Comic-Con Wrap, Day 1: Avengers, Tron, Green Lantern, Del Toro, World War Z, And More!
San Diego Comic-Con is like Geek Christmas and Super Bowl Sunday, rolled into one. If you can’t make it this year, don’t fret. We’re bringing you everything you need to know. It will be just like being there, though with slightly less cosplay. Today we have massive news from all over geekdom, including Joss Whedon’s official Avengers announcement, Guillermo Del Toro & Zach Snyder’s next movies, a surprise Green Lantern character, mega-panels for Tron: Legacy and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and much, much more.
-Tron: Legacy may not come out until December, but Disney is promoting it so heavily that the company is calling the convention “ComiTron” (I am not making this up). There is once again a full recreation of Flynn’s Arcade in the Gaslamp District. They are also promoting multiple video games that will help fill in the gap between the original Tron and this new mega-sequel. The panel on the movie screened 8 minutes of footage today that, if Twitter is any indication, blew away those that saw it. And then it was discovered that Skywalker Sound was recording the audience for the Tron panel and planning to use the sound in the movie. It looks like Jeff Bridges is playing two different versions of himself in the movie, which word has it works way better than you’d think it would. To top it off, there’s a new trailer, which you can see at Yahoo!
-Or at least I thought that would top it off, but at the very end of the Tron panel Guillermo Del Toro took the stage to announce that his next movie will be… wait for it… The Haunted Mansion. Yes, based off the Disney World ride. He did say that there is no relation to the previous, terrible version of the same idea, and that they “will not be taking Eddie Murphy’s calls”.
-Entertainment Weekly somehow brought together two of today’s biggest geek gurus, J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon, for one panel. Abrams discussed his upcoming film Super 8, produced by Steven Spielberg, and his new TV series Undercovers. Whedon said that his gig on The Avengers wasn’t official yet… and then made the announcement that it was official at the panel. When pressed for details, he said he’s still working on the outline for the film. The two held a mutual admiration society, though they did differ on some things… Abrams doesn’t like 3-D, but Whedon said it has its uses.
-MTV is reporting from the floor that not only is a World War Z movie officially on, but none other than Brad Pitt has signed on to star in it. This from the author of the original book, Max Brooks. He apparently received the call confirming the news while signing copies of his book for fans. The novel, a best-seller, is subtitled An Oral History of the Zombie War, and tells the story of a zombie apocalypse from the point of view of various first person accounts. The rights were secured by Pitt’s production company, Plan B Entertainment, after a bidding war back in 2007, but the movie has had a long gestation period. Brooks also revealed that Paramount had bought the rights to two of his other works, The Zombie Survival Guide and The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks graphic novel.
-Geoff Johns surprised everybody by saying that Parallax is in the Green Lantern film, but wouldn’t add any more details. He thinks that fans will dig the Green Lantern costume in the film once they see it in motion, but did promise that it would not have nipples. He also said he’s working on the development of a Blue Beetle TV series and showed some test footage of Jaime Reyes transforming into the character. He mentioned that he “knows something” about a Wonder Woman movie that may be in the works.
-Marvel’s big panel included Brian Michael Bendis, Jeph Loeb, Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, etc. They said that in the wake of recent events on Daredevil, Nova is the new “Man Without Fear”… does anyone who’s been reading Daredevil want to tell me what the heck’s going on over there? Bendis promoted Ultimate Doom and a general slew of Captain America projects ahead of his big movie. Also there’s going to be a Mike Mignola series with Rocket Raccoon, which may have just broken the dorky awesomeness meter.
-Look what Warner Brothers brought, it’s Abin Sur’s pink corpse! This is to promote the upcoming Green Lantern film, I presume. I know which action figure I’m putting on my wish-list this Christmas. It’s got exciting death action!
-In other superhero-type news, this is apparently Odin’s throne from the Thor movie. A little ostentatious, maybe, but I think it just needs a few throw pillows.
-After enough speculation to keep a roomful of monkeys with typewriters busy for many a year, SyFy announced that the second half of Caprica‘s first season will air starting in January 2011. The Battlestar Galactica spin-off/prequel/awesome has been in limbo for an inordinately long time, but now rumors of a second season pick-up are beginning to swirl.
-Another dominant presence at the Con is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which had the day’s final panel. So many panelists were on stage that each was asked only one question by Director Edgar Wright, to which they were allowed one word answers. Michael Cera showed up in a full Captain America costume. The big news was that some randomly selected fans were given entry to a full screening of the movie held immediately afterward, followed by Wright jumping off the stage and leading said fans to the theater down the street. Bryan Lee O’Malley, author of the graphic novel series the movie is based on, said that the series and the movie have different endings but that they got closer than he thought they would.
-Bungie previewed Halo: Reach, which they said will definitely be the final Halo game. It will have all sorts of cool new options, including the ability to fight from the Covenant perspective. Fans at various points yelled “I love you!” and “It’s so epic!” at the panelists. Halo fans will probably be thrilled by the live-blog of the panel here.
-Capcom’s brought a playable demo of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Gamespot has the full scoop. It looks like Dr. Doom will now be a playable character, which is great because I always wanted to be the dictator of a small Eastern European nation.
-Many large posters are up in San Diego’s Gaslamp district promoting the 2011 film Battle: Los Angeles, which appears to be some kind of alien invasion story. There’s a viral site called ReportThreats.org that you can check out. Slashfilm has pics of the various posters here. They later held a panel where they showed some footage from the film, which stars Aaron Echkhart as leader of one military platoon fighting off the aliens.
-There’s a big exhibit from Zack Snyder’s 2011 film, Sucker Punch. The Director of 300 and Watchmen says it’s about a girl in a mental institution who imagines herself as a heroine in an alternate dark fantasy world. Io9 is calling it “Alice in Wonderland with machine guns.” It also appears to include Pink Bunny Mechas! For more pictures go here.
-In other Snyder news, he told the LA Times that he has already started work on a screenplay for a 300 prequel called Xerxes. It apparently is about Themistocles at the Battle of Artemisium, which you always knew was a story ripe for being retold as a stylized action movie with lots and lots of speed ramping. Read the full interview here.
-One bit of news that caught me off guard today was that WETA Workshop, famous for their work on The Lord of the Rings (and also the Narnia movies, and Peter Jackson’s King Kong) is doing an animatronic The Wind in the Willows movie. This is that story about a bunch of anthropomorphized animals that is probably most famous these days for inspiring “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” at Disney World. It’ll shoot this fall and is schedule for a 2012 release.
-Joe Kosinski is obviously one of the next big things when it comes to directing (he helmed Tron: Legacy), and now he’s trying his hand a comics. His post-apocalyptic graphic novel Oblivion from Radical will come out later this year. He discussed it in an interview with Comic Book Resources.
-MTV posted the poster for Let Me In, the English remake of Let the Right One In being directed by Matt Reeves. It is pretty cool/creepy. Check it out here.
-Charlaine Harris, author of the Southern Vampire books that True Blood is based on, got her own panel. She responded to one fan that “Sookie will never be a vampire. Never.” She is currently working on the 11th book in the series.
-CHUD is reporting that there’s a Machete party tonight to promote Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming exploitation-pastiche film. (Is it exploiting exploitation? I just blew up your mind.) And they are giving away free tacos. This is the same movie whose first trailer started with Machete yelling “I have a message for Arizona!”
-Sylvester Stallone said that The Expendables originally came from an idea about doing a live-action 3D movie. Then he found out what you actually have to do to make a movie 3D and decided not to do that. He said that in addition to the film’s current all-star cast, he had reached out to Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Chuck Norris, but “there were extenuating circumstances…”
-The weirdest booth may be the one promoting AMC’s The Walking Dead TV adaptation. If you like zombies and/or gore, you will be interested in the pics over at Techland.
-The Vertigo panel announced that issue #17 of The Unwritten will have a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style plot, and that “it’s 32 pages but we turned it sideways and cut them in half, so it’s actually 64 pages”. It sounds absolutely insane. <end of Vertigo fanboy mode>
-Working Title Films has bought the rights to Kurt Busiek’s Astro City comics series, and they say that Busiek himself will be writing a script. More can be found at Deadline.
-Ugo got its hands on one of this year’s must-have souvenirs, Buffy Season 8 soda. So… that exists now. We have Giles’ Grape Potion, Willow’s Green Apple Witches Brew, and, best of all, Dawn’s a Centaur! Root Beer.
-And then there was the Megamind panel, which featured Will Ferrell dressed as his character Megamind (it’s an animated movie), Tina Fey (not in costume), and Brad Pitt (in cardboard cut-out form). (photo from CBR)
For live blogs of many of the biggest panels and events, check out Newsarama.
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