We’re in Hall H at the San Diego Comic-Con where the second Sony Pictures panel is about to start and we’ll be live bloggin’ the event so be sure to refresh for updates! The studio is expected to present The Other Guys, The Virginity Hit (a comedy from producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay), The Green Hornet and Priest.
Priest
Priest has opened the Sony panel. Stu Levy, the founder of Tokyopop, is discussing the history of the property. Anyone with an iPhone can now download the first Priest story for free and will receive bonus clips from behind the scenes of the film.
Priest‘s Director, Scott Stewart has come out to introduce a first look at the film in 3D that he says has been made especially for Comic-Con and will never be officially released online.
The scene opens with a man walking in a monk robe to some sort of large tribunal.
“I come before you because I need my authority reinstated,” he tells them, “This was a vampire attack.”
We see a Vampire launch at the camera. It’s a humanoid creature, but CGI, not unlike I Am Legend.
Lots and lots of action shots include metal crosses that turn into throwing stars, lots of bike scenes (including many in the desert), a fight on top of a train (with another motorcycle racing alongside), and a monster-dog leaping through the air.
“Is it true what they say?” ask a voice, “You wield the hand of God?”
The cast has arrived, including Paul Bettany (Priest), Karl Urban (Black Hat), Stephen Moyer (Aaron), Cam Gigandet (Hicks), and Maggie Q (Priestess).
Animator Genndy Tartakovsky has joined the panel. He will be providing an animated opening for Priest. He’s telling everyone that he ended up working with lots of former Disney animators and it was amusing showing them how violent he wanted the intro to be.
Though unfinished, Tartakovsky surprised the crowd by showing the entire animated opening.
The entire piece runs a couple of minutes and is entirely narrated. A voice explains that, since the beginning of time, man and vampires have fought. Vampires were stronger and faster, but man had the sun on their side.
“It was not enough,” says the narrator.
Moving through time, we see knights battling vampires and then WWI-era men in gas masks shooting flamethrowers.
Man, the voice explains, built walled cities protected by the church and lived inside for their safety. Soon they created their ultimate weapon, the Priests. Specially trained in the deadly arts, the Priests came close to wiping the Vampires out.
No longer having a need for them, the Priests were disbanded and reintegrated into society.
After the footage, Stewart explained that his Vampires have no eyes. One of the ideas they had was that, since they avoided sunlight, they evolved without them.
Maggie Q says that her character has a special lasso weapon and that she needed intensive training with the rope. The final question was a surprise appearance by her old track coach, who she was overjoyed to suddenly see at the mic.
Priest opens May 13th, 2011.
The Other Guys
The Other Guys have taken the stage with director Adam McKay and actors Will Ferrell (Detective Allen Gamble), Mark Wahlberg (Detective Terry Hoitz) and Eva Mendes (Dr. Sheila Gamble), beginning with a lengthy montage of scenes, many of which were variations of scenes in the final cut or jokes that were removed altogether.
McKay joked that, originally, Ben Kingsley was cast alongside Ferrell and Wahlberg but that he was too drunk on-set and had to be removed from the project.
Though the plans for Anchorman 2 fell through, McKay hopes that in a year or two they may be able to return to it. He will officially be directing The Boys.
Mendes says that she didn’t get to work with Wahlberg as much as she wanted to so she’s “aggressively looking” for a project where they can costar.
The panel moved directly into The Virginity Hit, produced by Ferrell and McKay. A full trailer was shown, showing the story of a group of kids who decide to turn losing their virginity into a viral video. The film seems to be a comedy drama shot with a number of handheld cameras in a variety of video formats.
In a surprise announcement, The Virginity Hit will have a surprise screening tonight at San Diego’s Reading Gaslamp theater with Ferrell and McKay in attendance.
The Green Hornet
Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Neal Moritz, Michel Gondry and Christoph Waltz have taken the stage and have started their presentation with a long series of clips from The Green Hornet.
The biggest new part of the footage was a number of scenes with Waltz and his double-barreled handgun (Gondry referred to it, after, as a “stereo gun”). It’s hinted that Waltz will have a costume as well at one point and we see a shot of a long red leather coat (but shot from the waist down) walking down the street. In another scene, it seems he’s trying to design a mask in a mirror with construction paper.
There’s one extended splitscreen shot where Waltz’s character is dispatching bounty hunters to go after the Hornet, so it seems that there will be several smaller villains for Green Hornet and Kato to fight against.
Following the footage, Rogen introduced a 3D scene, showcasing “Kato Vision.” In the scene, Kato and Britt Reid have bonded over their dislike of Reid’s just-deceased father. They decide to “do something crazy” and break into a cemetery to cut the head off a statue of him.
The footage opens with a 3D animated hornet, flying at the camera and the classic theme playing over.
Reid wears a prototype Green Hornet outfit as a disguise. He has a regular trench coat, a fedora and a green bandana over his face. He successfully cuts off the head but, as he’s leaving with it, he runs into a group of muggers attacking a woman. He tries to help, but gets chased himself.
Just as the muggers knock him to the ground, a fist bursts through the window of a nearby car. It belongs to Kato and we switch to his point of view. Everything moves in slow motion as Kato analyzes the scenes. He spots each and every object that could be used as a weapon, which blinks red to show he’s seen it. As he leaps through the air at the muggers, the scene deepens and multiplies (as the cars do in the trailer). The whole battle continues in slow-motion and, each time a weapon is disarmed, the blinking red turns off.
Kato’s own costume also seems to be somewhat of a prototype outfit, his mask replaced by driving goggles.
