New York Comic Con: 'Hulk,' 'Hellboy' goodies

There was a 1,500-pound beast in the room during Marvel's panel at New York Comic Con. We speak, naturally, of The Incredible Hulk...not to mention all the drama behind the movie that's unfolded in recent weeks. Director Louis Leterrier, actor Tim Roth (who plays the soldier-turned-baddie Abomination), and producers Kevin Feige and Gale Anne Hurd largely skirted the issue of star Edward Norton's reported gripes over the pic’s edits. ''I don’t know if you’ve seen Entertainment Weekly,'' Hurd said, defending her lead actor, ''but he is 100 percent behind this movie.'' Noted!

With that business taken care of, talk shifted over to the movie itself. Letterier promised ''many fights, and long ones'' after unleashing footage of an extended smackdown between the Greenie Meanie and Emil Blonsky, a.k.a. the Abomination. A few minutes later, the original Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, made a surprise appearance to loud applause, plugging his cameo in the movie. Meanwhile, the Marvel crew unveiled footage of the movie's long-awaited, fan-baiting Iron Man crossover cameo, featuring Robert Downey Jr. He appears as Tony Stark, talking to William Hurt’s General Thunderbolt Ross.

After the jump: Details on Universal's Hellboy II panel, and Guillermo Del Toro's next big idea.

There was love in the air over at Universal’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army panel. For those of you who haven't witnessed the affair between Comic Con-goers and director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), it’s a sight to behold. The good-natured del Toro doesn't so much speak as hold court to a giggling (and vast) gaggle of geeks. Here, he regaled his fans with a ''sizzle reel'' to tout his fantasy-film sequel about Hellboy (Ron Perlman), his pyrokinetic girlfriend (Selma Blair), and their adventures in saving the world. The three-minute-ish trailer featured oodles of cool monsters and Labyrinth-style fairy/insect-thingies. We also got a peek at the Johann Kraus character (voiced by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane), who looks a bit like a Jules Verne deep-sea diver. When the lights came up, del Toro was surrounded by creatures from the movie (actually actors in suits). Normally, we’d gawk at an assembly of costumed dudes at a Con, but these costumes were genuinely exquisite, in that baroque-horror style patented by del Toro.

By now, the director is already looking forward to his next films — The Hobbit, he hopes, among them. He'll know in the next four to five days if he can iron out some pending legal kinks so that he can direct it: ''It can go either way,'' del Toro said. ''I hope I am able to do it.'' In the meantime, he’s starting to sketch and write a small movie that probably won't get made for a few years and will have a Labyrinth vibe. Titled Saturn and the End of Days, it's about a kid named Saturn who watches the Rapture and the Apocalypse on his way to and from the grocery store. (Pause as the audience erupts in cheers.) And if that wasn’t crowd-pleasing enough, the ever-forthcoming del Toro even gave out his e-mail address. —Nisha Gopalan, with additional reporting and writing by Adam Markovitz