Just a quick update for you this evening: yesterday it was reported that Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues star Paul Rudd had entered into negotiations to star in Ant-Man for Marvel Studios and director Edgar Wright.

Now comes word that the papers have been signed, the ink is drying, and the deal is officially closed. Paul Rudd is Ant-Man.

The first official teaser trailer (now updated with a second teaser featuring some glorious Morgan Freeman voiceover work) for Transcendence has been released online.

The movie stars Johnny Depp and is the directorial debut of Wally Pfister, a cinematographer best known for working with Christopher Nolan on most of his films including the Dark Knight trilogy and Inception, which scored Pfister an Oscar.

You can check out the first teaser trailer and a synopsis below.

DreamWorks Animation has released the first official trailer for How to Train Your Dragon 2, the follow up to their 2010 hit.

The sequel features the voices of returning stars Starring: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller, and Kristen Wiig, as well as newcomers Cate Blanchett, Kit Harrington, and Djimon Hounsou.

Check out the trailer and read a synopsis below now!

Invincible #107
Written by Robert Kirkman
Illustrated by Ryan Ottley
Colored by John Rauch
Lettered by Rus Wooton
Cover by Ryan Ottley and John Rauch
Image Comics
Release Date: December 11, 2013
Cover Price: $2.99

Deception and dread: these are the themes that have been running rampant through Invincible as of late and that take an even greater position within Invincible #107. Writer Robert Kirkman is back once again with his fantastic illustrative team of Ryan Ottley and John Rauch. Get ready for a truly thought-provoking installment of this superhero comic.

Amanda (Monster Girl) pays an unexpected visit to the only individual who has insight into Rex’s (Robot) sinister side. Mark is tortured with paranoia over the missing Angstrom Levy and the fear that harm could eventually come to Eve and their unborn child. Meanwhile, the newly transformed Doc Seismic and an underworld of monsters make their first city-wide assault.

While X-Men: Days of Future Past is ramping up for what will most surely be an amazing experience come May 2014, there is already momentum building for next X-Men film, X-Men: Apocalypse, which started earlier this month thanks to a tweet from director Bryan Singer announcing the film’s arrival in 2016.

Now, Singer, who has used Twitter extensively to build hype and announcements for his projects, is once again using the social media platform to introduce us to the creative team who are plotting the story. In a tweet last night, Singer noted “Late night X-Men Apocalypse story session” and attached a photo which included Singer as well as Simon Kinberg, who wrote the X-Men: Days of Future Past screenplay, along with Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris, who wrote the screenplay for X2: X-Men United.

Check out the tweet and photo below!

Lionsgate has released the first trailer for the Patrick Hughes-directed The Expendables 3. The film brings back the action geriatric crew for an all new mission and they are joined by new faces, some just as old or fresh to the industry of description.

There really isn’t much to the trailer itself since it’s just one big head count. The movie also stars Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Kelsey Grammar, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Ronda Rousey, Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson, and Kellan Lutz.

Hit the jump to see the full trailer and synopsis.

Dolph Lundgren’s rise back to action movie prominence, thanks in part to The Expendables series, continues with the upcoming sci-fi action-horror flick Battle of the Damned, which is being released by Anchor Bay Films.

Lundgren stars as a military operative sent to rescue a young woman from a remote city that lay in ruin, and finds a host of zombies, a rag-tag group of survivors, and a batch of malfunctioning robots who may just save the day.

Along with Lundgren, the film features Melanie Zanetti, Matt Doran and David Field, and is written and directed by Christopher Hatton. You can check out the full synopsis and the red band trailer below.

Ghost #1
Volume 4
Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Chris Sebela
Penciled by Ryan Sook
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: December 17, 2013
Cover Price: $2.99

Although I’ve long been aware of the character, this is the first Ghost story (heh) I’ve ever read. And it’s a good one.

Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Chris Sebela, and penciled by the stellar Ryan Sook, Ghost #1 introduces the character to new readers in a way that won’t bore long-time ones.

Ghost’s (aka Elisa Cameron) mission is to purge demons from their human hosts, and then dispense with them. Unfortunately, this means that the human hosts also perish, a fact which while troubling for Elisa, was also something she could work through. Until now.

BFFs Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are back at it again. The duo have a coffee book’s worth of pictures of themselves hanging out together (in fact, someone go turn all of this into a coffee book immediately), like that time they hung out with Elmo from Sesame Street. Or that time they hit Coney Island together. Or that time they hung out with Leonard Nimoy whilst hitting Coney Island together. These are but a few examples.

And so, as it is the holiday season, it only made sense for McKellen and Stewart to pay a visit to Old Saint Nick and let him know what they want for Christmas this year. You can check out the image of the duo sitting on Santa’s lap below.

The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition
Blu-ray
Directed by Peter Jackson
Written by Peter Jackson, Phillipa Boyens, and Fran Walsh; based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
Starring Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, and Sean Astin
New Line Home Video
Release Date: August 28, 2012

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring accomplished a feat that few films have ever been able to do: it made a believer out of me. When the movie was first released in December 2001 it proved that epic fantasy features that were not set in a galaxy far, far away could still break box office records. I didn’t see the movie during its blockbuster theatrical run because….I really thought it was going to be terrible. There, I confess. It took me until Fellowship‘s first DVD release in August 2002 to realize that my harsh pre-judging of the movie, mostly based on the simmering anger I felt towards the past few years of bloated Hollywood FX spectacles that offered fantastic visuals but little in the way of memorable stories and characters, was in haste and a huge mistake.

I remember the sweltering summer evening when I rented a copy of Fellowship from my local now-defunct Hollywood Video on the way home from work. Knowing in advance that it was a three-hour flick my initial plan was to watch the first half at the least before hitting the sack so I could get up the next morning for an early shift at the Tower Records I had been working at back then for more than three years. Twenty minutes following the start of my first viewing of Fellowship of the Ring and I was hooked; there would be no “To Be Continued” that night. Even though I risked getting barely enough sleep to pass for a member of the living the next day I watched the movie until its very end, and by the time Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee walked off into the sunset to more adventures I was a full-fledged Rings fan.