The full plot synopsis for Marvel’s The First Avenger: Captain America has been included in the latest issue of Production Weekly: “Born during the Great Depression, Steve Rogers grew up a frail youth in a poor family. Horrified by the newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe, Rogers was inspired to enlist in the army. However, because of his frailty and sickness, he was rejected. Overhearing the boy’s earnest plea, General Chester Phillips offered Rogers the opportunity to take part in a special experiment… Operation: Rebirth. After weeks of tests, Rogers was at last administered the ‘Super-Soldier Serum’ and bombarded by ‘vita-rays.’ Steve Rogers emerged from the treatment with a body as perfect as a body can be and still be human. Rogers was then put through an intensive physical and tactical training program. Three months later, he was given his first assignment as Captain America. Armed with his indestructible shield and and battle savvy, Captain America has continued his war against evil both as a sentinel of liberty and leader of the Avengers.” No big surprises. We already found out that the film would be set during World War II back in May. No director has been officially announced, but I’m sure they’re working on it. The First Avenger: Captain America will hit theaters on May 6th 2011, just two months before Marvel’s big screen superhero team-up The Avengers is set to hit theaters.

A teaser trailer for Disney’s TRON sequel TR2N was the huge shocker at Comic Con this year. Recently The Guardian was ask Jeff Bridges about Tron 2 while doing press for How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, and here is what the actor said: “[TRON 2 is] another unique, wild experience that was too good to turn down. Engaging in that world again feels just like it did all that time ago. Basically, I’m still a child, I love being childlike, and here was another chance to play with these crazy toys. And the cutting-edge technology makes it exciting. Doing the teaser trailer for Comic-Con, I had my first experience of motion capture. And that’s turning the industry on its head. It’s amazing being part of that. … When we made Tron there was no internet, no cellphones. But now we have motion capture, so I think we’ll get a far more successful version of the story, which is someone literally getting sucked into a video game. When we did King Kong in the 70s, one minute you’d have a shot of Rick Baker in this big suit and then you’d cut to this 80ft stiff model, and they looked nothing alike. Compare to that Peter Jackson’s King Kong the technology is there and they did a wonderful job. I thought they created a beautiful Kong. So I hope that’ll be the same for Tron.” I finally was able to see the trailer on the big screen at the recent Disney Showcase event, and it looked incredible. The original TRON will always have a place in my heart, but seeing the TRON world being created with modern day technology made my heart skip a beat or two. So I can certainly understand where Bridges is coming from. Speaking of which, I wonder when Disney will release that trailer online in High Definition? Or for that matter, when are they going to finally announce a release date? Even The Avengers has a release date, and I’m pretty sure development on TRON 2 is much further along.

Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland) is in final talks to join Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland, a horror comedy from Columbia Pictures. Eisenberg would play Flagstaff a “terrified shut-in whose cowardice makes him an expert at surviving the zombies but who is forced out of his shell to join the band of survivors, which includes” Woody Harrelson. Sounds like a promising premise, but you might be wondering “Who is Ruben Fleischer?” Find out in our Commercial Directors Spotlight.

When we spoke to director Danny Boyle last month in Toronto, he seemed optimistic about the possibility of another sequel to 28 Days Later. But at the same time I got the feeling that not much had progressed since I last talked to him during the press tour for Sunshine. It was last year in San Francisco when Boyle revealed to /Film that he had an idea for 28 Months Later, and that it would be set in Russia. Arrow in the Head is reporting a rumor coming out of the Sitges Film Festival, that Paul Andrew Williams, the UK-based director of The Cottage, has signed on to helm the third film. Unfortunately, this has not yet been confirmed. I’m not really sure how I feel about a third film without Boyle at the helm. I was one of the vocal few who hated 28 Weeks Later, but I’m sure the idea of global zombie films will always sound appealing to me, at least in the conceptual phase. Discuss: Are you excited about a 28 Months Later or has the second zombie film boom run its course?

The filmmaker formally known as Guillermo del Toro, now referred to ubiquitously as Guillermo "I'm making The Motherf****** 'Hobbit'" del Toro, appeared tonight at the Director's Guild of America in midtown Manhattan as part of The New Yorker Festival series of talks. During the conversation with New Yorker staff writer Daniel Zalewski, the director of such modern genre masterpieces as Pan's Labyrinth and the "Hellboy" series talked up some of his future projects, including the aforementioned two-film Tolkien adaptation as well as a new version of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Currently at the beginning of pre-production on The Hobbit, del Toro discussed his process of gathering ideas, or "feeding his brain," in order to conceptualize his own vision of Middle Earth unique from where Peter Jackson went in his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy… "I find you have to discipline yourself to write in the morning, and then watch and read in the afternoons stuff that seems relevant, even in a tangential way. For example, reading or watching World War I documentaries or books that I think inform 'The Hobbit,' strangely enough, because I believe it is a book born out of Tolkien's generation's experience with World War I and the disappointment of being in that field and seeing all those values kind of collapse. I think it's a turning point that you need to familiarize yourself with. I'm starting. Peter Jackson is such a fan of that historical moment and obsessive collector of World War I memorabilia, and he owns several genuine, life-size working reproductions of planes, tanks, cannons, ships! He has the perfect obsessive reproductions of uniforms of that time for armies of about 120 soldiers... each. I asked him which books he recommended… because I wouldn't be watching 'Krull' or 'The Dark Crystal,' I need to find my OWN way into the story. That's the same way I did 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Devil's Backbone,' by watching stuff you wouldn't think about. "All my life I've been fascinated by dragons. I was born under the Chinese sign of The Dragon. All my life I'm collecting dragons. It's such a powerful symbol, and in the context of 'The Hobbit' it is used to cast its shadow through the entire narrative. Essentially, Smaug represents so many things: greed, pride… he's 'the Magnificent,' after all. The way his shadow is cast in the narrative you cannot then show it and have it be one thing, he has to be the embodiment of all those things. He's one of the few dragons that will have enormous scenes with lines. He has some of the most beautiful dialogues in those scenes! The design, I'm pretty sure that will be the last design we will sign off on, and the first design we have attempted. It is certainly a matter of turning every stone before figuring out what he looks like, because what he looks like will tell you what he is." After he completes his work on the two "Hobbit" films in 2012, the prodigiously optimistic del Toro has a whole slew of projects to keep him occupied until 2017, including a new version of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, his long-delayed Lovecraft adaptation At the Mountains of Madness, a just-announced trilogy of vampire novels (the first of which he claims is already written), and his own version of Frankenstein. Del Toro is an acknowledged fan of "Frankenstein." He has busts of Boris Karloff as the monster in his house. One of his biggest filmic influences, the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, revolves around a showing of the classic Universal Frankenstein. He has raved about Bernie Wrightson's illustrated version and the original Frank Darabont script eventually filmed as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by Kenneth Branagh in '94 and all-but-disowned by Darabont. Del Toro's version, however, sounds decidedly different… "I'm not doing 'Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.' I'm doing an adventure story that involves the creature. I cannot say much, but it's not the central creation story, I'm not worried about that. The fact is I've been dreaming of doing a 'Frankenstein' movie since I was a child. The one thing I can promise is, compared to Kenneth Branagh, I will not appear shirtless in the movie!" When pressed by a fan during the Q & A regarding the Wargs' appearance in The Hobbit, del Toro seemed like a child dying to spill the big secret he has but forcing himself to show restraint, joking that "Warner Brothers has a sniper right here in the theater." "There will be different sensibilities involved in this movie than there were in the original trilogy. First of all, because we have the travelogues in 'The Hobbit' which goes to places and variations on races that were not addressed in the trilogy. My belief on the 'Wargs' issue is that the classical incarnation of the demonic wolf in Nordic mythology is not a hyena-shaped creature. It is a wolf. The archetype is a wolf, so we're going to go back to the slender, archetypical wolf that is, I think, the inspiration for Tolkien. Listen… if we were having a drink two years from now I would spill the beans, because I'm a pretty easy guy about spilling the beans, but I can't in this instance I can't because it's three years from now... believe me, I am jumping up-and-down inside this fat body!"