Watchmen's Thursday midnight screenings grossed $4.6 million, reports Variety. Here's the boxoffice forecast. We know the comics epic will open huge. The question is, how will it play, not just here, but around the world? Here's my story in The Daily Beast. (I must say I enjoyed writing a full-length column again. I'd been missing it.)

The Wrap wraps up Watchmen. So does Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus is at 64%--the RT critics' base is wide and includes many online critics. UPDATE: The Guardian has issues with the way women make the transition from comic to screen.

Now that more of you have seen the movie, do you agree with me that it is disappointing and perhaps unfilmable as an action tentpole? And should have been done as a sophisticated, sexy, violent 12-part HBO series?

[Posted by Peter Debruge]

These days, my favorite thing about Pixar is the way each new idea they announce sounds even farther afield than the last, then the movie comes out, and it charms the pants off everybody: Rats in a restaurant? A robot love story?

Last week at Comic-Con, Pete Docter unveiled footage from Pixar's next curve ball, Up, in which an 78-year-old geezer (voiced by Ed Asner) fulfills a promise to his late wife, setting out on a great adventure to Paradise Falls, Venezuela. In the clip, the old guy pulls a fast one on two retirement home employees sent to collect him, attaching hundreds of helium balloons to his house and drifting away (with a hyper 9-year-old wilderness explorer named Russell unwittingly whisked along for the ride).

It was a gorgeous sequence, full of humor and sheer zen wonder -- the teaser only touches on it, since much relies on subtle character moments as old-timer Carl engineers his take-off (best of all, the presentation assured me Pixar isn't veering into Danny Deckchair territory here). That semi-surreal vision of so many multi-colored balloons against a clear blue sky reminded me of one of my all-time favorite television spots, the brilliant not-a-lick-of-CG ad for Sony's Bravia set:

But Docter lost me a bit when things flash forward to the jungle, to find Carl and Russell dragging the house by garden hose to its final destination: one of the unseen-by-human-eyes mountains that looms above the Venezuelan jungle. Is there really enough material here for more than a short film?

Then again, if we've learned anything from Pixar, it's that plot isn't nearly as important as character, and Docter made clear on the panel that his inspiration for Up was the personal revelation that old folks have led interesting lives. It's an intriguing thought: Could building a movie around a septuagenarian prove to even riskier than rats or robots -- and every bit as rewarding? (Don't forget, Pixar struck gold in this territory once before with the Oscar-winning Geri's Game, left.)

[Posted by Dave Lewis]

On the last day of Comic-Con, producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form allayed fans’ Friday the 13th fears with promises that their reboot of the horror franchise would keep Jason Voorhees out of hell, deep space and Manhattan. 

Fuller and Form are well versed in the land of horror remakes, with credits that include Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher, The Amityville Horror and soon, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. And, as cineastes might feel about Hitchcock, horror fans expect loyalty to the source material. The first-look teaser for Friday the 13th (shown twice) seemed to satisfy with slick thrills, plenty of R-rated gore and what appeared to be a fleeting glimpse of Jason as a boy. Likewise, the poster offers a faithful image of Jason's gruesome goalie mask.

The producers promised a more "realistic" take on the legendary slasher; this time around, the masked man sticks to Crystal Lake. "We tried to keep it rooted in reality,” said Form. “We tried to go totally away from the supernatural.” Form and Fuller said they took some inspiration from parts 2-4 of the original series, although it goes back to basics by exploring Jason's past and revealing how he got the mask.

“They made Jason smart,” said Derek Mears, who plays the iconic Voorhees. “You feel sympathy for him." Leave it to other actors to dream of assaying Hamlet, or at least Superman; Mears said that as a child he used to think, "Someday, I'd like to play Jason."

That said, when the panel suffered from dull spots, Form didn’t hesistate to pull in the film’s hunky and amiable star, Jared Padalecki. Offered Form, "Have you guys seen Jared with his shirt off?" The thought of seeing the star of the CW's Supernatural bare-chested got the fangirls screaming, the sound Form and Fuller hope to hear February 13. See more photos from the "Friday the 13th" Comic-Con panel.

Here's an excerpt from Variety's 1980 review of the original Friday the 13th.

The stoner comedy Pineapple Express, an inspired Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg/James Franco/David Gordon Green/Judd Apatow collaboration, will score big time. "I always thought Superbad would get made," said Rogen at the Pineapple Express panel. "But this I never expected to get made. When I watch this stuff I am amazed."

See photos from "Pineapple Express" panel at Comic-Con.

Besides the fact that both Rogen and Franco are growing into leading man status, the revelation in the film is the third leg of the stoner trio, Danny McBride.

I ran into him at the Pineapple Express party Friday night, the best of the Con (three agency parties thrown by CAA, UTA and WMA were packed with agents, mostly, while the PE party was poolside, civilized, not too crowded). It turns out that McBride really wants to direct. He studied film at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he and Jody Hill and Ben Best concocted the raucus martial arts comedy The Foot Fist Way, which played at Sundance and was eventually picked up by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. He also has a juicy role as a special effects wrangler in Tropic Thunder and is coming up in Land of the Lost and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles as well.

McBride now has a rising comedy career as a member of the McKay/Ferrell and Apatow comedy troupes. The ungodly stoner trio of Rogen, Franco and McBride did a lot of improvising, he said, including the last scene in the movie. (Apatow says that Rogen is unusually gifted at improvising entirely in character.) "I let the cameras roll," said Green at the Pineapple Express panel. "We do a lot of improvising. I let the actors have as much fun as possible which hopefully will translate to audiences. We started with a sober take, then went higher and higher until they were dancing on the ceiling."

"You don't have to know how to read," added Rogen.

"You don't have to memorize lines, which is nice," said McBride, who was told his character had shaved armpits, but not the reason why. "That's what you have to figure out," Rogen told him.

And nobody smoked dope. There were dangerous stunts, McBride pointed out. "I smoked a lot of weed in high school," said Rogen, who admits he once smoked pot with a fishbowl on his head. "You can't smoke weed when you're making a movie. It's too hard. There's too much heavy equipment around."

McBride answers a few questions on the Comic-Con press balcony:

At Friday night's EW director’s panel, Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Zack Snyder and Frank Miller gave up their geekiest moments.

Smith said he had just hugged Snyder, whom he had never met, after seeing Watchmen footage: ”I see Watchmen, I’m ready to fuckin’ die, my life has been fulfilled.”

Apatow confessed: “When I was in 6th grade, I chased Baa Baa Black Sheep star Robert Conrad on my bicycle for five blocks."

When Star Wars fan Snyder was shooting a TV commercial with Harrison Ford, he told the star that he had a full-scale action figure of Han Solo in Carbon Freeze in his house. “He said, ‘You probably shouldn’t have told me that,’” recalled Snyder.

On the set of Miller's first film Sin City (which he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez), in the first scene Bruce Willis comes in and finds out his girl has become an exotic dancer. Jessica Alba appears on stage with a lasso. “I had picked Emmy Lou Harris’s ‘Wrecking Ball,’" said Miller, "and I found myself bursting into tears to find that [what I had dreamed] had come true.”

[Photo courtesy the movieblog]

Judging from Comic-Con, vampires and werewolves of all shapes and sizes are on the rise.

Besides the romantic vampire phenom Twilight and the sexy HBO-targeted True Blood, a host of other vampire movies were on display at the Con.

Greek production designer and creature maven Patrick Tatopoulos has taken over the Underworld franchise, heading into prequel territory to provide equal time for the werewolves in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, starring a well-buffed, long-maned Michael Sheen (The Queen) as a werewolf in love with a sword-wielding, horse-riding, warrior vampire, Rhona Mitra (Doomsday), the daughter of vampire overlord Bill Nighy. "The last two stories were through the eyes of the vampires, in the air," said Tatopoulos. "This is about earth, a love story and quest for freedom."

"I'm a vampire, I'm a zombie and a squid," said Nighy. "How many people do you know can make that claim?"

Some of the fans actually booed a trailer showing Noah Wyle as a gentle librarian who falls for a sexy vampire in Jonathan Frake's The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice, basically a Something Wildish romantic comedy for TNT. The sequel Lost Boys: The Tribe looked pretty warmed over, too. “You’ll never grow old, you’ll never die and you’ll never know fear again,” one vampire tells a new recruit. Also not something I will ever see is Quarantine, a 2009 Screen Gems horror flick that traps a bunch of terrified people inside a tenement which has been infected by rabid vampire/werewolf attackers. It's done Cloverfield-style, and we're looking at the videotape. Or not.

X-Men's Wolverine is a kind of mutant superhero werewolf, right?

Hugh Jackman brought down the house when he popped into the Con, surprising the denizens of Hall H with a remarkable amount of energy for someone who had been on a plane from Australia, having just wrapped the X-Men spin-off, Origins Wolverine. It's his first visit with an X-Men movie, he said. Impulsively, Jackman jumped into the audience and greeted Wolverine comics creator Len Wein. "I have to shake your hand, buddy," he said. Without your pen I wouldn't have a career."

The movie is due May 1, 2009, based on a script by David Benioff. "The movie is big, it's action packed," Jackman said. "If I can describe the Wolverine movie in two words: It's badass." He added, "You're going to see a lot of berserker rage."

Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman and Jim Gianapulos were in the house as they screened some footage of Jackman and Liev Schreiber pitted against one another in training as they learn to control their powers. Gambit (Friday Night Light's Taylor Kitsch) was also unveiled. After the panel, Jackman flew off across the Pacific again, this time to Japan, for a vacation.

Yes, having Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London) do prosthetic make-up for The Wolfman is a good thing. CG will be used for the transitions, Baker admitted at the Hall H panel: “Something magical happens when you get an actor in good makeup, when he sees himself in the mirror, and says, ‘I’m the Wolfman.' This is an old-school gothic horror movie.”

“Everybody talks about how boring the makeup process is,” said Benicio del Toro, whose manager Rick Yorn sold Universal on this period remake of the Lon Chaney, Jr. classic, a fave of his client. “I loved watching him build the makeup for four hours. It’s about becoming. It’s exciting. The tough part is taking it off. That gets desperate.”

Even if del Toro is a genuine fan who argued for staying true to the original, the actor (as directed by last-minute helmer Joe Johnston) looks uncomfortable in 19th century tweeds as the estranged American son of Brit noble Anthony Hopkins and pursuer of corseted beauty Emily Blunt.

“I was running and screaming,” Blunt said. “I liked the whole idea of being a damsel in distress.”

“And I was chasing her,” said del Toro.

[Photo Jackman and Len Wein courtesy LA Times]

Click here for more photos from Comic-con

The franchise reboot of Terminator looks pretty strong under McG's direction. (It comes out May 22, 2009.) That the filmmaker is eager to prove himself with this picture can only be a good thing. His career is an odd one: many TV series and music videos led to his first film, Charlie's Angels, and its sequel, followed by the male weepie We Are Marshall. So McG (nicknamed after his mother's maiden name, because there were too many Joes in the house) is ready to rock.

He ran the panel like a paratrooper/cheerleader, even calling Christian Bale in Japan, and frequently asking the crowd to roar its approval. (It's become a sign of success to manipulate the audience into playing footage twice.) McG is in mid-shoot in New Mexico, where he likes the bleak desert, he told me later when I asked him about the film's Road Warrior influence. Playing to the fans, he said, "the whole thing began by listening, everyone wanted to look at the future, not T4. It's post-Judgement Day."

McG surrounded himself with credible talent, from Dark Knight's Jonah Nolan, who did a rewrite, to the dark Knight himself, Bale, ILM and the late animatronics wizard Stan Winston, whose designs "are all over this picture," McG said. "We have a lot of hardware," he said, displaying the bare-bones Cro-Magnon model T-600 Terminator, and plans to dedicate the film to Winston.

J.J. Abrams came to the Con with Fringe and Lost but not Star Trek, even though he could have, he told me. He was willing to, and had enough footage, even if he's still working on visual effects. Paramount did not want him to, he said. The studio's only presence at the convention was a screening of Tropic Thunder, which featured a funny intro with Ben Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jack Black as stars competing for geek cred. It would have played well in Hall H, if Paramount had done a Tropic Thunder panel, but the buzz on the screening spread throughout the convention anyway, as did the positive reaction to Pineapple Express.

Abrams was looking for Simon Pegg at the Pineapple Express party, who had starred as Scotty in Star Trek.

Here's EW's take on Star Trek's no-show at the Con.

One of my favorite bits in Hall H came from the always amusing Kevin Smith, responding to a question about the endless debate about rebooting Superman again. He cited Bryan Singer's intention to pull off a Wrath of Khan, the good, action-packed Star Trek movie that followed the first one, which was comprised, Smith said, mainly of long, lingering shots of the Starship Enterprise. "If you were into The Enterprise, it was porn," he joked.

Frank Miller's The Spirit may be too smart for the room. (Here's my interview with Miller.)

The footage for Miller’s homage to his comics mentor, the late Will Eisner, looked fun but strictly narrow niche, much the way Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse played best for folks who felt the same way about their B-movie inspirations.

Miller is a gifted, crafty storyteller/entertainer who clearly is having fun playing with his new medium while staying true to Eisner. “I grew up on Superboy, my love of telling stories derives from that,” said Miller at a director’s panel. “Any way I can explore the hero and bring him to life is another way to do my life’s passion. It’s my job to give you what you don’t ask for and don’t know you want.”

“We wanted the voice of the artist on the screen,” said producer Deborah Del Prete at The Spirit panel. “We went to Frank because of that vision.”

Miller embraced the advantages of his new medium, he said at the directors' panel. "I first went crazy with sound and movement. You don't understand how big that was. I was doing boxes with words over heads. My idea of an explosion was to write BOOM. I had some wonderful moments cutting shot to shot. Some aesthetics you develop translate beautifully into film."

When Samuel L. Jackson (The Octopus) kept demanding bigger and bigger guns, Miller asked the prop department to wire some guns together. “We made up the meanest, nastiest bad guns you’ve ever seen in your life,” said Miller. “When he holds them he looks like a robot transformer.”

Then Jackson had to work out in order to carry them. “I lost some weight that day,” he said. “I became a black skinhead.”

Lead Gabriel Macht plays a cop who comes back from the dead with some extra skills and juiced up pheromones, so that every woman he meets falls in love with him. While there are a bevy of bodacious babes (from Eva Mendes to Scarlett Johannson) in this stylized Sin City-style green-screen movie, and leads Macht and Jackson make powerful opponents, Lionsgate has some tricky marketing challenges ahead on this pic, which opens Christmas Day.

Miller says he dropped a half-finished graphic novel to work on this movie. According to Zack Snyder, Miller is also working on the prequel to 300, about an historic Spartan battle set shortly after the Battle of Thermopylae. Miller handed in the script for Sin City 2 some time back. I asked Rodriguez what was going on with that. Clearly the Weinsteins did not encourage him to rush ahead with that one, and he’s put it on a back burner in favor of something else, he said.

Here's The Spirit trailer.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: The Spirit Panel

The question hovering after Watchmen's delirious reception at Comic-Con is what will Warner execs Alan Horn and Jeff Robinov do now? They were both at the panel, and could see how well the Philip Glass-enhanced extended trailer played. It was gorgeous, visually arresting stuff, and the actors on the panel all reinforced the idea that there were real, rich characters to play here, well-written, with depth.

Of course what Marvel cut from The Incredible Hulk was the extra character nourishment added by Edward Norton. So will WB do the same here? Studios are responsible for looking carefully at the bottom line. So will cutting the movie down and losing some characters hurt the project? Every movie has a perfect length--but is it what's perfect for smart discerning Watchmen-philes and film critics, or the general public?

Here's my interview with Zack Snyder, and here's Reelz' video interview and Time's Watchmen take.

"Superhero movies don't exist just as summer popcorn mindless entertainment," Snyder told the 6500 fans packed into Hall H. "Watchmen talks about stuff that's important and serious. Serious filmmakers and actors are making these into cool movies. There are a lot of other cool graphic novels out there like Frank Miller's Dark Knight to make into movies."

Snyder said most of the movie was not shot the way 300 was made, on green-screen, but rather live action with practical effects--except for the Mars sequences and other FX being dropped into the movie, like Rorschach's moving inkblot mask. Billy Crudup did have to wear a suit covered with 140 dots as the very blue Dr. Manhattan.

"Getting into a costume and sticking a scar on my mouth helped me get in the mood to kill people," said Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Comedian (pictured here).

Matthew Goode took a big leap from the very twee Brideshead Revisited to Watchmen, which he admitted he had to look up on Wikipedia.

Snyder is taking the pirate story and animating it and putting it out on its own DVD, he said at the directors panel, with Gerard Butler doing the voice of the sea captain. He says he shot the transitions in and out of the black freighter so it can be added on the Watchmen DVD, too.

Artist Dave Gibbons expressed his amazement at walking around a real set (in Vancouver) and seeing his drawings brought to life. His trademark boxed signature will be visible on some of the sets in the movie, he said. He wished that Watchmen creator Alan Moore hadn't had such a bad experience on his last adaptation (V for Vendetta) that he refused to have anything to do with this one. That doesn't mean, Gibbons added, that the official Watchmen website shouldn't mention the guy's name.

The movie opens March 6, 2009.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Watchmen Panel

Here's the trailer.

[Posted by Kristina Rettig]  Actor Lee Pace in the Pushing Daisies press room. Pace said the cast has a $20 bet to see who can find Chewbacca at Comic-Con first. “The one thing that I love about this season is that Ned’s got a lot of problems," he said. "In the first episode, Chuck moves out [and] Olive goes to the convent." Showrunner Bryan Fuller credits the show's tone to Amelie, French cinema and horror movies and "a lot of credit goes to [exec producer] Barry Sonnenfeld" for its visual aesthetic. Photo by Olivia Hemaratanatorn

Some movie footage shown at the Con doesn't score with the crowd. Sometimes it's a question of how the material is presented. I was intrigued by the 4 1/2 minute extended trailer shown by Australian director Alex Proyas of his Nic Cage thriller Knowing (which Summit will release on March 20, 2009) mainly because it looks like it has more brain matter and visual skill behind it than most of the mind-numbing pictures shown here. Clearly, just because I respond to some of the artier presentations-- like Frank Miller's The Spirit-- doesn't mean they'll be mass audience fare.

I can't wait to get my hands on the director's cut of one of my fave dystopian sci-fi films, Proyas's 1988 Dark City, which will be released July 29th. It's the movie he originally made, 15 minutes longer than the bastardized edit that New Line Cinema released. "It's the cut I first tested," he told me. "Unfortunately the testing process did not go so well. We made a lot of changes. There are huge differences. The pace is different. This is a more honest-to-goodness director's cut."

Here's more info on Knowing from my interview with Proyas, as well as his first ever appearance at Comic-Con:

After the visually dense future worlds of Dark City and I, Robot, a studio tentpole which also featured heavy VFX, Proyas was happy to get back to a more reality and character-based drama, he said. "While there are quite a few effects sequences in it, they are subtly done. It's documentary in style, quite raw, hopefully believable."

The breathtaking plane crash scene, where Cage, having deciphered a page of numbered codes that predict disasters about to occur, stands on a highway and watches in horror as a plane crashes in front of him, was shot in one hand-held take, Proyas said.

The spec script by novelist Ryne Douglas Pearson had been kicking around for a decade (Richard Kelly couldn't get it off the ground). When Proyas read it ten years ago, he didn't see how to make it work, but five years later it came back to him in a tweaked form that he liked better. "It was improved substantially," he said. "I saw a clearer direction for where I wanted to take the story. Nic's character has lost his faith in human nature and the way the universe functions. He's on a quest to find meaning in the way the universe works."

Proyas was also relieved to get away from filmmaking-by-committee at Twentieth Century Fox, where making I, Robot, "a large and complex beast," was clearly not a pleasant experience for him. "It's increasingly important as to who I'm working with," he said, grateful that he could shoot in his native Australia.

A sci-fi, not comics fan, Proyas grew up on the classic novels of Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. And he has no plans to direct Silver Surfer, he said at Comic-Con: “Unfortunately that is just a rumor. I don’t know where that came from. I do like Silver Surfer, but I’m not going to be doing it.”

Here's the Knowing trailer:

"It's not minimum Payne, not medium Payne, it's maximum Payne!" declared director John Moore at the Max Payne panel. True confession: my experience with videogames is limited to Myst, Riven, and Sim City, basically. I have never played Max Payne and never will, nor is this movie aimed at my demo. Hardly.

"My challenge was not to screw it up," said Moore, who deployed a subjective video-game POV camera as well as super-so-mo Phantom camera which shoots up to 1000 frames per second. "You've got to follow the story. If you take the controller out of a player's hand, and he gives up control and lets you take it from here, you have to give him something exciting and kick ass. That's the point of playing the game. So on Max Payne we kick the shit out of the camera to make you feel like you're Max Payne in the movie."

The footage played well in the Hall. But no self-respecting female will go see this hardcore actioner, no matter how well Mark Wahlberg flexes his biceps. "After Invincible, The Happening and The Lovely Bones, I wanted to kick ass," he told the crowd. He compared this role (wishfully) to what he did in The Departed and Fear, saying this part is "driven by emotion." Wahlberg felt his Boston street cred helped in playing this role. "Payne is a happy man until his family is taken away from him and he gives up all hope in humanity," he said. "This is a dark and ugly world he lives in."

Mila Kunis plays one of quite a few tough babes on display at Comic-Con this year. "I learned how to use a gun and kick ass in five-inch heels," she said, playing to the gallery. "I had weapons training with an automatic and a colt and baton. I got to beat Mark up."

Click here for cast photos from this panel

Here's the trailer:

[Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Ludacris]

According to a San Diego State University study released on July 22, if things are bad for male film critics, they are worse for women.

Here's a sample of the findings in Thumbs Down: The Representation of Women Film Critics in the Top 100 U.S. Daily Newspapers:

*Men write the overwhelming majority of film reviews in the nation's top newspapers. In Fall 2007, men penned 70% and women 30% of all reviews.

*Of the newspapers featuring film reviews, 47% had no reviews written by women critics, writers or freelancers. In contrast, only 12% had no reviews written by men critics, writers or freelancers.

*Films with women filmmakers (directors and writers) and films with female protagonists and ensemble casts comprise a larger proportion of films reviewed by women than men. Thus, the under-representation of women film critics, writers and freelancers may cause films featuring females or with women filmmakers to receive less coverage.

The bottom line is that film criticism in this country's newspapers remains a largely male enterprise, echoing the heavy male dominance behind the scenes and on screen in the film industry.

And the coverage that movies with femme appeal do get from male critics is not the necessarily as positive or understanding as that from female critics. Mamma Mia! and Sex in the City would be recent examples. Why would a guy particularly engage with a romantic comedy like 27 Dresses? Professional film critics will argue that it is their job to know how to review such a movie. Let's put it this way. Some men are better able to adopt the female POV, and tap into their femme side, than others. Many men are not trained to do see things from the perspective of the opposite sex. All women are.

That's one reason why today's movies are so geared toward men, while women starve for material aimed at them. Women are accustomed to going along and accepting slim pickings in pictures by and about men. Even at Comic-Con, there's a sense that female fans are yearning for romance. The screaming response to Twilight's Brit heartthrob Robert Pattinson was enormous. He could be the next Leo di Caprio after Titanic, if Twilight hits as big as I suspect it will.

Men here were scratching their heads over Twilight. No clue.

Here's the LAT's video interview with Pattinson at Comic-Con. I feel sorry for the guy:

[Variety photo of Twilight's Robert Pattinson by Martha Hernandez]

Photo Gallery: 'Twilight' panel

[Posted by Krissie Rettig]

Warning -- spoilers ahead.

Lost fans may have come to see series creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, but they stayed for the prizes.

Like the Heroes panel before it, Lost needed time to hit its stride. Meeting the fictional head of recruiting for the Dharma Initiative (Hans Van Eeghan) was interesting; video of Octogon Global Recruiting representatives answering bizarre queries can be entertaining. However, fans want only one thing: Answers to burning questions left over from the previous season.

Adding to the fanboy and -girl glee, there were prizes for those who did the asking. One of the most unexpected prizes was the surprise arrival of star Matthew Fox, but it proved superfluous as all inquries continued to go to Lindelof and Cuse.

“Death is a relative term, really,” Lindelof told a fan who asked if the characters Jin and Locke were actually dead. “The show will still have both of those characters on the show.” (The fan was rewarded with bottle of water from Lost’s Oceanic Airlines).

And, when asked by a cave-dwelling fan whether Lost would end after two more seasons, Cuse gave the man a Lost calendar. “Mark the date,” Damon instructed. Well played.

Another fan was rewarded with a Heroes DVD box set after slapping Lindelof and Cuse on the wrist for season 4’s flash-forward/flashback episode with Jin and Sun, a combo that thoroughly punked many fans.

Here’s a list of other Lost tidbits revealed in the Q&A:

• The reflection in the water of the Oceanic Six (which resembled a cityscape to an inquiring fan) doesn’t mean anything. For once, it’s just a reflection.
• We will get to see Rousseau’s story in season 5.
• Cuse and Lindelof will employ a new storytelling device that is neither a flashback nor a flash-forward. In their classic nebulous style, the two didn’t elaborate.
• The show begins shooting in three weeks.
• Vincent (the dog) did “make it” beyond the season 4 finale and will be in season 5.
• Cuse and Lindelof wouldn’t say whether Jack and Kate will wind up together.
• However, they did confirm that Kate and Sawyer will see each other again.
• Daniel Faraday knows about the “secondary protocol” because his notebook (seen mostly in The Constant) holds information from both the past and present.
• Richard Alpert is “quite old.” Fox guessed that he was about 125.
• We will see Alpert barefoot in season 5 (for those wondering if the giant stone foot at the end of season 3 was his).

For rabid Lost fans, these tiny yet significant revelations are the biggest prize of all.

Click here for photos from this panel

[Posted by Brian Lowry]

If television has been something of a supporting player at Comic-Con, the 2008 edition pushed the medium's genre stars fully to center stage.

"Heroes" and "Lost" filled the 6,500-seat main auditorium - the first time series have invaded a space previously reserved for features. Many people slept out to ensure seats for Saturday's "Heroes" session and were rewarded with an early viewing of the full third-season premiere.

New Fox programs from Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams, "Dollhouse" and "Fringe," were among the weekend's more eagerly awaited presentations. And HBO's upcoming vampire drama "True Blood" was awash in theatrical-style promotion rivaling any of the major movie launches.

Post-strike anxiety clearly played a role in some of the producers' pleas to fans, asking them to beat the drum for shows sidelined longer than usual due to last season's work stoppage.

"Chuck" producer Josh Schwartz wasn't subtle, urging the audience to help the NBC sophomore hour survive a difficult time slot.

Given the tepid ratings for many scripted programs in the spring post-strike, networks and producers have reason for apprehension about the fall. For that reason, Abrams was philosophical about the "Fringe" pilot leaking online in advance, saying the breach at least reflected an appetite existed for the show.

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]

"Feast your eyes on the greatest writing staff in human history," said Rainn Wilson, introducing the writers of The Office. "Behold their gorgeous, gorgeous writer bodies."

It's been three days of Comic-Con. Let's let the writers speak for themselves: 

On Comic-Con
Greg Daniels: I always wanted to come to Comic-Con, but I wanted to spend time with my kids. I regret that now.

The Office vs. the office
Jennifer Celotta: One time we were just watching the animated cube bounce around the screen. Greg asked us what we were doing and we said, "It's just about to land in the corner."

Improv vs. scripted material
Michael Schur/"Mose": Rainn is a magical genius who creates all his own lines on the spot. Actually, we usually shoot the script a few times, but then we will let the actors and the writers tinker with it by adding lines. What gets in the show is a Frankenstein version of what we wrote.

Greg Daniels: The creators of the British Office, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, told us to make the actors great. Sometimes this is too successful.

Favorite characters
Mindy Kaling/"Kelly": I like writing for Ryan, especially for this season. He turned into the biggest d-bag of all time.

BJ Novak/"Ryan": I love writing for Michael. It's so cool to see someone in authority that is so innocent and so wrong.

On Pam and Jim
Daniels: We took inspiration from the classics. Sam and Diane. Ross and Rachel.

Novak: Spence and Heidi.

Using life experiences in writing
Rainn Wilson: I killed my girlfriend's cat once.

Anthony Ferrell: I used to work at Countrywide Loans and the printer would always fail.

Daniels: We had the Dundies at my real office, but we called it the Swampies. And we also had the office Olympics there.

Kaling: Michael, isn't there that time you walked into Greg's office as you saw his penis?

On being, as one fan put it, "the resident sex symbol for The Office."
Wilson: I feel great about that. Eat my shorts, John Krazanski!

Gallery: 'The Office' panel

[Posted by Kristina Rettig]

“Completely. Off. The. Hook.”

That’s what executive producer/writer/panel moderator Jeph Loeb promised for the upcoming chapter of Heroes (subtitle: Villains) as he tried to warm up the crowd before introducing the cast. Unfortunately for Loeb, the panel itself began very much on the hook. Broken elevators, traffic and other mishaps plagued the ensemble cast and they were entirely AWOL for the panel’s first 20 minutes.

As a result, poor Loeb was forced to play gameshow host to kill time, including getting the crowd to chant “He-roes! He-roes!” and having sections of Hall H face off in a screaming competition to prove whose fandom was bigger. Yikes. Nervousness seeped through the hall as fans wondered whether they would ever get the incentive to get on the Villains bandwagon, after what many said was a lackluster season 2.

Fans’ fears of an awkward, cast-less panel were relieved at about 10:55 am when the entire cast took the stage, including Tim Kring with a metallic suitcase handcuffed to his wrist. The contents turned out to be a DVD of the first episode of Heroes: Villains, titled The Second Coming. Once it was revealed that the panel would screen the first half of the two-hour season 3 premiere, the audience was pretty much reduced to a puddle of shivery fanboy goo.

Did it deliver? There were some scrumptious superhero goods, setting a high bar for the upcoming season. Without giving away too much, here is what I can tell you without absolutely destroying the experience:

1. Hiro gets some instruction from beyond the grave regarding his sacred duty and destiny.
2. Mohinder makes an important scientific discovery that has deep ethical and personal implications.
3. An unlikely messenger tells Claire something she didn’t know about herself and her abilities.
4. Malcom McDowell is awesome.
5. Peter Petrelli has some… issues.
6. We are given clues as to what superpower Angela Petrelli might have.
7. Maya’s accent mysteriously disappeared.

Fans were also told that missing episodes and much of the online content would appear on the season 2 DVD.

The episode’s success repressed any traumatic memories of the panel’s first 20 minutes. Milo Ventimiglia described the upcoming season as “Melt. Your. Brain.”

Off the hook, indeed.

Photo Gallery: 'Heroes' panel

[ Posted by Erin Maxwell]

The Simpsons came en masse to take on more than 3,000 crazed fans. The panel included Matt Groening (creator and executive producer, at right, looking jolly), Al Jean (executive producer and head writer), Matt Selman (executive producer), Michael Price (co-executive producer), Matt Warburton (co-executive producer), Don Payne (consulting producer), Carolyn Omine (consulting producer), Mike Anderson (supervising director) and David Silverman (movie and TV series director).

However, the panel did not include name tags that would allow me to tell who is who. And, rather than a moderator to host the event, fans were given a mike to exorcise their demons upon the panel. So, I now give you Team Simpsons vs. Ballroom 20:

Q: Will Marge ever gain weight rather than have Homer lose weight? (NOTE: Asked by either an 8-year-old or a short adult with a really high pitch. Sorry. I had terrible seats.)
A: *Stunned look from the panel*

Q: What celebrities will be on the show next season?
A: We have Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Robert Forster and Denis Leary. Denis will be on the show about Bart wanting a cell phone, but his parents won't let him have it. Denis loses a golf tournament and throws his phone. Bart finds it and does funny things like call his agent and sign him up for Everyone Poops: The Movie. Also, Seth Rogen will be on the show.

Q: Matt, will you be doing more with your Life in Hell comic?
A: For those who don't know, I draw a weekly comic called Life in Hell for the L.A. Weekly. It used to be in the San Diego Reader, but they don't like portrayals of gay couples in their publication, like with the characters Akbar and Jeff. So now every year I come to Comic-Con and denounce the San Diego Reader.

Q: What is the strongest season of the show?
A: Next season!

Q: Tell us about the ride (at Universal Studios Hollywood).
A: If you take drugs and watch The Simpsons on TV, you don't have to take drugs anymore. This will be like doing drugs and watching The Simpsons.

Q: What do you make of the rumors that this is the last season of the show?
A: Nothing should last forever, except The Simpsons.

Q: Why do the characters never age?
A: It would be like The Cosby Show. When the cute kids got older, they just brough on more cute kids. We can't do that with the show because it would change it. Sometimes we wonder what it would be like to see Bart as a teenager. Then you realize he would commit a felony, be tried as an adult and go to jail. We don't want to do that show.

Q: What do you think of all The Simpsons merchandising?
A: I saw this great diorama once at Comic-Con a few years ago of the Simpsons surfing. It was beautiful. The guy told me it was imported from Australia. Then he looked at me for a second and said, "Wait, didn't you create the Simpsons?" I said, "Yes. Yes I did." He said, "Sir, it would be an honor to sell this to you."

Q: Where do you get your jokes from?
A: Family Guy.

Q: How much of your life experiences are used in the show?
A: Well, when I was a kid they put a dome over my city and my family escaped to Alaska.

Q: What's it like to work on The Simpsons?
A: It's a labor of love. And a labor of work.

Q: Words of advice?
A: Remember folks, if you hang in there for 30 years, you too will have an animated show on Fox.

The real working stiffs of Comic-Con are the movie site web masters and their staffers, tirelessly filing away at their laptops, before, during and after panel after panel. "We wake up at 7 AM and go to bed at 2 AM," said IESB's Robert Sanchez at Thursday morning's web masters panel, "posting news, trying to link to others' stories. We celebrate our work. The entire online Comic-Con community can be proud we kick ass."

Enthusiastically and profanely moderated by self-styled bad-ass directors Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine (Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage), the panel provided a chance for them to promo themselves, natch, with clips from their upcoming Gerard Butler actioner Game.

All of the ten web masters consider themselves movie buffs first. "Instead of more traditional media, we start off as film fans, not traditional journalists," says MovieBlog's John Campea. "Every film fan loves finding a jewel, which we share with everyone else. I am not a journalist. I don't know what I am doing."

Some seemed to revel in the demise of old media. "The New York Times' profits are down 97%," proclaimed Sanchez. "That's awesome! Our profits are up 2 %. We're fanboys and geeks and proud of it. We appreciate filmmakers like you who reach out to the online community and make sure we reach out to our viewers and readers. We work hard not to be spoonfed by the studios. We have to get scoops."

To his credit, Devin Faraci of CHUD distanced himself from that POV, saying: "The internet is great at getting information out there but the truth is none of us assholes are out foraging for the latest George Bush scandal, and neither is Drudge or Wonkette. We need dedicated people who are funded to go places and report. The death of print journalism is a big problem for this country. I do care if the L.A. Times doesn't have a film critic or is closing its Berlin branch. We're fucked. It's a spooky time. Sure, the same way the studios are taking PR back into their own hands, instead of going through newspapers, the government will have its own bloggers on the payroll."

Faraci was also willing to admit that the websites don't always do their fact-checking. "We end up writing stories that turn out not to be true," he added, "scripts are changing day to day. And people from the studios are planting misinformation, like Chris Carter of X-Files."

When asked how Latinoreview got its hands on so many early scripts six months before they go into production, Kellvin Chavez quipped: "We clean your offices."

Today, these once unassuming fanboys are courted by studio flacks and granted early access to set visits, star interviews and marketing materials. "Studios are paying attention to sites and fans as part of the online community," said Sanchez, who was thrilled to be invited to DreamWorks Animation and meet Jeffrey Katzenberg. "They appreciate us more than traditional news."

"To be honest it sort of makes me jaded a little," said Brad Miska of Bloody-Disgusting.

Clearly, these web masters enjoy their access but are on their own as far as following any guidelines or maintaining objectivity. "I've been to a whole bunch of sets and met cool people," said Faraci. "It's amazing to step on a soundstage and see how it happens, to appreciate how hard it is."

AICN's Vespe admitted that all the access was problematic for a reviewer. "The danger of getting to know people isn't so much that you are willing to give a good review to a bad movie but that you see a mediocre movie and want to like it more." He said that when given access to the Transformers set, he made sure someone else reviewed the movie. "I write off the emotion of the first time I see a movie," he said, "that's what separates us from journalists. We're there because we want to be there, we're not some stage critic on assignment who doesn't care about movies."

12-year web veteran Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons, who says he built his site through word-of-mouth, visited the set of Driven and still wrote a bad review. "You have to tell people if a film sucks," he said, "even if you don't hear from them again."

Of course I disagree with Campea's definition of what a blogger does: "Real blogs don't break news like news sites," he insisted. "Blogs write opinion in editorials."

And the boycott of the trades does not seem to be widespread. "I'm not part of it," said Erik Davis of Cinematical. "We just do our own thing and link to whoever we get the story from."

"We do a lot of hard work," said Sanchez. "We had a scoop on G.I. Joe. And then the trades go out and post without giving any credit."

Cinematical uses fan reactions to trailers like The Terminator Salvation to gauge their interest in certain films, said Davis: "Each of these sites is posting about Dark Knight 20 times a day and it's not stopping."

[from left, Mike Sampson of Joblo (also pictured blogging in Hall H), Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons, Brad Miska of Bloody-Disgusting, Erik Davis of Cinematical and Eric Vespe (Quint) of aint-it-cool-news.]

Playtone producer Gary Goetzman wishes that Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn hadn't expressed his reservations about Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are to the LAT's Patrick Goldstein:

"We've given him more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film," Horn said. "We'd like to find a common ground that represents Spike's vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience. We obviously still have a challenge on our hands. But I wouldn't call it a problem, simply a challenge. No one wants to turn this into a bland, sanitized studio movie. This is a very special piece of material and we're just trying to get it right."

On the City of Ember train, Goetzman responded: "Warner Bros.' vision and Spike and my vision of the picture may be a little different. In the end good taste will prevail. The final cut is Spike's. Warner Bros. is not taking over the picture and has no intention of bringing down the hammer on anyone here."

The kid starring in the pic as Max (Max Records) isn't going anywhere. He was picked by Spike and approved by Warners, said Goetzman.

Goetzman admitted to me and AICN's Mr. Beaks that the live-action animatronic wild things definitely did not work in the context of shooting in the jungles of Australia and that CGI is being added now. "CG can always look right," he says. As for the rumor that kids ran screaming from an early research screening, Goetzman says that's not true: "There was no screaming, no crying, none of that."

Clearly, Jonze, who is still working on the troubled movie, needs more tinkering time. The original October release date is long past. But it does seem to make Goetzman a tad nervous that there is no new release date set. Clearly, limbo is not a comfortable place to be.

Earlier post: Where the Wild Things Aren't.

[Posted by: Kristina Rettig]

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Kiefer Sutherland drew the lion’s share of enthusiasm from the 24 crowd Friday evening, but the panel's special guest star was Carlos Bernard, an actor known to die-hard fans as Jack Bauer’s right-hand man, Tony Almeida – the one who died in season 5 at terrorists' hands in the CTU medical ward.

So what’s he doing here to promote Season 7?

Said Sutherland, “When [the writers] said that Tony was coming back again, I said, ‘How?’”

Fans’ fears of a hokey explanation were (somewhat) assuaged by the promise that the writers have concocted a compelling story arc that includes a very good explanation of why Tony’s still alive. “The writers insisted that Tony wasn’t dead,” said executive producer Howard Gordon. We didn’t love the way he died.”

Luckily, plausibility has never been a deal-breaker for most 24 fans, although they did grill the cast and crew over some of show’s biggest mysteries. Such as: “When does Jack ever go to the bathroom?” ("Whenever they cut to the White House, you can assume that Jack is getting a drink, taking a whiz and getting something to eat.) Or: “How does Jack make it from downtown to Van Nuys in 10 minutes?” ("Our 24-hour day is a really light traffic day.")

The panel also focused on the Africa-set 24 prequel, Exile, which will premiere about two months before the regular season resumes in January. The clip sent sporadic shockwaves through the room as fans got their first glimpses of Bauer kicking butt in Africa (and saving children, of course).

Regarding the show’s controversial use of torture, “Jack is going to have to face and deal with the things he has done,” said co-executive producer David Fury.

The panel’s best moment may have come when a young man, Cameron, asked Sutherland about his pervasive use of the phrase “Damn it!” and asked Keifer to give him a “Damn it, Cameron!” Sutherland turned around and, in classic Bauer bravura, yelled “DAMN IT, CAMERON!” The crowd erupted in cheers. It’s gonna be good to have Jack Bauer back.

The trick with Terminator Salvation is that the setting has moved from contemporary L.A. into the post-apocalyptic future, when the adult John Connor (Christian Bale) is battling to save humans from extinction. So Charlie's Angels director McG, who many film buffs have questioned as the appropriate choice for this project, has been able to reinvent the look of the series, make it "darker and grittier," says production designer Martin Laing, who also designed City of Ember. He says James Cameron spent three hours with McG, and was "very supportive," as was one-time Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger, now California's governor.

And the rating? "McG will make the best movie," he says. "He's not constrained. It will be PG-13 or R; we're trying for PG-13."

BTW, re: Terminator and Dark Knight star Christian Bale: He will not be at The Con. He's still travelling for Dark Knight, in Japan. And he probably doesn't want to answer questions anyway. Someone from Warners who was in his Hotel Dorchester Room when he had his altercation with his mother said it was not a big deal. He has not gotten along with his family for some time. And he has not been charged with anything by the London police.

UPDATE: Look for my report on the panel and talk with McG.

Joss Whedon isn't the only writer taking things into his own hands on the Internet these days. On the City of Ember train, screenwriter Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands) told me about her new short film distribution website small & creepy films, which she launched two months ago with her partner, producer Steve Nicolaides.

The duo invested some of their own money in it, though it wasn't "arduous," Thompson said. "Having worked in this industry so long, and given so much away psychologically, I wasn't willing to give anything more away. I'd look all day on the Internet where there are so many interesting things to see. We lack gatekeepers for outsider art."

Their first production (in partnership with Chiller TV) is the 28 episode web series The Hills Are Alive, produced and co-written by Nicolaides and Thompson, which they shot on their ranch in Ojai over many years.

Their goal is to collect and show "weird, genuinely out-there stuff," said Thompson, whose friends at film fests are sending them material. Small and Creepy is also sponsoring a young animator, Evan York, who records people's dreams and animates them with a Sharpie. For now the site shows shorts. "People don't have the patience or bandwidth to do otherwise," Thompson said.

Her goal, not yet met: "I will make a cell phone feature," she said.

While many of the questioners in Hall H were fans, one perky babe started to build a fanbase of her own after approaching the mike several times. They're even following her on youtube. She's Leah d'Emilio from Mahalodaily.com and the reason she's doing the public access: PR. Traffic. The usual.

Our intrepid reporter takes on the cult of George Lucas.

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]

Spoiler: George Lucas is a great guy!

These and other startling facts were clearly established at the panel for the upcoming animated feature Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Looking to score a few spoilers and watch a few cool clips, I snagged a place in Hall H. Usually, Hall H has a scary line that promises to eat away at my early 30s; alas, this one was a breeze.

Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni, producer Catherine Winder, co-writer and story editor Henry Gilroy and editor Jason Tucker were on hand at the sparsely attended event to chat about all things George. Meanwhile, the folks from LucasFilms got a chance to talk in depth about George, the new movie, George's genius, the new TV show, George's good looks, the trials and tribulations of bringing the toon to the big screen, George as an inspiration and George the legend.

Said Gilroy: "We needed to make something that would stand up to what came before. The bar was set really high. I worked on the comic adaptation of the movie and a few of the 'Star Wars' tales. If you are in that world all of the time, it starts to feel like home."

Said Tucker: "When I first met George, he said he had a lot of respect for the editing process. There is a part of him that is really open to new ideas. He gets very excited. At the end of the day, I learned more about clarity."

Said Filoni: "He was passing on what he knows."

Spoiler: George Lucas is a teacher to many.

Said Winder: "No one was clear how involved George would be. As the project developed, he was so excited by what we were creating and the unique look we were hoping to achieve."

Spoiler: George Lucas is a friend to all.

Said Winder: "When we got the material back, we reviewed it with George on the big screen. George got excited by what he saw. He asked me and Dave to turn it into a big-screen feature for the fans."

Spoiler: George Lucas loves fans. And is very excitable.

Winder added: "There is a lot to juggle with this project. I had to get into George's head. He wanted us to produce something that would blow people away. The first thing I had to do was find the creative team. I spent a lot of time search for the right people."

Said Filoni: "The Star Wars films inspired me creatively. You can tell a lot about a person by which Star Wars film they like… There have been arguements on whether or not a light saber can cut Superman."

Spoiler: The people who work for George Lucas love him like a father and think about him constantly.

Then the panel began to argue whether or not George Lucas had healing powers and if it was possible for him to see through brick walls. This was followed by a prayer thanking the heavens for sending us George Lucas and a hope that more episodes would soon be created as a method to help spread world peace. We then all held hands and sang the Ewok joy song from Return of the Jedi.

Okay. This is a lie. They showed a few more film clips and I had to leave because it was friggin' cold in there.

Number of times George was mentioned during the panel, on average: Once per minute.

This would have made a hell of a drinking game.

Comic-COn Photo Gallery: Star Wars - Clone Wars Panel

[Posted by Kristina Rettig]

Joss Whedon is a Comic-Con god, one who inspired fans to wait hours for a seat in the non-Whedonesque Stargate Atlantis panel — the better bum-rush the front as it ended. By the time the next long line outside Ballroom 20 was admitted, holdovers had taken up three-quarters of the room’s 4,400-person occupancy.

The fact that the panel began 10 minutes late didn’t seem to phase the fanboys and girls, some who wore T-shirts proclaiming, “Joss Whedon is my master now.”

While the panel was intended to feature Whedon’s latest project, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, fans preferred to focus on all matters Joss. Not that it mattered. Whedon and his Dr. Horrible stars Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion spent most of the time dodging questions in favor of keeping the party going, an approach that only seemed to further engage the crowd.

“You do kill a lot of chicks,” said Harris in response to a question regarding Whedon’s tendency to put a good storyline above his characters’ general happiness.

“I love happy endings. Some of you can remind me of some of them later,” Whedon replied.

As for his own unhappy endings, Whedon said, “I’m wiser than when I did Firefly. Anything that doesn’t get out, I can make on the internet now. ‘Dr. Horrible’ is about putting power into [fans’] hands.” This got an explosive response from Whedon fans who disagreed with the networks' opinions on shows such as Firefly and Angel.

By the time Whedon left Ballroom 20 to a standing ovation, the audience had learned the following:

1. “Cabin in the Woods” is in the works.
2. For now, the “Fray” series is not happening.
3. Xander will return in the Buffy comic.
4. The “Dr. Horrible” universe is expanding to include a part 4 (says writer Jed Whedon), a soundtrack (available in the next couple of weeks), a DVD (with a contest for 3-minute videos) and if you want a “Dr. Horrible” van remote, go here.

"We think we are making a character show with a mythology," said "Lost" creator Carlton Cuse. "The characters are the cake and the mythology is the frosting."

[Posted by Erin Maxwell]

"I just wanted to cram a show with as many things as I could that would make me smile, like doggies and pie," said Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller.

Entertainment Weekly’s showrunners panel focused on programs that push the limits of TV viewing, with themes that don’t include a boy-girl romance or a gruff detective with keen insight into the human mind. Instead, we have a pie-loving character with the ability to resurrect the dead, a fembot sent to protect a future leader and a government agent whose prior experience is handling IT at an electronics retailer.

"The best thing to ever be uttered by a network would be, 'We have too many shows about time travel,' Fuller said. “That would be an achievement for everyone in this room."

Showrunners had to deal with writer's strike fallout over the past year, something that was especially difficult for first-year series working to build a fanbase.

“There was a period of time where the network was trying to figure out when to bring us back after the strike, but they didn't want to throw us under the American Idol bus,” said Fuller. “Pushing Daisies is picking up 10 months after the last episode. All of the characters kept the secrets they learned last season and now are ready to bust.”

Josh Schwartz of Chuck says his solution is to pretend they’re starting from scratch. “We are writing the first episode of the new season like a pilot," he said. “We come back with Chuck dangling off a roof and telling us what has happened.”

One of the strike’s key issues was the production of Web content. "It's a reality of the business that people just want more," said Josh Friedman, creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Lost creator Carlton Cuse described online content as an opportunity to expand the fiction. "Our reality games are fun because we get to tell a story we can't tell on the show,” he said. “It's for people committed to the mythology.”

Fuller said, "We were going to do a series of animated shorts on Pigby. But due to the strike, we got a lot of resistance."

Showrunners also said they initially faced the stigma of "genre shows,” since programming with heady sci-fi or fantasy themes had a history of being ignored or rejected by networks and/or audiences.

"We call the mythology the 'rabbit hole.' We can spend six hours talking about time travel and will end up not writing at all," said Friedman. "We went down the rabbit hole in a few episodes and it took us a while to get out."

“There is a fine line between mythology and mechanics. George Lucas drew it when he came up with midi-chlorians,” joked Fuller. "No matter what the genre elements, you will have to want to spend time with those characters for a while."

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Lost Panel

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Pushing Dasies Panel

It will be interesting to see how much interest there is today in the remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still. One trend at Comic-Con is star managers pushing clients who are fans of a remakeable brand-name project. Erwin Stoff pitched Keanu Reeves for this one 15 years ago, and Rick Yorn pitched Benicio del Toro for Wolfman after seeing the poster in his house.

Stars always need tentpole movies. And Reeves seems to be a good fit for the alien Klaatu; he has an ethereal stillness to him that works in the footage we saw in Hall H Thursday. "'That guy can play the alien,'" Reeves joked to Stoff, who liked the idea of a movie that looks at the denizens of earth from an alien POV, Stoff said.

Director Scott Derrickson was also a fan of the original and actually met Wise when he was still a film student. Wise told him to do a horror film to show his stuff. And so he did, with The Exorcism of Emily Rose. "The original film was such a product of its time," said Derrickson. "The idea of updating it made sense. We're not dealing with a nuclear threat. The U.N. exists. The issues are different. The idea of an alien coming to earth who looks at human nature from an outsider perspective is an interesting take. In some ways it's about what it mean to be human."

"There was an objectifying and containment to him," said Reeves, who says this interpretation of the character is less "warm and fuzzy and human. I'm not that guy. He goes on a journey of seeing and looking and being affected by humans."

The relationship of Jennifer Connelly and her stepson (Happyness star Jaden Smith) shows Klaatu what humans are all about.

Derrickson completely reimagined the look of the alien technology as more organic and "ecological," he said. Wellywood's Weta Digital is beavering away on the elaborate VFX.

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: FOX (Includes The Day The Earth Stood Still)

[posted by Erin Maxwell]

Blink while watching an episode of Spaced and you'll miss six Empire Strikes Back jokes, at least two references to Evil Dead and a few random tidbits about The A-Team. Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes created the sitcom for the U.K.’s Channel 4 in 1999 and while the tale of Tim Bisley and Daisy Steiner renting Marsha's flat only lasted for two seasons and 14 episodes, Spaced turned comicbook fans and Star Wars geeks into rabid fanboys.

Now, almost a decade since it first preemed on Channel 4, Spaced finally crosses the pond as the DVD makes its U.S. debut with commentary from fans like Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Diablo Cody, Bill Heder and Patton Oswalt. It's about bloody time.

“There is an episode in the second season where we parody Pulp Fiction,” director Edgar Wright said on a Friday afternoon panel that included stars Pegg and Jessica Hynes. “It was great to actually get Quentin to do the commentary."

Getting folks on board for Spaced wasn't always easy. "When we were showing him the first treatment, the main studio guy said, 'I don't get any of it, but I love it,'" said Hynes.

"We look back now and realize how lucky we were. We look at American shows and we would never be able to get to make it here," said Wright. "There are a lot of great shows out there. It's always amazing to see what catches fire.

"I think that it resonates with fans because they can sympathize with Tim and Daisy," said Wright. "At the time we made it, we were those people. At the time, youth shows were being written by men in their 40s. We were actively living those lives."

So, what are the chances for a "Spaced" reunion? "I'm so old now," said Pegg. "Tim was 27. I'm 38."

"We were thinking of doing a third season, but with a complete CG background and flat dialogue," said Pegg.

Added Wright, "I would direct from inside an office where I wouldn't have to have contact with humans."

One of the fun things about wandering The Con is seeing all the folks in their costumes. And some other random sightings. The goofy guy is Ben Lyons, one of the two co-hosts of At the Movies, who is here covering for E! (a job he is keeping, btw).

For more (and better) Comic-Con photos check Variety's photo gallery. New photos are being added here on the jump:

When EW writer Nicole Sperling posted a Twilight item on her blog, she got 821 comments in 15 hours. Thus it was no surprise Thursday that screaming women flocked into Hall H prepared to screech like Beatles fans whenever Harry Potter star Robert Pattinson opened his mouth.

The poor guy was "tweaked," admitted one Summit staffer who tried to prep the guy in advance. He could barely talk amid the screams in a room packed with some 7000 people. "Let me focus," he begged. One fan asked a question about The Day the Earth Stood Still and Twilight opening on the same day, December 12. 'Who will win?" The fans screamed their answer.

"I just wanted to play the hottest vampire in the world," joked Pattinson. "He's a fantastical dude and he dazzles."

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Twilight Panel - includes more photos of Robert Pattinson

High above the exhibition hall at Comic-Con, Warners was conducting interviews Thursday for Watchmen in advance of their anticipated Hall H show-and-tell on Friday. Zack Snyder is currently battling with Warners over the ultimate running time of the movie, which is three hours. He's trying to cut it down, but doesn't want to lose a character like Hollis, a guy who gets murdered about half way through. ""I'm not ready for that yet. If Dark Knight got two and a half hours, Watchmen should get fifteen minutes more," he pleads. "I'm trying to be reasonable." Snyder is caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the studio's commercial demands and the fans who love the comics. A movie has to reach beyond the faithful, remaining accessible to mainstream moviegoers.

Thanks to his success with 300, Snyder was able to sell Warners on a faithful adaptation of the Alan Moore mid-80s classic graphic novel. All the previous adapters changed something fundamental, he points out, like updating it to the war on terror. He sets his in the 80s, cast unknowns, and insisted on an R rating. "I wouldn't know how to do it otherwise," he says. "Fans should thank 300 because there's no way they would let me do it, no way, I've taken full advantage."

But the studio still thinks Watchmen is too "too long, too sexy, and too violent," says Snyder. For him, "that's a reason to go. That's the why. If you take that out you take out the why." Otherwise it'll just be another "watered down version of Watchmen, and then you might as well make another superhero movie. There's a million characters out there you could do instead."

On the amazing maturation of comics-based cinema, Snyder says, "People are interested in comic book movies because they represent mythology and adventure heroes. They allow fantasies to exist in our world. That worked with a great movie like Dark Knight, which took it over the top. You look at Iron Man and you have the same thing, a serious actor like Robert Downey Jr. in a serious portrayal of a guy and then you have this cool fantasy aspect that makes for a great time at the movies. That's what comic books allow us to do, they live in our world but they also allow us to experience some sort of mythological connection to gods or whatever you want to call them, and that's archetypal and everyone can relate to it."

Watchmen "deconstructs those same mythological ideas," he says. "Watchmen says, 'you know what? Look at your heros, what are they really? They're us dressed up.' The cool thing about Watchmen is it allows the story and the characters to comment on our world, comment on ourselves. It's a modern superhero movie, modern in the sense that it is slightly intellectualizing the concept of superheroes. People have to come to Watchmen, Watchmen can't go to them. If I've done it right, the movie will get more people into the graphic novel Watchmen itself, so they could read it and say, 'wow, this is what a superhero could be!'"

When he put the looks and costumes together, Snyder used the book, he says, "it works. Why would you change it? The film has to exist for a cinema audience the way the comics existed for comic book fans in 1985 and 1986. It's got to be able to comment on how cinematically people relate to superheroes. The cool thing about Silk Spectre is her outfit is overtly sexual. You can't put that outfit on a Fantastic Four. If I was making a PG 13 movie everybody would be up in arms. This girl is clearly using sexuality as a weapon. That's the point. It's nipply. It's like a dominatrix outfit. That's the fetishistic aspect of it. You have to go all the way."

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: The Watchmen Panel

[Posted by Liz Shannon Miller]

COMIC-CON -- The "Dexter" fanbase turned out in force Thursday night, primarily for the chance to ask what it's like to play likeable serial killer Dexter Morgan. In between scarfing chocolate kisses on the table (having been stuck in traffic all afternoon, "Dexter" star Michael C. Hall was starving), Hall said the character was fun and challenging. "He confides in the audience in a way that he doesn't confide with anyone else on the show," he said. "And if you watch the show, you find yourself implicated in these events."

Hall wouldn't get into how his relationship with Rita (Julie Benz) evolves in the upcoming season, but, per footage screened prior to the panel, "He's definitely learned how to have sex. That I'll cop to."

Said Benz, "(Rita) truly sees the good in Dexter. Even if there was DNA evidence and photos in front of her, she still wouldn't believe it was true.

"Every man needs a hobby," Benz said."Some men play golf." ("At least it's not a boring hobby," moderator Kristin Dos Santos agreed.)

Nonetheless, the panelists agreed that the show's dark nature affected all of them. Producer Clyde Phillips said one writer's assistant on the first season left after the first few episodes because she was "bringing it home with her."

"The longer you do it, the easier it gets to decompress," Hall said.

Regarding the series' repurposing for CBS, Phillips said the cuts made by CBS, in order of priority, were for time, language, nudity, and finally, for gore. "We're really not that gory a show. If you add up two years of what we've done, we've only done a few minutes total." However, everyone seemed happy to exchange the content for the chance to reach a larger audience.

"'Dexter" first came to CBS because of the writers' strike, but it also fit into the networks' pattern of crime shows. However, while no one believed the possibility of a "Dexter" crossover was likely, Hall floated the idea of a "CSI: Miami" guest appearance -- where, in his role as a crime scene analyst, all he would do is help solve a crime.

"Dexter" season 3 airs on Showtime this fall.

I saw three summer comedies in a row this week, two from the Judd Apatow factory, Step Brothers and Pineapple Express, plus Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, which screened at Comic-Con last night (Pineapple Express screens here too). UPDATE: Here's Todd McCarthy's Tropic Thunder review.

Step Brothers is a great premise that has been sketchily executed; Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are often hilarious acting like ten-year-old boys, but the concept quickly wears thin. Pineapple Express is the best of the three movies, and the smartest; Seth Rogen, James Franco and Danny McBride are inspired throughout as pot heads on the run from some killer drug dealers. An intelligent director, David Gordon Green, an indie dramatist-turned-studio-comedy guy, makes all the difference. These guys cared about the details. It's not sloppy.

While Tropic Thunder is also funny, it's also really expensive, so it gets top-heavy as a star-studded big- budget action film shot on location in the jungle. The Comic-Con crowd ate it up--especially the opening intro with Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. competing for Comic-Con geek cred--although I had a sense that it was probably too inside for many of them. It's a rather reflexive and sophisticated treatise on filmmaking in Hollywood today as well as the art of acting. Robert Downey Jr. (as an Australian actor staying in character as a black dude) and Stiller (as an action hero who can't discern reality) dissecting their identities as actors is hilarious. Tom Cruise and Matthew McConnaughey also offer support with risible results as producer and agent, respectively. Actor/screenwriter Justin Theroux did so well with this he's writing probably the hottest project in town right now, Marvel's Iron Man 2.

On the City of Ember promo train from L.A. to San Diego on Wednesday, I found myself in close quarters with folks from the likes of Time, LA Times, aint-it-cool-news, sci-fi channel, and CHUD. I've always prided myself on being able to hold my own with the fanboys, but was stopped cold when one guy asked me point blank, as a large group listened intently, what was my favorite Adam McKay/Will Ferrell movie? My heart stopped cold. "Um, I've never seen Talladega Nights," I stumbled. "I didn't like Step Brothers that much either. So I guess it would have to be Anchorman."

So lame. BTW, the train ride was a brilliant promo idea on the part of Fox Walden's Jeffrey Godsick, who commandeered two cars and attached them to a train, showed 23 journalists some footage of Monster House director Gil Kenan's City of Ember, which was adapted by Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands) from the 2003 novel. It took Playtone's Gary Goetzman four years to get the movie made, for a price, $35 million.

The footage was promising: Saorise Ronin runs around an amazing set that was built by production designer Martin Laing in Belfast, Northern Ireland in a gigantic ship factory eight stories high. (The Titanic was built there.) He emptied it out and built what may be one of the last gigantic practical sets.

I got Kenan to admit that having come from the freedom of the CG animation world, he was a tad frustrated by the limitations of live action filming, and may return to animation. The movie looked like one of those fun escape into a future fantasies that still relate to the real world: deep underground, City of Ember is running out of resources, and mayor Bill Murray is hoarding. "It's a relevant and potent morality tale," said Thompson, "about society running out of food and power, corrupt at the top and so startlingly to the point, as the grown-ups are asleep at the wheel, in denial."

It's the younger generation that figures out how to save the human race from extinction. Shades of Wall-E.

[Posted by Liz Shannon Miller]

COMIC-CON -- Despite reports that they've called off their engagement, Rose McGowan and Robert Rodriguez gave every appearance of being nothing short of ecstatic to be working together on the remake of "Red Sonja."

The project's still in the process of scouting and casting, but that didn't stop them, along with director Doug Aarniokoski, from parading concept art featuring McGowan in Sonja's steel bikini. 

The panel's Q&A suggested a strong contingent of "Grindhouse" fans, whose questions included whether or not there would be a sequel to "Planet Terror" (a possibility, according to Rodriguez) to what would be the subject of Rodriguez's next "10-Minute Cooking School" - the DVD's featurette. The last one instructed viewers on how to make breakfast tacos out of migas and homemade tortillas.

"I love those tacos," Rodriguez raved. "I still eat them every day. You love them too, right, Rosie?" 

McGowan's response was somewhat reluctant.

However, her enthusiasm for "Red Sonja" knew no bounds. "I want to retake female vengeance," said McGowan, who said she'd rejected countless movie offers that would have had her play "the girlfriend." She said her childhood  fantasies included growing up to be "La Femme Nikita" -- a claim that inspired cheers from the audience that packed out rooms 6C-F. She said she plans to do her own stunts and will also be trained in free-running and swordplay.

Another question: "Can we get some 3-D?  So we can get some CGI 3-D blood in our faces?" Replied Rodriguez: "You want to see 3-D cleavage, too. Admit it." But while Rodriguez floated the possibility of 3-D, he did not confirm it. He did promise that the film would be bloody enough to create "the double-R."

In this video, Anne Thompson goes one-on-one with Rodriguez and McGowan.

As for villains, Rodriguez mentioned Danny Trejo (his second cousin as well as an actor) as a shoo-in, saying that Trejo calls him daily to ask when they'll be making the "Machete" full-length feature (adapted from the fake trailer that opened "Grindhouse"). Rodriguez says "Machete" plans are definitely in the works. 

Aarniokoski promised a mix of green-screen and practical locations; McGowan promised that, unlike the original Sonja, Brigitte Nielsen, she would not sport a mullet. 

"Would I keep my sword?" she was asked. "Hell, yeah. I'm gonna get another one for my grandchild."

Comic-Con Photo Gallery: Red Sonja Panel

At 3:14 Thursday afternoon, the California Highway Patrol removed the SIG alert on I-5, thereby allowing Hollywood's exodus into Comic-Con to continue unabated.

The drama began a little after 5 am, when a tractor trailer flipped over and sparked a four-acre fire at Camp Pendleton, the major West Coast base of the United States Marine Corps that lies about 40 miles north of San Diego. While the blaze was doused within an hour, the traffic headaches had only begun.

Among the reported "missing" at Comic-Con today were "Kings" star Ian McShane, "Knight Rider" producer Doug Liman and "Push" star Dakota Fanning, along with an untold number of film and TV executives who wished, more fervently than ever, that they had easy access to a helicopter. -- Dana Harris

COMIC-CON -- After writing "Tintin," why in the world would Steven Moffat turn down the chance to write the sequel? Because, while there's nothing but love for director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson, he may love "Doctor Who" even more.

Moffat, who was recently announced as the showrunner for the fifth season of the BBC's "Doctor Who," raved about his childhood love for the British sci-fi icon at the Thursday's noon panel, refusing to pick a least-favorite of the show's previous incarnations.

Asked which version of the series was his favorite, Moffat expressed his loyalty for the current series "because Tom Baker (the fourth actor to play the Doctor) never rang me up and said, 'oh, go on.'  But I did love it all, genuinely."

"You write the kind of 'Doctor Who' that you remember and I remember being absolutely terrified," Moffat said. "So that's what I write." 

Moffat will take over the series in 2010, but says he has already begun writing the first episode "very, very slowly." -- Liz Shannon Miller

FROM COMIC-CON -- Biblical overtones exploded into a full-on David-and-Goliath adaptation in the 20-minute excerpt of "Kings," which screened Thursday morning to a half-full room 6B. The pilot sets up an alternate universe where, after a devastating civil war, New York and the surrounding area has become a kingdom led by King Silas (Ian McShane). David (Chris Egan) takes on Goliath-brand tanks. That sets up the premise, but the exerpt revealed little in the way of upcoming twists.

Following Q&A was moderated by actor Greg Grunberg ("Heroes"), who hinted repeatedly for a "Kings" guest spot throughout the panel. Ian McShane wasn't able to make it in time, but sent along a message cursing out the 405 in pure Al Swearengen mode (which is to say, unrepeatable outside of "Deadwood"). Susanna Thompson referred to him as "a force of nature," while another cast member called him "a puppy."

Creator Michael Green ("Heroes") spoke candidly about getting the opportunity to pitch a pilot to NBC: His response was to "give them the weirdest idea I had."

Audience questioned both the religious and political overtones of the story. Green denied intending a Biblical context -- "it's just a hero's story" -- despite the pilot beginning with King Silas giving a speech full of references to God.

"Is the fact that it's a monarchy meant to be omnious?" one audience member asked, admitting, "it made me feel a little uncomfortable." But the panel refrained from drawing comparisons between the political structure of "Kings" and the current American government, preferring to point toward the parallel between the power held by corporate CEOs.

"Kings" will premiere in February on NBC. -- Liz Shannon Miller

Images from the "Fringe" website. What do they mean? After seeing the pilot, we still don't know, either.

Variety is now at Comic-Con and will be through Sunday, with tales from the front appearing on Thompson on Hollywood. First up is Liz Shannon Miller, reporting on reaction to the pilot for the new Fox drama "Fringe."

The gross-out teaser for the "Fringe" pilot got a vocal reaction from fans at Wednesday night's screening, setting the bar high for future installments of the JJ Abrams-produced series.

Event had low turnout; Wednesday night is traditionally sparsely attended, with most Comic-Conners choosing to spend their time on the floor. However, those in attendance were a rapt audience, with Joshua Jackson's delivery of some wittier lines drawing big laughs from the drama's rare moments of comic relief.

Despite a hearty round of applause at the conclusion, reaction was mixed. Some attendees praised the series' mystery qualities, but also found it a little slow and long (probably not an issue for the pilot that airs; the version that screened tonight ran over an hour). One audience member Mark Davis compared it to "The X-Files;" another said she enjoyed the show's puzzle-like elements.

In keeping with those elements, cards promoting a "Fringe" ARG were distributed throughout the evening, with a map of the area surrounding the San Diego Convention Center on one side and a message for those attending the "Fringe" panel on Saturday to be sure that they "do not leaf [sic] the convention center without getting your clues." Those who are not able to be there are advised to check out Explore the Impossiblities, a site that doesn't seem to feature much content -- yet. Like "Fringe" itself, the site hints at infinite possibilities lurking beneath the surface. -- Liz Shannon Miller

With Comic-Con looming, movie sites are pushing to get scoops on new movies of interest to the fan community. A sequel to 300, which broke big at Comic-Con, is a big deal.

Thus at the Saturn awards last month, after Collider.com got Zack Snyder to talk about a planned 300 sequel, word spread through the fan sites and eventually Variety tracked the story down and got official confirmation of Frank Miller writing a 300 prequel for Snyder to direct.

Here's how Variety handled the online coverage:

Another "300" has been rumored from the start, but last week Snyder and the original producing team stoked a frenzy online when they talked about it at the Saturn Awards.

This happens a lot.

This doesn't mean that Variety purposely stole the story, as Collider suggested. Variety's Diane Garrett actually nailed down more info.

It's not always cut-and-dry--sometimes everyone is chasing the same news and a given reporter may not be aware of what has broken online. A reporter isn't always tracking down where something broke first, just the story itself. "Sometimes when a publicist sees a story break online," asserts one major online site editor, "they try to place the story in a legitimate news source and they don't necessarily let anyone know."

The Collider protest led to several other sites joining a boycott of the Hollywood trade papers. Here are reports in Folio and MTV News, which spoke to Variety editor Peter Bart. He announced Variety.com's plan to create a blog of blogs:

“I think we’ll grow together. I really do and I think to some degree we want it. I would like to have us develop a blog of blogs, where we get a highlight reel of the best blogs that deal with the entertainment media. I think that will happen before long, and I think that would ameliorate some of these concerns.”

The fight for numbers now is so fierce that the site that breaks a story wants to get credit for it---via links and traffic. That is what is at stake. By the way, a host of mainstream outlets, online and print, rewrite Variety stories without always giving us credit, either. This is the way of the world.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
Now that the Watchmen trailer has hit the web, giving us a tantalizing look at the film's visual effects and overall style, here's a tidbit about how those wicked-cool Dr. Manhattan effects were created. Billy Crudup appears in the trailer as Jon Osterman, who becomes a superbeing after a laboratory accident. (Shades of Bruce Banner!) For his post-accident scenes as Dr. Manhattan, Crudup is replaced in the film with a motion-capture CG version of himself. During filming on set, Crudup acted opposite his co-stars, wearing a suit covered in blue LEDs, so he would give off an otherworldly glow in real life, just as Dr. Manhattan does in the movie.

I'm not going out on a limb to say that the most anticipated presentation at Comic-Con will be Zack Snyder's panel on Warner Bros.' The Watchmen. Remember, 300 exploded out of Comic-Con two years ago.

The trailer hit the Web this week, and the HD version is stunning. I love trailers where you don't know what the hell is going on. Of course afficionados of the Alan Moore comics can identify the origin story of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and the shadowy bipolar Rorshact Rorschach, among others.

Snyder himself explains some of his secrets here. UPDATE: And here's EW's Snyder and Alan Moore interviews. And Comic-Con preview. Stay tuned to Variety's ongoing Comic-Con coverage.

Today I talked to someone who has seen the movie, Legendary Pictures producer Thomas Tull, who goes 50/50 with Warner Bros. on such films as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Superman Returns, 300 and The Lady in the Water (the only film he didn't actually produce). An old Watchmen comics fan, Tull wanted in on the film as soon as Snyder pitched it, even though many people have regarded the complex, layered sci-fi narrative about superheroes who are real as unfilmable. After Tull saw a cut of the movie he told Snyder, "You got it. You nailed it the spirit of it and made it come alive."

"It's a smart visually stunning movie," he told me. Of course he's vested.

He's also vested in making the next Superman installment, which is still years away, come to life. While Bryan Singer has been working on Valkyrie, Tull and the folks at Warners have been listening to various screenwriters pitch their solutions to how to make the next Superman work. "It's an iconic character," says Tull. "After everything that went into the first film, it's important to make sure that nothing is rushed and we come out with a fantastic second film." One thing they all agree on: Superman needs a powerful antagonist, a "worthy opponent," he says.

Coming sooner is Louis Leterrier's follow-up to Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans. And no, Leterrier is not being talked about to direct Superman. "He's laser-focused on Titans," says Tull.

Comic-Con is coming at the end of the month, and two movies sure to make a splash at the San Diego convention center are Frank Miller's neo-noir The Spirit and Catherine Hardwicke's vampire romance Twilight. I interviewed both directors for my column: Miller says The Spirit is in color, not black and white, and that he colors with emotion. Hardwicke talks about auditioning Robert Pattinson to play the vampire Edward Cullen opposite Kristen Stewart's Bella--- on the bed of her Venice beach pad. Only with those two was there serious heat.

And here's the Comic-Con sked. UPDATE: And here's EW's cover story and backlash to their ultra-glam cover shoot, which alters the appearance of the actors from the movie.

With Comic-Con around the corner (it's the last week of July in San Diego), Catherine Hardwicke's movie version of Stephenie Meyer's chick lit vampire phenom Twilight, which doesn't open until December but is already on the cover of EW, is one of the movies sure to pop at the biggest movie launch platform I can think of right now. Is there one bigger?

Cannes is one thing. Sundance and Toronto another. But the impact of Comic-Con on the movie marketplace is huge.

Paramount Pictures will not be putting on any panels or bringing any stars to Comic-Con this year. They may do some viral stuff. But their big "geek" titles G.I. Joe, J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, Michael Bay's Transformers 2 and M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender won't be released until 2009. Last year Paramount kicked off Iron Man at the Con, which played big there. "The timing was off this year," said one Paramount spokesman.

UPDATE: As Slashfilm points out, Paramount was a major presence at the 2007 Comic-Con, with not only Iron Man but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Beowulf and Cloverfield.

Cinematical has more info on what the other studios are doing.

UPDATE: Paramount spokesman Mike Vollman just called me to say: "We have a vibrant and exciting schedule of activities planned for Comic-Con." The studio will be unveiling a number of marketing materials on these pics.

Universal threw an Incredible Hulk premiere Sunday on the lot (which a week later, still had a tinge of smoke in the air). After all the grief and belly-aching about problems behind-the-scenes, Transporter director Louis Leterrier's movie played great at the Amphitheatre, and got thumbs up not only from me, but from 18-year-old Nora and Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart. (Here's Variety's Incredible Hulk Movie Page.)

Edward Norton (who does not take a screenwriting credit) manages to make his tortured scientist-on-the-run sympathetic, not just as a man in love with fellow-scientist Liv Tyler, but as the raging-green Hulk, who seems to have learned a few things this time around from Peter Jackson's King Kong. Hulk (animated by Rhythm & Hues) does the chest-pounding dance on a rainy mountain crag routine--as his soaked lady-love looks on appreciatively, the only person who can reduce his heart-rate--and releases his rage in a satisfying lion-like roar. SPOILER ALERT: He also does gratifying big-scale battle with another gamma-tainted uber-being, The Abomination, played in human form by Tim Roth. Bill Hurt chews up the scenery as the villain of the piece. This time, they got it right.

The Incredible Hulk reveals the hazards of taking your movie to Comic-Con--God Forbid your presentation doesn't go over with fans. Bad Internet buzz killed dogged the first Hulk and threatened this one, too. One producer of Michael Bay's Transformers 2, which is currently filming in Pennsylvania, admitted that he'd just as soon not take anything to the July comic-book convention in San Diego until they have something really fab to show.

Here's the trailer:

Here's Todd McCarthy's review of Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk. He sees the 2008 incarnation on Tuesday; we'll post his Thursday print review on Wednesday night.

Finally, though, ultimate fanboy Harry Knowles' enthusiastic response and advance tracking indicates that Marvel (which made Iron Man, too, which has already grossed $289 million) will score another big opener this weekend: The Incredible Hulk is expected to gross in the same range as the last Hulk and last weekend's Kung Fu Panda: $60 million or so. The tracking is strong with men, as you'd think, and weak with women, who might build on word-of-mouth, because of the Norton/Tyler love story.

As the movie was unspooling, though, I was thinking, "wonder how they'll set up the sequel?" and, "when is Robert Downey, Jr. going to show?" Both of those things do make possible Marvel's planned Avengers movie, which could combine the likes of Giant Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Wolverine and Iron Man, to name a few likely suspects we discussed with Kevin Smith on the way out. He responded to my query about Marvel setting up Avengers with, "you have to be retarded not to think that!"

UPDATE: Here's Cinematical on the reveal of Tony Stark's cameo, which is at the very end of the movie. And Film School Rejects has a Hulk Guide.

I saw Joss Whedon at EW's Comic-Con party. I asked him, "What was the nature of Wonder Woman's disfunction in your screenplay?"

"She didn't understand weakness," he answered. "She couldn't understand other people's vulnerability."

"What didn't Warner Bros. like, exactly?"

"I don't know what they didn't like," he said. "It was cool. Comics are what's working for me now."

Whedon's long awaited special collectors edition Serenity DVD is coming out on August 21, packed with all-new bonus content, including:

BONUS FEATURES: -- Approximately 15 Minutes of Deleted Scenes with Commentary by Director Joss Whedon -- Extended Scenes -- Outtakes -- Take A Walk On Serenity: Cast & Crew take us on a special tour of the Serenity space ship. -- The Green Clan: Expose on Cinematographer Jack Green and his team. -- Joss Whedon Introduction: Joss' original introduction of the 2005 film "Serenity." -- We'll have a Fruity Oaty Good Time! The original version of the "Fruity Oaty Bar" commercial. -- Feature Commentary with Director Joss Whedon and Cast Members Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau and Ron Glass. -- Feature Commentary With Director Joss Whedon -- A Filmmaker's Journey: Journey with Joss from script to screen. -- Future History -The Story of the Earth That Was: Instant history lesson of the "last" 500 years. -- Re-Lighting The Firefly: This featurette traces the story of how a canceled television show gained a cult following to become a major feature film. -- What's In a Firefly? See how Zoic visual effects studios helped bring Joss' unique vision to the big screen. -- Session 416: These Internet pieces document a portion of River's participation in a psychological study and her interactions with her therapist.

More press release info and DVD stats on the jump:

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
It’s been 10 years since Variety named Greg Mottola a “director to watch” on the strength of his debut film, Daytrippers. Then he sorta disappeared from the feature scene, resurfacing only now to direct Superbad, the latest comedy from the Judd Apatow stable. “Being gone for 10 years takes the pressure off the sophomore slump,” Mottola told me after “Superbad’s” Friday-night sneak peek at Comic-Con.

But he hasn’t exactly been idle. Mottola fell in with Apatow’s crowd back on Undeclared, directing a few episodes of the show. “It was like comedy boot camp,” he said. “Undeclared” led to directing Arrested Development, which opened the door to “Superbad.” Michael Cera (an Arrested Development star with his own web series) and Jonah Hill play sex-obsessed high-school seniors in a screenplay that “Knocked Up’s” Seth Rogen and longtime friend Evan Goldberg started writing 10 years earlier.

The entire posse — including breakout Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who plays “McLovin” (“This movie is about to destroy this young man’s life,” Apatow joked) — was present at the Comic-Con screening, but Mottola deserves a special mention since I predict he’ll be the unsung hero of this equation (at the post-screening Q&A, the questions went to everyone but him).

Apatow, of course, is on top of the comedy world right now, and the cast are all up-and-comers. But without Mottola’s touch, the comedy wouldn’t play nearly as well. Under his guidance, the movie manages to be sincere without getting sentimental and raunchy without lapsing into the unreal (check out the red-band trailer on Sony’s official site ).

Even the rowdy Comic-Con crowd couldn’t believe they “went there” during a scene that involves some very dirty dancing, but the MPAA went along with it. According to Apatow, “Superbad has the least that’s gotten cut from any movie I’ve ever worked on. We were trying to extend the DVD and there was nothing to extend.” Credit Mottola for making his sophomore outing anything but sophomoric.