While we’re fairly confident that Disney and Marvel would have preferred to wait and announce the news at Comic-Con, word began to leak last week about its big future plans. Among the movies it is developing was the less-than-surprising live action take on Guardians Of The Galaxy (talk of which has been floating for a couple of years) and the more shocking revelation that Disney Animation is working up fellow super-team Big Hero 6. Now Entertainment Weekly has locked in confirmation from Disney about the Hero idea.
They might not be anywhere as well known as Cap and co, but then Marvel has been doing well with heroes who aren’t quite as familiar to general audiences already. Big Hero 6 is a team rounded up and contracted by the Japanese government, who wanted their own answer to the likes of Iron Man. And while the Hero team has had a much more limited run in the comics, it still produced some interesting characters.
The roster includes Sunfire, a man who can harness solar energy as a weapon; Silver Samurai, a self-explanatory warrior who has a history with Wolverine; 13-year-old boy genius Hiro; his giant shape-shifting robot Baymax; Honey Lemon, a woman who can draw almost any object she needs from her purse (which happens to be a portal to another dimension – handy!) and Go-Go Tomago, a female hero in a voice-controlled suit that can fly as an egg-shaped ball of energy.
Given their unusual powers, you can see why Marvel might have targeted this one as animation rather than live-action. For now, no details have been released about who is developing the movie, and it is still early days. Unless something breaks between now and either Friday July 13 or Saturday July 14, when Disney and Marvel hold their big Comic-Con panels, we figure they’ll be dropping some news at San Diego.