Earth’s Mightiest Heroes refuse to give in to Loki’s demand in a new clip from “Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight!” Check out the clip below and get your copy digitally on December 11.
In “Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight!,” the holiday season gets extra chilly as Loki and the frost giant, Ymir, plot to conquer the world. A team of Marvel heroes must stop the villains from stealing Santa’s power – if anyone can actually find the mysterious Mr. Claus. Fortunately, Rocket Raccoon and Groot are also hot on Santa’s trail. Heroes, villains, elves and cosmic bounty hunters collide in an epic quest that leave the fate of the holiday and the world itself in the balance. Check out a clip from the upcoming special above!
Pre-order your copy of “Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight!” now! Stay tuned to Marvel.com for all the latest news and updates on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
This wimp is no pushover, as the latest installment in the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” franchise sold 1 million copies worldwide in its first week on sale.
Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 80 percent of the US market, said it had sold just under 314,000 copies in its first week on sale, making it by far the No. 1 selling book in the US last week. Second place went to Stephen King’s “Bazaar of Bad Dreams,” which sold a robust 60,000 copies.
The serial chronicles middle schooler Gregory Heffley and his troubles with family, friends, and school.
Author Jeff Kinney, with 164 million copies in print, is a reluctant author, having first aspired to be a newspaper cartoonist, but it did not work out.
“That is actually a regret that I have, that it never worked out,” said Kinney.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that I became a bestselling author,” he said sitting in the bookstore that he owns and built in his home town of Plainville, Mass, midway between Providence and Boston.
With so much of its sales coming from overseas, Kinney did something rare and started his book tour overseas. A day after he spoke with The Post, he was jetting off to Madrid then to London, Lisbon and Paris before returning home for Thanksgiving.
His first US stop will be at his own bookstore the weekend after Thanksgiving — then it will be on to Athens, Istanbul, Bucharest, Amsterdam and Riga in Latvia. He’s already visited Tokyo, Beijing and Sydney, Australia.
In China, Kinney has more than 60 million books in print.
The hardcover book lists for $13.95. Don’t wait for the paperback to come out. Aside from the Scholastic edition available through the school book-fair market, there has never been a paperback sold at retail.
“I think if we had put the books out on newsprint, there would have been a different reaction,” said Kinney. There is a sort of weightiness to it. It asks that the books be taken seriously. Part of the conceit is that this is a kids’ diary.”
Star Wars fans: the Force has been freed!
That’s right. As of 12:01 AM this Friday, April 10, you can stream Star Wars anytime you want. The original and prequel trilogies will be available for purchase on digital platforms like Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, iTunes, and Vudu. You can buy all six films individually, but some retailers are offering bundled deals.
Having the Star Wars films available on streaming gives fans the ability to watch these films whenever and wherever they want. There’s a big added literal bonus for hard core Star Wars nerds. Lucasfilm has released a list of all the potential bonus features and deleted scenes that are available. These include famous lost moments like Threepio unleashing the wampa on the Stormtroopers in The Empire Strikes Back, all the Rebel pilots cut from Return of the Jedi, and extra scenes from the prequel trilogy. There are also trailers, documentaries, and special effects reels. Of course, these press releases came with the caveat that not all retailers will have all of these bonus features. Which means, you might not get that extended take the of “Aunt Beru’s Blue Milk Scene.”
So, the question is: which platform is right for you? Personal preferences aside, here are what all the major streaming retailers are promising.
Amazon is giving customers a sweet deal if they pre-order what they’re calling Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection. You get all six films on streaming, plus unspecified bonus material, for $89.99. The films are individually available for purchase in either High Definition or Standard Definition for $19.99.
Google Play is offering the films individually for $19.99 or all six together for $99.00. However, they have also upped the ante (since their press release last night). You can pre-order the six films together for $89.99. Google Play is the only platform to confirm so far that you will get all 72 pieces of bonus content (and 12 are brand new to Star Wars fans). While it’s probable you’ll get the same content with the other platforms, it’s worth noting that Google Play is the only one so far to confirm it.
Vudu’s DealIf you pre-order on Vudu, you save $10 on the bundle deal. This means you get all six films for $89.99. Vudu promises “all new digital extras,” but of course, isn’t explicit on which ones you get. (Maybe the famed Toschi Station scenes?) But, Vudu is sweetening the deal by offering an additional $10 credit to new subscribers. So, if this is your first Vudu purchase, you’ll not only get the best deal on the six films, but an extra $10 to spend on Vudu titles to boot.
You can also pre-order the six movie bundle at M-GO for $89.99, but all individual films are available for a slightly discounted rate of $19.77. That’s also the VOD platform’s nod to the year the original Star Wars was released. In fact, you can pre-order Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope for $14.99. In addition to these price cuts, M-GO is giving customers who purchase the whole bundle 1138 Rewards Points that you can redeem on future M-GO purchases.
At this time, iTunes doesn’t appear to be offering the films in any sort of bundle. You can pre-order each film individually for $19.99. iTunes also promises “never-before-seen footage and deleted scenes.” Maybe one of them will be a glimpse of a deleted scene from The Phantom Menace featuring Adrian Dunbar as the original Senator Bail Organa?!?!? So, why would you want to buy all the films outside of a bundle on iTunes? Because you have Apple TV. iTunes will be the only place Apple TV viewers can buy the films.
These deals are subject to change, and many are contingent upon pre-order.
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‘Star Wars’ Is Coming To Streaming — Which Platform Is Right For You?
David Heyman, producer of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, says the movie is most comparable of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth film in the original Harry Potter franchise.
Heyman notes that even though Goblet of Fire was directed by Mike Newell and the new film is from David Yates (who helmed the final four Harry Potter movies), it is Newell’s entry that comes closest to Beasts, reported Entertainment Weekly.
“Fantastic Beasts has got the charm of the fourth. It’s like the fourth. Mike talked about the fourth as being like an Indian musical and it’s not that, but it’s got the humour of of that film. It has the romantic comedy, that fish-out-of-water humour, that very human, natural character comedy.
“And now David is always looking for truthful, human moments, it’s never just a gag, he’s grounding (the storytelling moments) in a reality. Beasts is very funny, it’s got a big heart, and there’s darkness too,” Heyman said.
‘Fantastic Beast’ has charm of ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ says producer David Heyman
This month, the American children’s writer Jeff Kinney published the 10th book in his blockbusting Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Entitled Old School, it came out simultaneously in more than 90 countries, and within a single week had sold a million copies. With figures like this, Kinney need never have strayed from home and could have simply concentrated on writing the 11th book, but instead he decided to head out on tour to promote it even more. In the past two weeks he has visited Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, China and Japan. This week it’s the UK, and then he’s on to other sundry European destinations, before heading on to South America.
“It’s Tuesday, right? At least, I think it is,” he says with a laugh, settling into his central London hotel suite, and sounding far perkier than someone carrying that amount of jet lag should. Given his astonishing sales record –the number of copies in print of Wimpy Kid now exceeds 164 million, there’s a film franchise and Time magazine has voted him among the 100 most influential people on the planet – you might expect Kinney to have superstar tendencies, albeit of the literary kind. But to call him unassuming would be to understate matters. Kinney, in his pressed shirt and ironed chinos, is almost vigorously ordinary and normal.
“I’m always worried kids will be disappointed when they come to meet the writer of their favourite book, only to find this middle-aged, average-looking guy,” the 44-year-old says.
Kinney’s early ambition was to become a newspaper cartoonist. While at university, he had created a comic strip about a socially maladjusted freshman called Igdoof, and spent several years trying to get his work syndicated. But, he says, “my drawings weren’t professional enough”. He started designing children’s websites, and in his spare time continued drawing, replacing Igdoof with a middle-school student by the name of Greg Heffley. And lo, Diary of a Wimpy Kid was born. It has probably worked so well because of its universality: we were all awkward kids, once. Written, as the title implies, like a diary – in handwriting – and full of simple yet sprightly cartoons, it’s more comic strip than novel, and follows the eternal travails of adolescent Greg, his family and friends. The latest story finds him attempting to unplug himself from the modern world – switching off phones and computers – with reassuringly calamitous results. As with the previous nine books, this one runs to a very precise 217 pages (Kinney likes order and uniformity), and children, as ever, are devouring it the way they do sugar.
But if his books are easy to read, Kinney insists they are torture to write. “I enjoy having worked, but I don’t enjoy the work,” he says. “It’s a grind. I can spend four hours trying to come up with a single joke” – his books are full of jokes – “and fail to write even one. And I spend up to 17 hours a day on the drawings. It breaks you down.”
He must surely be exaggerating here, if only because the man has cranked out 10 volumes in just eight and a half years. But if he struggles with the writing process, then he does enjoy the spoils of his efforts. He downplays giving talks alongside the Titanic director, James Cameron, and enjoying dinner with US presidents past and present, but will concede that his unexpected success has benefits.
“I never expected to become wealthy, but I do like being able to make positive changes in my town,” he says. Kinney lives with his wife and two boys in Massachusetts, in a town called, perhaps appropriately for an Everyman, Plainville, where they live in a “regular” house and pursue a largely “ordinary” life. But he has built a soccer field for the local school, and a downtown bookshop called An Unlikely Story. “It’s become the cultural hub of the region, and that is very validating,” he says.
This has been his busiest year: he has written the screenplay for the fourth Wimpy Kid film, is planning two seasonal specials, and also a musical. The books, meanwhile, keep coming.
“I often debate whether to try and create something else or simply be happy with what I have,” he says. “But I always feel that when a cartoonist retires their characters, it leaves a hole in people’s lives. I don’t want to bring them to an end unless I have good reason to do so. And I don’t, yet.”
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Jeff Kinney has sold 150 million copies of his book
Ten years ago today, on November 18, 2005, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” officially released in theaters across the U.S., and there was much rejoicing.
And by “that,” obviously, we mean the part immediately after Harry Potter’s name emerges on the binding list of Tri-Wizard Tournament competitors, when Albus Dumbledore comes raging down the stairs, grabs Harry by the collar, and bellows, “HARRY! DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE?!!”
Of all the things that got lost in translation when “Harry Potter” made the move from page to screen, this is the one screw-up that fans are still talking about. It’s the gaffe that must not be named; the Voldemort of mistakes.
And today, in honor of the movie’s tenth anniversary, we’re taking a closer look at it.
Needless to say, this scene played out pretty differently in J.K. Rowling’s novel, where Dumbledore was described as asking the question calmly — and where he definitely didn’t pull that crazy shoulder-grabbing move, which probably terrified Harry and gave him a near-fatal case of shaken-wizard syndrome.
Truth: The GOBLEDDA FIYAH moment was just the most egregious example of the wise old wizard being portrayed in a way that was wildly out of character. J.K. Rowling’s Dumbledore was ancient, wise, and always in quiet control (albeit infuriatingly vague at times.) Gambon’s Dumbledore? Much more shouty. Like, at least 5000% more shouty.
The best-case scenario? Ignorance. Unlike Richard Harris (who played Dumbledore in the first two “Harry Potter” films before his death in 2002), Gambon has a personal policy against reading the books that he’s starring in adaptations of — which means he had no idea, going in, that Book Dumbledore was such a soft-spoken guy.
When asked about acting in the “Harry Potter” series, he famously replied, “I don’t have to play anyone really. I just stick on a beard and play me, so it’s no great feat.” (So basically, that’s not even Dumbledore we were watching. It’s just Michael Gambon in a prosthetic beard.)
A Brief History Of The Worst ‘Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire’ Mistake Ever