV: You have done everything from a publicity tour with Betty White to trying on the Green Lantern costumes. So, in looking back at the year, is there a moment that sums it up, that encapsulates what 2009 was about?

Reynolds: I think, seeing the prototypes for the Green Lantern costumes was a huge moment. It was a moment when I was like, "This is happening, and it's happening in the right way." That's a pretty cool, definitive moment for me.

MTV: Were you happy with the incarnation of Wade Wilson and Deadpool in "Wolverine"? Do you think you captured what you wanted to in the first look at Wade?

Reynolds: Yeah, I think the initial moment of the sequences that involve Wade, I think it did. It's always difficult to fully embrace something that isn't perfect, in terms of staying true to the source material. So it was a little bit frustrating. I really wanted to play Wade, and I really wanted to play Deadpool, and it would kill me to see someone else play them. I had a kind of ham-fisted attitude that it had to be perfect, but it doesn't. The movie's called "Wolverine," it's not called "Deadpool" or "Wade." I thought it was a nice little wink and tip of the hat to things to come. Finding the tone of that character alone is such a difficult prospect. I've been in so many meetings lately about "Deadpool" and meeting all these writers. Everyone is always looking for that one line, "What is that character?" and for me it's kind of like, "There's a guy, and he's in a highly militarized comedic fame spiral." That's not an easy thing to write -- an entire screenplay, let alone a franchise. I had a blast playing Wade. Every line I had in that was stuff I thought he would say. It wasn't something that a writer said to me. It was fun to really create that character, including everything he spits out of his awful mouth.

MTV: Does your love of "Green Lantern" and Hal Jordan go back far?

Reynolds: I've known about "Green Lantern" my whole life, but I've never really followed it before. I fell in love with the character when I met with [director] Martin Campbell. When I sat down with him, I really got what it is that this guy is all about. When you have a guy like Martin Campbell, part of his charm is that he has ba--s of titanium, and the other part is that he's slightly crazy, and you have to be to take on something with the scope of "Green Lantern." He's less of the director and more of a general. He just really knows strategies, he knows the intricacies, and his attention to detail! It's infectious. I sat down with him, and I could not even believe what he was saying. When I went to the meeting, I was entirely cynical. I thought, "What the hell, I'll see what they have to say," and I left the room with a completely different perspective.

 Thor- Come on you knew Thor was going to be in this post somewhere, the movie is clogging up the newsrooms with it's many casting rumours and confirmations and this tidbit once again has to do with a character from the film. For once, though, it's not a case of who is playing the character but whether that character will even be in the film. Variety, today, reported that ""Thor," scripted by Mark Protosevich, Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller, centers on a partly disabled med student who discovers his Norse god alter ego, the hammer-swinging Thor." In Marvel history that disabled med student is Donald Blake but through sources at Ain't it Cool News it's believed that Blake will not be in the film. Surely they wouldn't create a new character with the same description and story as Blake? Ain't it Cool News also have a heap of potential spoilers from an as yet UNTRUSTED source who claims to have seen the script for Thor. They confirm Blake's role while also dishing out other spoilers from Thor and some details on The Avengers. Remember, while this is an UNTRUSTED source, there could still be spoilers so read on at your own discretion. 

* The film starts with the 6 warriors (Thor, Loki, the Warriors 3 and Sif) in Asgard, OdinHopkins on the throne, etc.
* Loki is adopted, hence the black hair.
* Loki kills his dad, usurping the throne, Thor is cast out to Earth.
* Thor lands in a desert, and is promptly run over (literally) by Natalie Portman and Stellan Skarsgard, a PhD cosmology student and her Norwegian professor, who have gone out to study though telescopes a strange cloud in the cosmos.
* When they realize that Thor is who he says he is, Stellan, who has grown up with Norse mythology, can't quite deal with it and goes out on a drinking binge.
* The script closes with a 5-page battle. The fighting styles for Thor and Loki are, as you'd expect, markedly different, Thor being very much about raw strength, Loki being much more about motion, grace and intelligence. The closing battle will be the first thing they film.

Avengers:

* Loki is one of, if not the key [“Avengers”] bad guy.

* The [“Avengers”] film opens with 20 minutes of Loki basically entrapping/brainwashing Banner, and in so doing gaining control of the Hulk for his own nefarious deeds. This spurs the Avengers into existence.

Like I said this is an UNTRUSTED source so think what you will of the 'spoilers' here. I do like the idea of a couple of the villains teaming up in Avengers, Tim Roth stated Abomination may make an appearance, and without going the alien route The Hulk would be something that would be big enough to require a team of heroes. Then they could blast him off into space and they could do a Planet Hulk film and then a World War Hulk film....Okay so they are just my crazy dreams for the character but hey, it could happen. The naming of Skarsgard in a role is interesting because while it was rumoured a few months ago he would star nothing has been said since. AICN, and I would have to agree, believe this could be a measuring stick as to how trusted the source is. If we hear Skarsgard confirmed as a professor then there could very well be something to these spoilers.

Hex and Losers Photos- Finally we just have few pretty, okay the Hex one isn't so pretty, pictures from two comic book movies The Losers and Jonah Hex.
Both films are set to come out in 2010 and will give some lesser known comic books a chance at the big screen. Personally I'm far more interested in Hex, the story of a disfigured bounty hunter in the deep south.

That's double the Michael Cera action, the undisputed king of the geeky, awkward yet somehow cool and funny teenage males who manage to get the hot, sometimes equally geeky and funny teenage girl.

In Youth in Revolt, based on the novel by C.D Payne, Cera continues to play the geeky, awkward teen he is known for. This time round it is Nick Twisp a teen who enjoys Sinatra and Fellini while everyone around him, including his divorced, seem to be getting some action. Nick, as it usually goes, finds the girl of his dreams in the free-spirited Sheeni Saunders played by Portia Doubleday who is making her biggest appearance in a film to date. Thing is Sheeni has a boyfriend and among other complications which keep the two apart. To win Sheeni over Nick creates a rebellious alter ego called Francios who sports a moustache, cigarette and penchant for mayhem along with a desire to do anything to make Sheeni his girl. The film has a great accompanying cast including Justin Long, Zac Galifianakis, Steve Buscemi and Ray Liotta.

I liked seeing Cera as Francois because it is something different for him, he's able to act differently and show that he's not just the awkward, funny teen. Personally I love all these coming of age comedy/romance films. They are good for a few laughs, you don't have to think about anything, they usually have an amazing soundtrack and are generally just enjoyable to watch. Youth in Revolt looks to fit this formula and it will certainly be a film I'll end up seeing. It's released January 15, 2010.

The long awaited second installment of my interview with Igor Hardy aka Hardy Dev, an independent games developer, is finally finished. Igor is currently busy with several projects, hence the delay, but I'm glad he has finally been able to finish the interview we started. Igor's answers are very in-depth and interesting and I thank him for his time. Check out his site, "A Hardy Developer's Journal", after you've finished reading the interview.

8. What are the game/games you are most looking forward to? Why?

Oooh, that's a long and fascinating tale. I'll tell at least a half of it.

Probably it was when I got exposed to my beloved adventure games genre sometime in early grade school that I first started to wonder about the design aspect of games. Previously I got to play some of the classic platformers for the first Nintendo (Famicom), shooters and beat-em-ups on my friends' Amigas and in video arcades, but those games didn't really fascinate me in the same way that "Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis" could. I mean for me this was an Indy experience deeper and more fun than watching the movies and I was really curious what went into making something like that.

I've got the opportunity to find out some time later - when we started learning computers at school. For some reason the lessons centered around LOGO - an educational programming language that was already pretty ancient at that point in time. Soon I've started spending hours with it at home (on a crappy, pirated... err... PC emulator that I run on a Mac) and in effect created my first "game" called "Street Blighter" which as the title suggest was a Mortal Kombat parody. It is probably the only beat-em up ever to be controlled by a text parser, although it was less of an action game and more of a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of thing with animated cutscenes. Later, I did an almost whole sequel for it, started something of a text adventure etc, but I never really found a versatile enough engine to build games on (probably there weren't any at the time, but I didn't have Internet access to check that properly), so I lost my enthusiasm soon.

Anyway, these experiences convinced me I knew what a game designer is. A real game designer is a programmer - one who knows exactly how the code translates into the final player experience. I also thought that proper games are created only in huge companies on the other side of the world and that it's really fun to work in such a place. Because of the distance I didn't see much chance I would get to become a professional game designer, but I seemed to enjoy programming anyway, so that's what I decided would be a smart thing to do in the future when I was leaving grade school. I went in this direction a bit, but... let's just say that eventually this (seemingly) very sensible young boy didn't start a career this way. However, shortly thereafter I did learn to code all kinds of things in Turbo Pascal.

Other than that, many years later I suddenly started getting lots of ideas for games. And for the first time in my life I saw my ideas as actually good and fairly complete. I figured that something should be done with them or they'll go to waste, so I did. Currently I'm in the middle of my first game Frantic Franko which I'm doing mostly by myself (with the important exceptions of music and voices) and I'm also at the pre-production stages of a commercial project. Based on my design, but with several people involved.

Independent gaming will probably continue to be the most fun part of it all as long as people will see the importance of providing different experiences and reflections than the mainstream. The moment people stop striving for something different and it becomes only about making a game with one's own hands is the moment being independent loses its meaning.

The next installment of Family Guy's Star Wars series, which began with Blue Harvest, is due to be released just in time for the holidays. The Star Wars special sees all your favourite characters like Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland, Chris, Stewie and Brian take on the roles of Han Solo, Chewbacca, C3P0, R2 D2, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader from the Star Wars Universe. The focus of Dark Side is the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back and will see some new characters thrown into the series like Mort as Lando Calrissian and an appearance from Yoda.

Trailer Addict has a full trailer, previously the only footage I was aware of was a short that accompanied the X-Men Origins: Wolverine DVD. There was never any doubt I was going to get this when it comes out, I'm a huge Star Wars fan, but I would have liked to of seen Mort in the trailer as Lando. I guess they are leaving his role a surprise as it could possibly be the best thing in the special. Check out the trailer and see what you think for yourself before the December 22 release.

Right now it looks like we can't go two days without hearing about another casting update on Kenith Branagh's Thor movie. The epic tale of the Asgardian hero who falls from grace with the gods and ends up on Earth has recently been in casting overdrive with the Warriors Three and Heimdall, aids to Thor in Asgard, announced last week.

Now Natalie Portman, who will play the character Jane Foster, has announced that her good friend Kat Dennings, who starred as Norah in Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, will also have a role in the Thor movie. Portman told MTV earlier this that "Kat Dennings is going to be in it with me and she's a good friend and an amazing actress, so I'm looking forward to that."There was no word on who Dennings would play from Portman but now Variety are reporting that her character will be "Darcy, who works with Natalie Portman's Jane Foster character." I just saw Nick & Norah I like Dennings as an actress, she's a bright and bubbly thing on screen who can handle dialogue well and she seems like a good fit, considering her real life friendship with Portman, for a character who is obviously going to Portman's friend in the movie.

While things have generally been pretty good of late on the Marvel movie front there was some inevitable bad news last night. It seems the planned Silver Surfer spinoff, which came about in the wake of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, has hit a bit of a wall. J. Michael Straczynski, who penned the about to be released Ninja Assassin, spoke to Collider about his involvement with the Silver Surfer movies script. He said that "What happened was when Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer didn't do as well as they hoped it would do, it caused them to call into question a Silver Surfer movie." Straczynski goes on to describe the vision he had for a Silver Surfer movie, "We would have seen Galactus, his home world, what happened and him trying to get back there, because now that he’s betrayed Galactus, he’s concerned his home world might be in jeopardy", which I'll admit sounds interesting especially with the final comment he makes. He says that while his script picked up right were Rise ended, and now any new film will have to be different, the story he had in mind "It was definitely adult fare. I wanted to tell the origin of the Surfer and get into that whole thing." The thing that annoyed me the most about the Fantastic Four films, apart from them just being terrible, was the reluctance to be a pure kids film or pure adult film, it didn't know, and that made the movie clunky and painful to watch in some scenes. I am of the opinion that all Marvel films should be primarily adult based and hearing a writer echo those views is reassuring even if he thinks the project is dead.