Comic-Con footage starts going “Up” on-line
July 28, 2008 at 4:14 pm by Curt Holman in A&EEvery year Comic-Con steals some of the thunder of Atlanta’s Dragon*Con (this year held Aug. 29-Sep. 1). The San Diego comic book, fantasy and all around geek showbiz convention has gradually become Hollywood’s unofficial venue for hyping genre projects. That neat-0 Iron Man trailer from last year, for instance, debuted at Comic-Con. A friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles and frequently attends Comic-Con said that the studio hype is getting a little out of hand: “This is the year that Hollywood Officially Ruined Everything.” I wasn’t there, but here are a few apparent highlights. (Any of you who did attend Comic-Con, please let us know what else looked cool.)
Pixar presented an extremely short teaser trailer for next year’s Up — which, based on the company’s track record, could be one of next year’s best movies. Up stars the voice of Ed Asner and has been called “”a Pixar-meets-Miyazaki art film version of About Schmidt,” so it could be the studio’s riskiest venture yet:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine, starring Hugh Jackman and opening May 1 of 2009, premiered an admittedly intriguing trailer. I’ve become massively skeptical about the viability of prequels, but since Wolverine’s past has been established as both ambiguous and violent, this film looks like an exception. So far you can only see bootleg footage shot during hte convention, so the quality’s crappy but at least coherent, and the loud cheering gives a flavor of the Comic-Con experience. Warning: it’ll probably get taken down soon:
Other filmmaker panels and presentations that were well received included Watchmen, Benicio del Toro’s The Wolfman, the unlikely-sounding Tron 2 (which apparently has interesting footage that hasn’t gone viral yet) and the sort-of prequel Terminator Salvation. Here’s the teaser trailer that was attached to The Dark Knight:
There was also more footage from The Spirit, the directorial debut of comic book legend Frank Miller, who wrote and drew 300 and co-directed Sin City, based on his own graphic novels. So far The Spirit trailers look a lot more like Sin City than the original detective noir comics from pioneering writer/artist Will Eisner. Frankly, The Spirit looks kind of bad based on this (check out Samuel L. Jackson’s Nazi uniform), but here’s hoping the finished product, due in December, turns out well:
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July 28th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Wolverine vid has been taken down already.
I’m surprised no buzz on Twilight. I didn’t go, but with all the stuff I saw on it, kinda felt like I did.
I will be at Dragon*Con though. Can’t wait!
July 28th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
For more info on THE WOLFMAN and Benicio Del Toro, visit http://www.beniciodeltoro.ca