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.
In terms of headcount and sheer star power, New York Comic Con is hardly akin to San Diego yet. Still, year 3 marks the first time Hollywood has finally started to dip its tentative toes into these here nerd waters. Highlights from a few of Saturday's presentations:
The Dark Knight: DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz introduced, to thunderous approval, the new Dark Knight trailer, which will hit the masses in about two weeks. Yes, Heath Ledger was there as the Joker, all deliciously steely glares and menacing deadpans. He bore knives and guns, then delivered this blunt directive to his crew: ''Kill Batman.'' Still, watching his dark performance, it's hard not to be reminded of the tragedy surrounding Ledger's life and death. So in perhaps a marketing twist, the focus was quickly deflected to the tense dynamics between D.A. Harvey Dent (who'll go on to become the disfigured villain Two-Face and is played by Aaron Eckhart), Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), and Bruce's former flame Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
The Spirit: With help from moderator Kurt Loder (yes, MTV’s Kurt Loder!) and flirty star Eva Mendes, comics creator-turned-screenwriter/director Frank Miller (pictured, with Mendes) debuted a Sin City-kissed teaser-trailer about the lady-lovin’ vigilante who fights crime in Central City; sincerely emphasized the impact his friend and Spirit creator Will Eisner has had on his work; then offered this nugget when asked why he cast the not-so-well-known Gabriel Macht as the title character: ''Holllywood has produced many male actors, however very few men.''
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Star Wars: Fans filled up the auditorium seats fancying a glimpse at something — anything! — new from the new Indy movie...to no avail. (Apparently, Lucasfilm is stockpiling for San Diego.) Fans did, however, get a look at the Indiana Jones Original Adventures Lego videogame (out June 3, 2008; watch EW.com's First Look here). Think of every iconic Indy scene that you can, only built cutely in Legos, and you've got the idea. On the Star Wars front, the company simply offered more reminders of The Clone Wars movie — that CG-animated take on that intergalactic throwdown that occurred between episodes 2 and 3 — out Aug. 15, and its companion TV series airing on the Cartoon Network and TNT this fall. The clincher: an assembly of four or so Clone Troopers, in costume, on the floor. (A videogame, The Force Unleashed, will come out Sept. 16, in which you play Darth Vader's secret apprentice between episodes 3 and 4.) Also there: Seth Green and his Robot Chicken co-creator Matt Senreich, who, in addition to giving EW a shoutout (the duo met after Senreich read in our pages that Green was a geekish toy collector), provided such anecdotes as how one of Lucasfilm's mandates in making Robot Chicken Star Wars was not to use the word penis. (This is no joke.)
After the jump: Prince Caspian and Wall•E.
X-Files creator Chris Carter and regular franchise writer Frank Spotnitz brought two things to their panel at New York Comic Con yesterday evening: (1) A teaser-trailer for the out-in-July film The X-Files: I Want to Believe that was too short and sharply edited to reveal anything substantial plot-wise (though it did feature the sight of David Duchovny’s Mulder asking Gillian Anderson's Scully for help with something or other); and (2) a determination not to reveal anything else at all about the movie.
As Carter, who directed I Want to Believe, made clear from the start: ''I think everyone wants to be surprised on July 25.'' Fair enough. But that didn't stop various members of the gathered throng trying to get info from the pair — mostly in vain.
Question: Are we going to see the Lone Gunmen?
Carter's answer: ''Deny everything.''
Will we be surprised by the evolution of Mulder and Scully’s relationship?
Carter: ''I don't know.''
On the subject of the sci-fi sequel's much-rumored ''steamy love scene'' between its two principals, Carter joked that the sequence had been neither axed before filming nor cut in the editing room but was actually in the movie. He later made it doubly clear this was a gag by saying that actor Mitch Pileggi, who plays Mulder and Scully’s FBI boss, was in the sequence too. But the pair did let slip a handful of apparently genuine titbits about the movie. Scully’s family, it seems, does not feature in the film, and neither does Lance Henricksen's X-Files-universe character Frank Black. The pair also confirmed that Amanda Peet and Xzibit play FBI agents in the movie, and Spotnitz said that DC Comics would be announcing a new line of X-Files comics the next day (prompting Carter to point out that Spotnitz had basically just announced that himself: ''Don't tell anyone!''). Finally, the genial, silver-haired Carter laughed that he had not read any fan fiction to get inspiration for the movie's presumably non-existent sex scene, but that he appreciated the genre: ''People are living more hot and racy lives than me.'' —Clark Collis
The truth is out there...as a trilogy? X-Files creator Chris Carter has revealed that he has ambitions to make at least one more movie detailing the adventures of Mulder and Scully. "We would like to make another film," Carter told EW.com on Friday, prior to his
appearance at this year's New York Comic Con. "We're not under the
illusion that it's a given; we've got to perform with [this summer's X-Files: I Want to
Believe] in order to give it another day."
Another installment would make three films in the franchise, following 1998's The X-Files and the forthcoming, Carter-directed, I Want to Believe, which debuts in theaters July 25 and is a stand alone monster-of-the-week-type venture. But Carter suggested that a future movie might re-engage with the original TV show's overarching alien-invasion plot. Doing so could be timely given that, according to X-Files mythology, the final stage of said invasion is due to start in December 2012. "Well, we didn't think that one up," Carter said. "That is actually part of the literature. It is a Mayan date. But I think we'd like to revisit that whole storyline."
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