Star Wars

After waiting on a very long line for about an hour, I finally made my way into the IGN Theater for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones panel. The festivities had already gotten underway, and so the theater was packed, dark and hard to navigate. Additionally, I had walked in while they were screening footage for the upcoming video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which hits shelves in September. The footage looked great (from what I could tell), and I'm looking forward to a game that's set in between Episodes III and Episodes IV as there's so much room to play with there. For more on the game, check out StarWars.com.

From there, Steve Sansweet introduced two guys who had just graduated with a doctorate in Star Wars from New York University. It's funny, too, because right before their names were announced the guy next to me leaned over to his girlfriend and said, "Holy crap, I didn't know you could get a doctorate in Star Wars! Why didn't I do that!? Then Sansweet played their senior thesis: a documentary that, in reality, turned out to be the trailer for Robot Chicken's Star Wars episode. Of course, the two guys were Seth Green and Matt Senreich. They, in turn, talked about how that episode is arriving on DVD in July. This will include all sorts of stuff, like the deleted scene they screened featuring George Lucas on a therapist's couch complaining about how other people messed up Star Wars when Lucas let them play in that world (ie: Robot Chicken). Funny stuff.

You know that room Willy Wonka takes everyone in -- the one full of candy, and then the fat kid gets sucked into the chocolate pipe? For a geek, Comic Con is that room. Actually, Comic Con is like visiting 60 or 70 of those rooms for an entire weekend. I'm not even what you'd call a geek, gamer or fanboy, and I get absolutely overwhelmed each and every time I attend one of these conventions. It's seriously like losing yourself in another universe for awhile -- and then you get to watch a really sick trailer ... or three.

NY Comic Con blew the f*ck (pardon my French) up this year. Last year, they hosted Hostel II and The Hills Have Eyes 2. This year, they had Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Wanted, The Incredible Hulk, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Speed Racer, The Dark Knight, The Spirit, Prince Caspian ... and much more. Yup. In one year, NYCC has seriously kicked things up a notch and I was happy to be a part of the fun.

I'll do a whole recap thingy tomorrow (the scene they showed from Hulk brought the house down -- huge highlight for me), but in the meantime check out all these pics I took throughout the day. They're not all perfect, but they give you a pretty good idea of what it was like walking around, oblivious and in desperate need of some lunch. (Photos include: Hellboy panel, Spirit panel, Star Wars, Wanted panel, Iron Man video game, Hulk video game, hottie girls with guns, stormtroopers, and lots and lots of action figures.)

More Coverage:

Tony Stark's Cameo in The Incredible Hulk/Third Dark Knight Trailer Screens
The Spirit Trailer Premieres
Guillermo Del Toro on The Hobbit and Future Projects

Above you can see a photo of the Exclusive Comic Con poster for Wanted (click on the image to enlarge). Wanted is just one of the films that will host a panel tomorrow during New York Comic Con, with the film's director Timur Bekmambetov on hand to answer questions ... and a little birdie told me there might be some new footage screened as well. I was able to meet Timur tonight during a private function at Universal's fatdaddy suit in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel here in New York City. I could sit here all day and talk about this friggin' suite -- remember the apartment they rocked out in Cloverfield, way up overlooking Central Park? Yeah, this was the exact same view. Unreal.

I'm not allowed to talk about what went down in this suite, but I believe we're allowed to show you this poster and urge you all to head out to Comic Con tomorrow to check out Timur and Wanted. Screw it ... based on what I saw, this movie looks pretty damn ridiculous. Action. Lots of it. Crazy car chase. Jolie with marks all over her body. Lots of red. I'll shut up now. .

Wanted hits theaters on June 27th.

There has been no shortage of news coming out of the NYCC this past weekend (including from our very own Ryan Stewart). Now, IGN reports that Paramount and Brad Pitt's Plan B Productions are partnering to produce a film version of the novel World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War by Max Brooks (son of Mel). Brooks seems to have a flair for the subject of the "living challenged" as he also wrote the Zombie Survival Guide. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski is adapting the book but there is no confirmation yet that Pitt will star, Straczynski kept it pretty non-committal saying the script was, "For Brad Pitt potentially -- we'll see what happens. He might be the star in it."

Adapting the book won't be easy, since the novel is an anthology of man's survival during the "great" war with the undead. The structure of the book has no main characters and jumps time and place with recollections of the survivors of the decade long fight. During a panel discussion, Straczynski described the story as "very political, very smart, very cagey". Straczynski seems confident that if all goes to plan with the script, production wouldn't be far behind. The project sounds promising, but considering Pitt's plate looks pretty full, I'm not counting on him getting in front of the cameras for this one.