The Comic Con 2007 Superpost

24
There were a few things revealed: CTU will be disbanded by the government and Jack will be hauled in front of a Senate Committee to explain his actions over the past several seasons. The show, itself, will be set in Washington DC and not Los Angeles.

The movie won't be filmed until after the next season. An idea that's thrown about is having one half of the film in normal movie time and have an event set off a timer leaving the second half in real time.

Spoiler: An alternative end sequence was written but not filmed for the 6th season. When Jack was looking down the cliff he would hear "Jack, we have a lot to talk about". He turns around and who should he see? Tony Almeida. The theory is that if you didn't see someone die on screen, then it's still open for Tony.

Futurama
Good news everyone! While it was already announced a few months ago that Futurama would return in some form, it was only announced yesterday that it would in the shape of full-length high-def films sold on DVD. The first will be called "Bender's Big Score" released on November 27th.

It will be followed by three additional films, and each film will be divided into four episodes each to be aired on Comedy Central. So, that's 4 DVD movies or 16 new episodes depending on how you look at it.

The remaining three films will be titled, 'The Beast with a Billion Bucks', 'Bender's Game' and 'Into the Wild Green Yonder' but are subject to change. There was no information as to their release date. The first film centers around some nudist aliens and the secret to time travel which is somehow attached to Fry's buttock. Expect lots of animated asses actually. Welcome back, Futurama. The entire cast is returning and the first film is to be written by Ken Keeler and David X. Cohen (my favourite writers in the series).

Get Smart
The new movie based on the TV show of the same name had some more promising footage shown. It stars comedy superstar of the moment (alongside Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow that is) Steve Carrell taking on the role of Maxwell Smart. It also stars Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Masi Oka (Hiro from Heroes with an IQ of 180) and Anne Hathaway (my future ex-wife). Click here for the brilliant trailer. Click here for the original TV show intro and here for the 1989 version. As a bonus, click here for the Simpsons spoof.

Heroes
Show creator Tim Kring said that they had chosen the first director to do an episode of "Heroes: Origins", a six-episode spin-off series debuting in April, after the end of the regular season of Heroes. Origins is an anthology series, and each episode will serve to introduce new characters to the Heroes universe. Kring had previously noted that he felt the show was a great opportunity for writers, directors and actors who might otherwise not be able to commit to a TV series to have fun briefly playing in the Heroes sandbox.

Kring then said he wanted to bring the just-signed director up on stage. As the clueless panel all looked off-stage to see who was coming, Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman) started saying "No way! No way!". The audience then erupted in cheers, as none other than Comic-Con favorite Kevin Smith took to the stage.

In other Heroes news, there will be a hardcover DC graphic novel publication released of all the online comics that tied in with each episode collected together in a neat little package. The comics will feature the art of Tim Sale (of Batman: The Long Halloween fame) who created the artwork featured in the TV show as painted by the drugged painter who saw the future. The HD DVD boxset is out on 24th of August and I can't wait to pick that up.

The Incredible Hulk
It's still in the pre-production stages but the main cast and director came to Comic Con to reveal the bare minimum of information on the new Hulk movie. “This is a part one, this is the beginning of a whole new Hulk saga,” confirmed The Incredible Hulk producer Kevin Feige. Read the rest of the panel here. The film stars Edward Norton as Bruce Banner and Liv Tyler as love of his life, Betty Ross.

An interesting revelation about the film is that Eddie boy (as I like to call him) is more than just an actor. He said "I came into this and I wrote the screenplay. I was the Marvel kid. I had subscriptions to a lot of the marvel comics. I loved Hulk, the early incarnation of Hulk and then the television show when I was a kid." He goes on to say "I always felt like it was one of those great contemporary myths. It's almost like out of Greek mythology. This suppression of your inner demon". You can see the concept art for the new Hulk here. As you can see, they're taking it in a different direction i.e. longer hair.

Indiana Jones
There was just a live video presentation from the set of "Indiana Jones and the Something of Blah" or "Indy IV" since the full title hasn't been revealed yet. Stephen Spielbergo and the main cast were there (including Karen Allen who returns as Marion Ravenwood). The new members of the family include Shia LaBeouf (he's so hot right now) and Ray Winston (he's so hot right now). Here's the video of it all.

Lost
There wasn't much revealed at the Lost panel, but to be honest, this is Lost we're talking about. Nothing is ever revealed about anything. Ever. Oh my gosh, there's a polar bear after Jin! What happens? A flashback about Sun and Jin and how they struggled when living together. There was very little information given out except for the re-appearance of who plays Michael in the show. A lot of crazy promises were made by the shows producers with a new film also revealed to keep fans busy until next Spring.

What excited me most at Comic con, Lost related, was the first glimpse of Lost: The Video Game. It looks pretty effin' good to me. That said, I'd say there would be very little point to it. A game based on the first season is not going to reveal something we don't already know plus all the loose ends are going to be tied up by the show in the next 4 seasons. Season 4 starts next February for an uninterrupted 16 show run. Click here for a good panel report.

Smallville
The adventures of young Clark Kent is a guilty pleasure of mine as a huge Superman fan and of DC comics in general. At the panal presentation, we were introduced to Supergirl who will be played by the lovely Laura Vandervoort. Haha. That's a funny name.

Some nice tidbits were revealed. Some obvious points are that Bizarro and the Martian Manhunter take up the most of the season's early episodes. The early JLA will reappear with some old and new members with Green Arrow appearing mid-season. Bruce Wayne will never, ever appear in the show, however cool that would be with Wonder Woman an idea for the distant future.

Spiderman
There was a sneak preview of yet another new Spiderman cartoon series. The series will be based on a 16 year old Peter Parker who goes to high school. The show is promising to show the origins of everything in the Spiderman universe. I still love the old 1996 Spiderman cartoon.

Empire asked Sam Raimi about a possible Spiderman 4. He doesn't know whether he'll want to direct it or produce the film and he wants to find a script good enough so he can work on. All he did reveal was that the first meeting regarding Spiderman 4 happened only last week. Whether it'll still be the same cast again or if they'll introduce 17 antagonists in the next film is all guesswork at this stage.

Superman Doomsday
The direct to DVD cartoon based on the classic comic book had a quick Q&A on the film and why it's being done. I don't think it should have. As much as I love Bruce Timm's animation style and The Death Of Superman/ World Without A Superman/ The Return Of Superman/ Hunter: Prey graphic novels, I don't think they should have mixed. The trailer shows that the cartoon pretty much takes the comic shot for shot and throws some voices on it. Click here for the lifeless trailer in more ways than one.

Star Trek
The big news before the actual Comic Con was the confirmation of Zachari Quinto from Heroes as Spock as I posted a few days ago. At the actual panel presentation, people hoping to find out more about the cast (in particular, who'll play the young captain Kirk?) were disappointed. The only information given about Star Trek XI was that Spock will be played by two different people: Quinto and the original Spock and music superstar, Leonard Nimoy. When asked why he chose to come back to the Star Trek universe, Nimoy said that "it was logical". Geddit? Logical! Because that's what he would always say 40 years ago but with pointy ears. Hilarious I tells ya. JJ Abrahms admitted because of how great the script was that he'd be incredibly jealous of whoever would direct. It was also announced that the first season of Star Trek would be released on HD DVD in November. To see the comic con presentation, click here.

Star Wars
There was very little Star Wars news for such a geekfest. The actual Star Wars related news came in the shape of Family Guy. Airing in the States this September will be an hour long Star Wars special called "Blue Harvest". The title comes from the code name Episode IV had when filming. Here's a ten minute clip recorded at the Star Wars festival a few weeks back. It might reveal some of the best bits so be advised.

Wall-E
This new CGI animated feature film comes from Disney/ Pixar studios and is directed by Andrew Stanton, the man who was in charge of Finding Nemo. It's to be released on June 28th 2008 so there's still a good while until we see a trailer.

The story goes a little something like this: "WALL-E is the story of the last little robot on Earth. He is a robot that his programming was to help clean up. You see, it's set way in the future. Through consumerism, rampant, unchecked consumerism, the Earth was covered with trash. And to clean up, everyone had to leave Earth and set in place millions of these little robots that went around to clean up the trash and make Earth habitable again.Well, the cleanup program failed with the exception of this one little robot and he's left on Earth doing his duty all alone. But it's not a story about science fiction. It's a love story, because, you see, WALL-E falls in love with [Eve], a robot from a probe that comes down to check on Earth, and she's left there to check on and see how things are going and he absolutely falls in love with her." This one is going to be different and is one to keep an eye on.

So that was most of the news. I'll have the biggest movie projects of the convention Iron Man and Watchmen summaries tomorrow. I'm still trying to find the Iron Man footage as the one on Youtube was just taken down due to legal reasons.