ComingSoon.net arrived in San Francisco, California yesterday for the kick-off of WonderCon 2010 at the Moscone Convention Center.
Friday is all about television and comic books for the most part with DC Comics doing their panel, preceded by a spotlight on their superstar writer (and now Chief Creative Officer) Geoff Johns. In fact, DC Comics has a huge presence at WonderCon this year with many of their top creators and writers in attendance, including James Robinson, Greg Rucka, Judd Winick, Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner and Gail Simone.
Warner Bros. Television is bringing a bunch of their shows to WonderCon on Friday, including last week’s catch-up episode of “V,” and upcoming episodes of “Fringe” (April 8 episode) and “Human Target,” all of them presented with a sneak peek of “Ghostfacers,” their new spin-off from “Supernatural.” Since we haven’t been keeping up with any of the shows mentioned, it’s doubtful we’ll make any of these unfortunately.
Off-site, we’ll be getting a preview of Activision’s upcoming “Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions” game which promises to explore different alternate Spider-Man universes using a different gameplay than previous Spider-Man games like “Web of Shadows.” So far confirmed are the “Amazing” (essentially, the Spider-Man we know from comics) and “Noir” universes.
On Friday night, Screen Gems will be debuting the first teaser trailer for Paul W.S. Anderson’s fourth installment of the horror franchise, Resident Evil: Afterlife, at a special screening event attended by stars Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter, and we’re looking forward to that. The trailer will then be shown at tomorrow’s panel and debut on online at 2:15 Pacific Time.
Disney is also doing another big viral event for their anticipated holiday release Tron Legacy, out at Justin Herman Plaza, which you can learn more about on OperationTron.com, but it’s so far away from the downtown area, so hopefully, someone will report in on it.
Saturday is the big day for movies and the two studios who are going all out are Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Pictures, who have brought footage and the casts of their biggest upcoming movies for April and beyond. Of course, like at Comic-Con every year, it’s going to be really hard to see all the footage and do interviews so we’re going to spend most of Saturday running back and forth trying to cover as much of this as humanly possible in the six hours it all takes place.
We’re excited about the debut of more footage from Sylvain White’s action flick The Losers, based on the Vertigo comic series from Andy Diggle and Jock. We’ve only seen trailers and commercials so far, but hopefully we’ll get some full clips. They’re also bringing along all the Losers: Chris Evans, Zoe Saldana, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Oscar Jaenada and Columbus Short. Should be a great panel!
The Warner Bros. presentation on Saturday for Platinum Dunes’ reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street should also be fun, since they’re bringing along the new Freddy Krueger, Jackie Earle Haley, and some of the young actors and actresses he’ll be tormenting in the movie.
Somewhat of an unknown going into WonderCon is Vincenzo Natali’s Splice, a sci-fi thriller starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley that was meant to be released by Senator Films last year, but instead showed up at Sundance looking for a distributor, where it was picked up by Joel Silver’s Dark Castle Entertainment for a wide release by Warner Bros. on June 4. (We’re kind of shocked that they’re not bringing anything from Jonah Hex which is out later in June, since WonderCon would seem like the perfect audience to show more footage.)
Disney’s big summer movie with local boys Pixar Animation is Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3, a movie that premiered to raves at ShoWest last month and should get a lot of people excited to see the further adventures of Buzz Lightyear and Woody (voiced by Tim Allen and Tom Hanks respectively). We’ll be curious to see what footage they show, but I’m sure it’ll go over as well or better as Pete Docter’s Up did at WonderCon last year.
Jerry Bruckheimer is bringing both his big summer movies to WonderCon as well as their directors and primary casts with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The Sorcerers Apprentice getting big presentations on Saturday morning. In attendance will be Jake Gyllenhaal (for “Prince of Persia”) and Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel and Teresa Palmer for “Sorcerer’s.” Neither movie is a sure-thing this summer and getting people excited at WonderCon is important for the movies, so hopefully they’ll show more than the trailers for both we’ve already seen.
Of course, being that it opens on April 16, Matthew Vaughn’s anticipated action movie Kick-Ass will also be at WonderCon with a panel on Saturday featuring original comic creators Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., screenwriter Jane Goldman and the stars of the movie. (Hopefully Nicolas Cage will stick around for it!)
We still haven’t really checked out what’s going on Sunday, but Saturday is the big day at WonderCon, and we’ll be posting anything of interest that we catch while running around between interviews. Look for continuous WonderCon updates here and smaller, quicker updates on our @CSConFest Twitter Feed.
