Two major Marvel announcements hit this morning, one of which is enouraging and the other less so.

On the encouraging side is the hiring of writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to write the screenplay for "The First Avenger: Captain America." The duo were named one of Variety's 10 Screenwriters to Watch in 2005 and have penned the acclaimed HBO biopic "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" as well as having worked on both Narnia pics to date. Variety wrote in 2005 that the duo have a talent for making the familiar feel fresh and work in a very collaborative, craftsman-like way. That bodes well for bringing some heft and energy to the "Cap" movie, which is to be set during World War II and lead into the "Avengers" pic.

On the less-encouraging side is Fox's hiring of Josh Schwartz to write the continuation of the X-Men films (follow this link to order "Mutant Cinema," my book on the previous X-flicks) in a project called "X-Men: First Class." The idea of continuing the X-Men franchise with younger characters has been discussed since the release of "X-Men: The Last Stand" in 2006 as a way to get around the scheduling nightmares and expense of reuniting the original cast. It also lets Fox retool the franchise for a new audience — and Schwartz's hiring seems to confirm the studio wants to go younger and soapier with the next installment.

The fear for fans is that the project will deviate too much from what makes the X-Men successful and enter embarassment territory. And for a lot of fans, an X-Men pic infused too much of the soap and comedy that makes "O.C." "Chuck" and "Gossip Girl" work as TV shows will be at the very best a second-tier version of a first-class concept.

This is something that Marvel's many X-Men comicbook spinoffs have faced over the years as well. While I am a big fan of the early run of "The New Mutants" — especially the Bill Sienkiewicz issues — the concept has for the most part resulted in second-tier comics for die-hard fans only, from "Generation X," to "New X-Men: Academy X" and the current "Young X-Men." While Schwartz has his own comicbook cred — Adam Brody's character Seth on "The O.C." was a huge comic nerd, though much of that at the time was attributed to writer and one-time comics scribe Allen Heinberg — I expect there's almost zero crossover between the fanbases for X-Men and "Gossip Girl." A pic that tries to graft too much in the way of relationships and romance onto the gravitas and superheroics of the X-Men concept invites the kind of fan backlash that studios prefer to avoid.

Admittedly, this conclusion involves a good amount of speculation. Fox has release no details on the pic and reports conflict as to which mutant characters the film may feature.

Marvel does publish a comic called "X-Men: First Class" that features a more modern and all-ages take on the original X-Men team from the 1960s: Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman and Angel.But other reports (including Variety's) suggest a pic focused on younger characters from previous pics such as Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Colossus and Rogue. The former would require a complete reboot as the original characters were all of differing ages in the original X-Men trilogy and two of the five (Cyclops and Jean) are dead. It's always made sense to keep one or two original trilogy characters (even if you have to recast) and add in any of the dozens of other mutants featured in the comics. Just off the top of my head are: Gambit, Cannonball, Psylocke, Dazzler, Havok, Polaris, Banshee, and Forge. For villains, we never got to really see the Sentinels, or the Hellfire Club.

Regardless of the cast of characters, keeping the film true to the tone of the best X-Men comics and the original film trilogy is perhaps the most important key to keeping the franchise on track. Deviating too much from what is known to work in this genre almost never works — as Marvel's pre-Avi Arad history in Hollywood will attest.

Here's the new trailer to "Watchmen," released this evening at Yahoo! Movies.

I wish it showed a little bit more than what was seen in the previous trailers, but at least there's some dialog and a slightly better sense of how it's going to play.

WB has released six new banners for "Watchmen," each featuring one of the main characters. Click to the jump to see them all!

Plus, Zack Snyder chats with Dark Horizons about the state of the film (nearly finished), the new trailer appearing with "Quantum of Solace" this week, the plans for multiple editions, and confirms some speculation about whether the film sticks to the ending used in the book.

Box office hits may be getting a bigger push this year from studios. The New York Times says that not only is a major campaign planned for "The Dark Knight," but Par may give "Iron Man" a push now that "The Soloist," which also stars Robert Downey Jr., has been bumped to spring.

A new poster for "Watchmen" has been released. Click for a closer look.

Marvel's Kevin Feige talks to MTV about the chances of seeing a "Runaways" movie sometime after "Avengers" hits the screen in 2011, and that someday a "1602" movie might not be impossible. He then tells Comic Book Movie that "Doctor Strange" also is a movie possibility. Meanwhile, Gale Anne Hurd tells Superhero Hype she definitely plans to make a follow-up to "The Incredible Hulk" with Edward Norton, though she admits he may appear first in "Avengers."

Bluewater Productions has signed a deal with Lionsgate to make comics based on the horror pics "Leprechaun" and "Warlock."

Boom! Studios announces a comic based on the Sci Fi series "Eureka" — an obvious license to pick up given that the show's co-creator is a co-founder of the publisher.

Yesterday, WB and director Zack Snyder showed some 25 minutes of unfinished footage from Watchmen to various members of the press. While I didn't see the footage, the reports coming in are impressive.

From Variety's Marc Graser:

The visuals are stunning. With Watchmen, he’s created a faithful adaptation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel that will satisfy fans. The characters pop off the screen; you can almost feel the texture of their suits, meticulously designed by Michael Wilkinson. The production design by Alex McDowell is overly theatrical but a world you want to visit. Overall, the sequences are mesmerizing and almost trance-like. And it’s dark. Very dark. The Dark Knight has nothing on the grit and violence that’s on screen. But it’s the over-stylized nature of how it’s handled that doesn’t make it cringe-worthy or unwatchable.

From AICN:

Moore's tome has not humbled Snyder; it's emboldened him. Whereas Snyder seemed committed to channeling Frank Miller's 300 directly from the page to the screen (with every thrust and decapitation intact), he's bravely added his own flourishes to WATCHMEN. Aside from the music, which adroitly evokes the era (KOYAANISQATSI was very much a 1980s Cold War creation), he's also made reference to the most influential movies of our time. When you see Nixon in the War Room, it's Kubrick's War Room; when Dr. Manhattan is brutally taming Vietnam, it's Coppola's Vietnam (though, according to production designer Alex McDowell, minor stylistic alterations, like the shape of the overhead lights in the War Room, were necessary to avoid legal dust-ups*). Snyder may not be a stranger to audaciousness (he did, after all, remake DAWN OF THE DEAD), but this is the first time I've sensed him in the work. And I think this reconfiguring of classic cinematic tropes is a potentially brilliant idea. Conceptually, it's in keeping with Moore's depiction of pop culture rising up against (or knuckling under) the encroachment of full-blown authoritarianism; hell, I think the notoriously cranky writer might even approve of some of these changes.

And The New York Times:

The scenes on display Wednesday spared nothing when it comes to the messy side of the super life. One scene in the R-rated film has an unclothed pair of heroes lounging in their high-powered “Owl Ship” after a love-making session. Another focused on the gore-spattered ceiling left behind by some super-action.

In all, the scenes gave a much deeper look at the film than did the extended trailer Mr. Snyder showed at the Comic-Con comics and fantasy convention in San Diego last summer. Indeed, a 12-minute credits sequence retold American history from the 1930s to the 1970s, as if heroes — good, and not so — had driven the action.

The Times also reports that the current running time for the pic is 2 hours and 43 minutes, with Snyder saying he'll defend that all the way. And the topic of the Fox lawsuit evoked the usual deflections and statements of being focused on finishing the film for its planned March 6 release.

Finally, a good look at this movie and some footage of the Spirit himself. A huge improvement over the previous teasers, this still looks a lot more like Frank Miller than Will Eisner.

The Mark Millar global assault continues, with the Scottish writer and art partner Tony Harris setting up their Image Comics series "War Heroes" at Sony with Michael De Luca set to produce.

This is Millar's third comic project to break through — he wrote the comicbook "Wanted" and his current Icon series "Kick-Ass" is in production with Mathew Vaughn directing. Sony is looking for a writer to adapt the comic, which has published only two of its six issue run so far.

Deals show Millar's knack for coming up with high concept stories and publicity — the rights to "Wanted," "Kick-Ass" and "War Heroes" all were sold with only a couple of issues released.

Variety's own Michael Fleming reports this morning that Oscar-nominated actor-director Kenneth Branagh is in talks to direct "Thor" for Marvel.

Branagh, best known for high-quality adaptations of Shakespeare and other period pics, is an oddly inspired choice for this project. The script by Mark Protosevich has been widely praised by the likes of AICN and, according to the details in Fleming's report, includes the original Don Blake secret identity for the God of Thunder. Branagh obviously would be the ideal guy to handle Stan Lee's faux-Shakespearean comicbook dialog, even as the choice invites comparisons to Ang Lee tackling the "Hulk."

I still think Lee's Hulk is underrated, but given the all-out action approach of Marvel's recent pics, it will be interesting to see how this one plays out in the casting.

Tatiana Siegel's report for Variety on Fox's summer b.o. woes contains plenty of good tidbits on its upcoming comicbook properties and confirming the widespread rumors of turmoil on the set of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine":

"Wolverine" helmer Gavin Hood was nearly fired, according to sources, because of squabbles with the studio, and two backup directors were in place before Richard Donner -- who is married to the film's producer Lauren Shuler Donner -- flew to the Australian set to smooth things over. At the time, Fox insisted that Richard Donner was on-set because he is a producer on the film. However, current credits for the film list various producers, but Donner is not one of them.

Piece also talks about the studio looking to rectify its superheroless summer this year with more X-Men spinoffs, including a possible "Deadpool" film and a possible second chance for "Daredevil," whose first bigscreen outing in 2003 failed to impress fans.

* Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin in the next Batman movie? That's what actor Michael Caine, who plays Alfred in the series, told MTV's Splash Page he's heard from WB execs. But is that what director Christopher Nolan has in mind? Nobody knows for sure as Nolan is on vacation. During press for the film, Nolan spoke frequently about how he takes on one movie at a time, saying he did not even begin to think about doing a sequel to "Batman Begins" until months after its release because he had to make sure a second film would be better than first — a task that will be even tougher going forward. Given that m.o., it seems unlikely that Nolan would have such high-profile plans already in place. though that kind of casting would surely make a lot of people very, very happy.

* Back in Marvel land, a rumor that the studio offered "Captain America" to superstar Will Smith turns out to be false. Original info came from actor Derek Luke in speaking to MTV's Splash Page, though AICN's Harry Knowles reports his Marvel sources tell him it's just not true.

Nikki Finke reports that both director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire have signed on for a fourth "Spider-Man" movie. She goes on to say that should actress Kirsten Dunst not join them, the role of Mary Jane Watson would be recast. Villain rumors are addressed, with the most likely candidates being The LIzard and Man-Wolf. Given Raimi's preference for Silver Age stuff, the Lizard seems a tad more likely.