SUPERMAN RETURNS

According to Contact Music, actress Kate Bosworth used Hollywood legend Katherine Hepbern as her inspiration for playing Lois Lane. "I watched a lot of Katharine Hepburn to prepare for Lois," Bosworth said, "particularly 'The Philadelphia Story' and 'Guess Who'S Coming To Dinner.' Hepburn is a great model for how I see Lois -- strong but fragile."

300Variety (subscription required) is reporting that actress Lena Headey has been cast as the queen opposite Gerard Butler in the Frank Miller adaptation. Headey will play Gorgo, wife of Leonidas. Also joining the cast are David Wenham, Dominic West, Vincent Regan and Rodrigo Santoro.

SPIDER-MAN 3

Spider-senses tingling! According to a spy report over at Freeze Dried Movies, there's problems with the costuming for the villains already. Their scooper wrote, "The first problem is with Venom's costume, which Spiderman wears first. Instead of being pure black, they took a bit from the comic and gave it a disgusting purple tint. In the comic the reason for the tint was to Venom stood out in the shadows, but in film there's no reason for this. Now I've actually seen the costume designs and they're terrible. The purple looks awful. And yes it gets much, much worse. All I can say about the Hobgoblin outfit is 'yikes!' He looks like a skateboarder or something."

JOHN CARTER OF MARS

Also from Variety (subscription still required), Paramount has tapped Jon Favreau to direct "John Carter of Mars," the epic adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi series, which was a Marvel comic book in the seventies. To further show the Marvel connection, Favreau played "Foggy" Nelson in their "Daredevil" movie.

SMALLVILLE

Kryptonsite has a new image gallery from the upcoming episode "Aqua." Over at KryptonKnight, they allege new spoilers (registration required) for another upcoming episode called "Solitude."

X-MEN 3

There's a new link floating around the blogosphere showing screen shots from clips from unreleased trailers for "X2: X-Men United" and the upcoming "X-Men 3." Some of the footage was supposed to show with "Fantastic Four" but didn't make it.

FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED MINUTES

Today marks the two year anniversary of the Comic Reel at CBR, standing in the very long shadow of the illustrious and praiseworthy Rob Worley and his legendary work with Comics2Film. It has been a distinctive pleasure to bring you a daily dose of links, legends and lies these past two years, and I look forward to doing it as long as site executive producer Jonah Weiland can tolerate having me around. Special thanks goes out to you, yes, you specifically, for enjoying the ride, and we appreciate each and every reader for their patronage.

On the other hand, this means the Comic Reel is two years old, just about old enough to toddle around and throw stuff at you, so be warned ...

But back to business -- if you have the scoop on anything related to comic book movies, TV adaptations or just want to give us a briefcase full of cash, no questions asked, drop us a line and let's coordinate. You can choose an alias if you'd like, or be mentioned by name -- we honor requests for anonymity. Broadcasting live from Los Angeles, this is your humble scribe Hannibal Tabu saying thanks for your time and indulgence, I screwed up so look for fresh comics reviews tomorrow, and "don't blame me, I'm drunk too!"