Expert geeks and contributing cynics Luke Y. Thompson & Gary Hodges are covering Comic-Con for Deadline. The following is a list of panels that they consider to be of most likely interest to Deadline readers. As there are not enough hours in the day, a panel’s inclusion on this list does not necessarily mean they will report on it in more detail later. This covers official convention events only; numerous other things, like the Cowboys and Aliens premiere, will be happening but are not necessarily open to all badgeholders. Opinions and commentary are those of Luke or Gary alone, and do not necessarily represent those of anyone else at Deadline. (Remember, Nikki doesn’t do geek…) All panels are subject to change, especially if somebody gets stabbed in the eye again this year:
SATURDAY, JULY 23
10:00-11:00 – From Buddha to Batman: Deepak Chopra and Grant Morrison Discuss The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes.
Oh, dear lord. Deepak Chopra? Twilight suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. (LYT) Room 6A
10:00-11:00 – Spotlight on Jerry Robinson. This guy created the Joker. Bow down. (LYT) Room 9
10:00-10:45 – Chuck Screening and Q&A. Chuck soon enters its fifth and final season, and all the major cast (Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Joshua Gomez, Ryan McPartlin, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Vik Sahay, Scott Krinsky, Sarah Lancaster, and Adam Baldwin) will be present for an unspecified “video presentation.” Hmmm… (GH) Ballroom 20
10:00-11:00 – Motion Picture and Television Production Designers. Yay! Production designers need love too. After all, most of those cool movie action figures on your shelf are the result of their work. Panelists include moderator John Muto (Terminator 2:3D), Cece DeStefano (Alias), Jim Bissell (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), Edward Thomas (Torchwood, Dr. Who), and Greg Melton (The Walking Dead). (LYT) Room 25ABC
10:00-11:00 – Attack of the Show! Attacks Comic-Con. Kevin Pereira, Candace Bailey, Sara Underwood, Blair Butler will be on hand to try and to their best to distract the crowd from the fact Olivia Munn is not with the show anymore. They will not succeed. (GH) Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront
10:30-11:30 – Marvel Television. A look at the season 2 premiere of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, plus a glimpse of some Spider-Man stuff. Though labeled with a giant “K” in the schedule to indicate it’s for kids, I suspect the audience’s average age will be a little older. (GH) Room 6BCF
10:30-11:30 – The Return of Action-Adventure Animation. Various industry types discuss whether there’s room for straight action-adventure cartoons in the post-Family Guy world. I hope they agree that there is, because otherwise all this time I’ve spent writing up the different action-adventure cartoon panels was totally wasted. I might as well have just typed “RIP” and then the little crying emoticon (;_;). (GH) Room 8
11:00-12:00 – Terra Nova. Stephen Lang, executive producers Rene Echevarria and Brannon Braga, and co-executive producer Jose Molina offer a preview of the sci-fi series in which humans from the future retreat from an inhospitable Earth to 85 million years ago. It seems like they could’ve gone back, say, 45 million and totally avoided that little problem of the landscape being dominated by large dinosaurian carnivores. But that wouldn’t have made for good television. (GH) Ballroom 20
11:00-12:00 – Sanctuary. In case you hadn’t noticed, Syfy is all over Comic-Con. Not a screening or preview, this looks to be purely a behind-the-scenes look at the show about… oh dear lord, more People With Powers. (GH) Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront
11:30-12:30 – Bill Blackbeard: The Man Who Saved Comics. Fascinating story, this. A guy actually named Blackbeard amassed a vast collection of comics in the ’60s when he heard that libraries were switching their archives to microfilm. He died earlier this year and thus won’t be at the panel, but people inspired by his story will. (LYT) Room 24ABC
11:45-12:45 – TWIXT: Francis Ford Coppola and Dan Deacon. This should be interesting. Coppola’s latest movie, a ghost story with sequences in 2-D and 3-D, will supposedly be shown with live music performances by musician Dan Deacon. Clips will be screened here, as the audience apparently will become involved in a “dress rehearsal of the completely unique and innovative way they plan on performing it.” Sounds like an old dog may be teaching us some new tricks. (LYT) Hall H
12:00-1:00 – The Art of Adapting Comics to the Screen. “Being faithful to the source material” seems to work the best more often than not. The writers of Cowboys and Aliens and Captain America may or may not agree. (LYT) Room 23ABC
12:00-1:00 – Kick Buttowski: XD Animation Panel. Cast and crew of the series about a preadolescent neighborhood daredevil, and a sneak peek at Disney XD’s upcoming shows Motorcity and Tron: Uprising. (GH) Room 25ABC
12:00-1:00 – Being Human. Sorta like Friends, except these twenty-something roommates are a vampire, werewolf and ghost. The cast will be on hand to answer questions and talk about the show, though nobody there will be able offer a meaningful answer the question “What is with all the vampire stuff lately?” (“Because they’re so sexy!” doesn’t count.) (GH) Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront
12:00-1:00 – Twilight Fan Panel. I’m willing to bet most of the fan-fiction writers who gather here have a better command of prose, world-building, and storytelling than Stephenie Meyer. (LYT) Santa Rosa Room, Marriott Marquis & Marina
12:15-1:00 – Futurama. Matt Groening and the voice talent appear to talk the seventh season the show, which sounds like a long time until you look at Groening’s next panel, in the same room… (GH) Ballroom 20
1:00-1:45 – The Simpsons, on its twenty-third season, with approaching 500 episodes in the can. If you watched them all, back-to-back without commercials, it would take you… let’s see… carry the one… um, a week to see them all. I kinda expected that number to be bigger. (GH) Ballroom 20
1:00-2:00 – Robert Kirkman. He’s the guy who created The Walking Dead, a realistic, character-driven take on the zombie apocalypse. Next up, he’s doing something with Rob Liefeld, which would seem like the polar opposite kinda thing. (LYT) Room 25ABC
1:00-2:00 – Relativity Media: Immortals. The producers of 300 bring a 3-D movie that looks a whole lot like 300. From director Tarsem Singh, who came to fame directing R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” video, comes a story of an ancient Greek dude (Mickey Rourke) who quite literally wants to lose his religion, by killing the gods. Standing against him is a stonemason named Theseus (Henry Cavill, a.k.a. Zack Snyder’s new Superman) who may or may not be the same Theseus from the famous story about the minotaur. Tarsem won’t be there (word has it that he’s hanging out in the corner, in the spotlight, trying to keep a view. Oh no…he’s said too much, and hasn’t said enough), but Cavill, Rourke, Stephen Dorff, Freida Pinto, Luke Evans, Kellan Lutz, and those producers of 300 who probably have names too (j/k…Gianna Nunnari and Mark
Canton). (LYT) Hall H
1:00-2:00 – Community. Cast members Joel McHale, Chevy Chase, Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown, Danny Pudi, Gillian Jacobs, Alison Brie, and Ken Jeong will all be there to joining some executive producers to talk about the next season. Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront
1:30-2:30 – Spotlight on Tsuneo Goda. You know that “Domo” character you see everywhere? Fuzzy rectangular thing with big teeth and stick-figure arms? This is the guy who created that, and presumably cashed in big-time. Total genius. (LYT) Room 5AB
1:45-2:45 – Vampires and Others. A panel on the topic of relationship advice for human-vampire couplings. This is what people are talking about when they say Twilight ruined Comic-Con. (LYT) Room 6A
2:00-3:00 – Spotlight on J. Michael Straczynski. The guy’s writing career runs the gamut from the original He-Man cartoons to Murder, She Wrote, Babylon 5, and Spider-Man comics. He’s now working on a movie adaptation of Max Brooks’ World War Z. He’s also one of the only Hollywood creative types who can make a goatee look good. (LYT) Room 7AB
2:00-2:35 – Family Guy. Weirdly, Seth MacFarlane isn’t on the schedule to appear for this panel, though other cast members (Alex Borstein, Seth Green, Adam West) will be. They’re also going to show clips of an upcoming episode with lots of Stewie in it, so maybe that’ll be enough to satiate the diehard fans. (GH) Ballroom 20
2:15-3:15 – Knights of Badassdom. Anyone who was alive in the ’80s may remember the hysteria surrounding role-playing games like D&D. Religious fundie nutjobs assumed that since the game involved magic and dragons, it was therefore Satanic and could conjure up demons. According to this new movie, they were kinda right, as a group of LARPers (live-action role players) bring forth a succubus, and must use their fictional skills to beat it for real. Peter Dinklage, Steve Zahn, and Summer Glau are among the actors who’ll be showing up, along with director Joe Lynch, whose Wrong Turn 2 did for reality TV what this movie aims to do for LARP. Please be funny. (LYT) Hall H
2:30-3:30 – TV Guide Magazine Presents: Super Supernaturals. TV Guide gathers another random mix of celebrities, this time with a more distinct theme: they’re all in shows about monsters or witches or whatever else. John Barrowman (Torchwood), Kristin Bauer (True Blood), Thomas Dekker (The Secret Circle), David Greenwalt (Grimm), Theo James (Bedlam), Jim Kouf (Grimm), Britt Robertson (The Secret Circle), Phoebe Tonkin (The Secret Circle), and Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf) will all be there to answer… god knows what sort of questions. “What’s it like to wear fake teeth?” “What does fake blood taste like?” Oh I can’t wait. (GH) Room 5AB
2:35-3:15 – American Dad. A preview of the season 7 premiere, along with much of the cast (though again, not Seth MacFarlane). Ballroom 20
3:00-4:00 – Cartoon Network: Adventure Time. One of my personal favs in the Cartoon Network lineup, the panel will feature voice actors, artists, and bits and pieces of upcoming episodes. See it or risk being sucked into the Tree Witch’s bottomless bottom. (GH) Room 6A
3:00-4:00 – The Write Stuff III: Writing for Genre Television and Beyond. Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman, Lost), Ashley E. Miller (Fringe, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Robert Hewitt Wolfe (Alphas, The Gates, Riverworld), Steve Kriozere (NCIS, Femme Fatales), Steve Melching (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Transformers: The Series), Gabrielle Stanton (The Vampire Chronicles, Haven), Jose Molina (Firefly, Terra Nova), Amy Berg (Eureka, Leverage), and Mark A. Altman (Femme Fatales, Castle) share behind-the-scenes advice on how to write for TV. Last year’s number one tip? I dunno, but I’m guessing “Add vampires.” (GH) Room 23ABC
3:00-4:00 – Dark Horse: Joss Whedon. The director of The Avengers will attempt to evade your Avengers questions and steer the subject toward the stuff he’s doing for Dark Horse comics, pretty much all of which is Buffy the Vampire Slayer related. You won’t have any problem with that, will you? (LYT) Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront
3:15-4:15 – Calling all Lost Fans: Once Upon a Time. First of all, don’t be misled by the liberal sprinkling of the word “Lost” all over the panel’s description: this really has no connection to the series, other than some shared creative talent. Once Upon a Time is ABC’s new fantasy-drama with modernized takes on fairy tales, where the main characters either are or are related to the figures in the stories. (For example, cutie Ginnifer Goodwin is Snow White. She teaches school now.) Cast, creators and producers will be there to talk about it, and also give some sort of souvenir to attendees. (GH) Room 6DE
3:30-4:15 – The Vampire Diaries Screening and Q&A. Cast members Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, Ian Somerhalder, Candice Accola, and Joseph Morgan join executive producers/writers Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec to – and I quote – “enthrall fans with a season two highlight reel and Q&A session.” Non-fans, on the other hand, can obsessively check their e-mail on the smartphones. (GH) Ballroom 20
3:30-4:30 – How to Get News Coverage. Have an affair with a politician. Next topic. (LYT) Room 24ABC
3:30-4:15 – Universal Pictures: Snow White and the Huntsmen. Whatever you do, don’t say “Hi, ho!” to Kristen Stewart – it means something totally different now than it did in Walt Disney’s day. Anyhow, K-Stew goes from having two guys fighting over her in Twilight to having (presumably, unless this is a very new telling) seven dwarfs and a prince all vying for her affections. Considering Chris Hemsworth is in the movie, we reckon he wins. Also at the panel: Charlize Theron, Sam Claflin, and director Rupert Sanders. Plus apparently some other unannounced filmmakers to surprise us with non-Snow White-y teasers too. (LYT) Hall H
4:00-5:00 – Finally! Nickelodeon: The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra: Exclusive First Look. Nickelodeon struggles heroically to wash the taste of M. Night Shyamalan’s movie out of everyone’s mouths. (GH) Room 6BCF
4:15-5:15 – Grimm: World Premiere Pilot Screening and Q&A with Cast and Producers from the New Supernatural Series. Hmm, that title sorta summed it up. Grimm is described by NBC as “a police procedural with a supernatural mythology, inspired by the classic Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales.” I don’t know if there were attractive young vampires in any of the Grimm fairy tales, so I’m not sure how this will work. (GH) Room 6A
4:30-5:15 – Fringe Screening and Q&A. Most of the cast is coming (though Joshua Jackson is conspicuously absent), and there will be some sort of video shown, though it’s not clear what. Like so many shows with cult following, Fox has treated Fringe like a redheaded stepchild for a while now. Is that that a part of the appeal? Is some of fandom rooting for an underdog? Oh my god I’ve figured out how to make a sleeper hit; someone sign me right now. (GH) Ballroom 20
4:30-5:30 – The Vinyl Frontier. Not the most original name for a documentary about designer vinyl toys, but can you blame them? They could have gone with Vinyl Destination, The Vinyl Countdown, Vinyl Fantasy…okay, that last one sounds too naughty. (LYT) Room 24ABC
4:30-5:30 – Further over the Rainbow: A First Look at Dorothy of Oz. Instead of some “bold new take,” it’d be nice to see a faithful adaptation of the original Oz books, now that the technology exists. The reason it hasn’t likely been done yet is that Oz is public domain, so a cinematic franchise couldn’t be anyone’s exclusive property. And yet, this animated musical has a chance of being truer to source than usual, as L. Frank Baum’s great grandson Roger is the writer. (Though remember that Time Machine movie directed by a descendant of H. G. Wells? That
was a weird one.) Martin Short and Patrick Stewart will be in attendance for this one, along with a surprise announcement. (LYT) Hall H
5:00-6:00 – Costume Designers & Costume Illustrators. Joel Schumacher began as a costume designer; others are thankfully sticking to their day jobs. (We kid, Joel; got a soft spot in my heart for Flatliners). Discuss the merits of rubber muscles versus spandex versus armor versus body paint with costume designers Julie Weiss (Twelve Monkeys, The Ring), Joseph Porro (Stargate, Ultra Violet), Wendy Chuck (Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Twilight), and costume illustrators Christian Cordella (G.I. Joe 2: Cobra Strikes, Captain America: The Last Avenger), Constantine Sekeres (G.I. Joe 2: Cobra Strikes, Superman: Man of Steel, Thor, Green Lantern), Phillip Boutte (Superman: Man of Steel, Twilight Saga), and Brian Valenzuela (Super 8, Mission Impossible 4). (LYT) Room 23ABC
5:00-6:00 – Charlie’s Angels. Lots of eye candy on display for ABC’s reboot of the series and movies, with Annie Ilonzeh, Minka Kelly, and Rachael Taylor. And Minka Kelly. Word is Minka Kelly will be there, as well. I wonder if she ever got that collage I sent her? Maybe she was too touched to respond, or was afraid she’d mess things up if she tried to talk to me. (GH) Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront
5:15-6:00 – The Secret Circle Screening and Q&A. In this new CW series, a teenaged girl discovers she’s a witch, from a family of witches… which leads to the unraveling of old mysteries, uncovering danger, and finding adolescent romance. Before Twilight I would’ve said this was the goofiest thing I’d ever heard. Now I don’t know what to think. (GH) Room 6BCF
5:15-6:00 – Alcatraz Pilot Screening and Q&A. The latest let’s-see-how-long-we-can-keep-people-watching-for-answers series, Alcatraz opens with hundreds of inmates and guards appearing in modern day after mysteriously vanishing from the prison decades ago. I’m guessing it won’t be as simple as going to one of them and asking what happened and where they’ve been. Jorge Garcia (formerly of Lost) will be there, waiting to be embarrassed by a fan who will march up to a mic and tell him he’s like a great big teddy bear. (GH) Ballroom20
5:30-6:30 – Teen Wolf. Stars Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed, Dylan O’Brien, Tyler Hoechlin, Holland Roden, and Colton Haynes join executive producer Jeff Davis and director/co-executive producer Russell Mulcahy to show some clips from the last few episodes of this season. It should make for a howlingly good time! Actually I can’t say that for sure. (GH) Room 24ABC
5:45-7:30 – An Early Evening with Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith is going to talk for an hour and 45 minutes, apparently. In that time, he could probably show the entirety of Red State, except he’d rather charge you a premium for that. As irritating at his defensive public persona can be, the dude’s talks are generally, consistently hilarious. Though if he’s really planning on quitting filmmaking after the next one, he is eventually going to run out of stories about how some crazy big-name Hollywood actors and producers did insane things to him on the set of something
or other. (LYT) Hall H
6:00-6:45 – Nikita Screening and Q&A. The Maggie Q-led spy drama returns to Comic-Con to promote season 2 and the Blu-ray/DVD release of season 1 in a few weeks. (GH) Room 6BCF
6:00-7:00 – Roddenberry Productions. Rod Roddenberry (Gene’s son) will be joined by Trevor Roth and Tory Mell to discuss the future of Star Trek and give away an iPad 2. Wait, what? (GH) Room 23ABC
6:30-7:30 – Good Vibes. Adam Brody, Alan Tudyk, Olivia Thirlby, Jake Busey and Tony Hale join executive producer and creator David Gordon Green (Your Highness, Eastbound and Down) and executive producers Tom Brady, Brad Ableson, and Mike Clements to talk a little bit about the new MTV animated comedy. (GH) Room 24ABC
6:45-7:30 – Person of Interest Pilot Screening and Q&A. This one sounds a little interesting, as it’s about an ex-CIA agent (Jim Caviezel), presumed dead, who partners with a mysterious billionaire to prevent violent crimes predicted by a crazy piece of software in New York City. Stars Caviezel, Michael Emerson, and Taraji P. Henson will all be there for the screening and the Q&A afterward. Room 6BCF
7:00-8:00 – The Origins of the Samurai Power Rangers. Did you realize Power Rangers is in its nineteenth season? That’s only a few less than The Simpsons. I’m a little too upset to say any more about this. (GH) Room 23ABC
7:30-8:30 – Star Trek: Between the Cracks. Larry Nemecek, author of the Next Generation Companion, has now produced a documentary about the hidden archives of Star Trek entitled The Con of Wrath. He even claims to have new stories that you’ve never heard on a DVD commentary before, and before a crowd that can easily contradict him on that if it’s possible, he intends to prove it. Brave man. (LYT) Room 7AB
7:30-8:30 – The Art of the Hollywood Movie Poster. Quick, fanboys: name any movie poster artist other than Drew Struzan. Tough, isn’t it? Maybe about time you learned some more names? Come see Andrea Alvin (Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Pinocchio poster artist, wife and artistic partner of late cinema art legend John Alvin), Matthew Peak (Nightmare on Elm Street poster artist, son of famed movie poster artist Bob Peak), Steve Chorney (Labyrinth, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Star Trek), James Goodridge (Inglorious Basterds, Harry Potter), and Lawrence Noble (The Empire Strikes Back 10th Anniversary, Time After Time, Flash Gordon). (LYT) Room 8
7:45-8:45 – MythBusters. Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman, Tory Belleci, Grant Imahara, and Kari Byron will be talking about the upcoming season. I haven’t caught the series in a while, and was wondering if they ever struggle to come up with new myths to test… a quick look on Wikipedia says a recent episode explored whether a person could dodge a bullet after it was fired at them. So that answers that question. (GH) Room 6BCF
8:00-9:00 – Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: Ishiro Honda. If the creator of Gojira/Godzilla were alive today, he’d have turned 100. And if he’d been alive in 1998, he’d probably have slapped Deab Devlin and Roland Emmerich as hard as he could. Neither of those being the case, film historian Peter H. Brothers, who literally wrote the book on the famed director, will discuss his life and work. If he dresses formally, be sure to yell “Man in suit!” at him. (LYT) Room 9
8:00-11:00 – Hall H and Ballroom 20 Saturday Panel Playback. Yep, still a good idea. (LYT) Room 25ABC
8:15-9:15 – Femme Fatales Revealed: Behind-the-Scenes of the Hit New TV Series. Cinemax’s late-night series about… actually I don’t know what this is about. I was going to say “hot chicks in trouble,” but the site said it’s about “the exploits of powerful and dangerous women who use their survival instincts to escape perilous situations and exude their inner guile.” Maybe I saw the wrong show. (GH) Room 6DE
8:30-9:30 – Metal Hurlant Chronicles. Metal Hurlant – published here in the States as Heavy Metal – is a science fiction/fantasy comic anthology, beloved for years by aficionados who love its genre stories, cool art, and heaping helpings of sex and violence. A series based on the mag’s stories is on the way, so they’ll be showing the pilot and host a Q&A. (GH) Room 8
8:30-11:30 – HBO’s True Blood Presents the Comic-Con international Masquerade. See costume presentations more elaborate – and occasionally skit-based – than on the dealer’s floor. Watch in the Sails Pavilion and there should be both free nachos and a DJ who starts spinning early, thereby drowning out the audio (that can be a good or a bad thing, depending…). Also the only time you can buy alcohol at Comic-Con. (LYT)
9:00-10:00 – Can DIY Filmmaking Replace Hollywood? Selling Your Own Damn Movie Without Selling Your Soul! Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma team discuss how you can stay independent by making cheap movies and then giving them to him to distribute for free. Hey, it’s kept him in business, anyway. (LYT) Room 9
9:30-10:30 – FX Pilot Sneak Peek Screening. Sort of a mystery prize screening, FX isn’t saying what exactly attendees will get to watch if they show up – apparently there will be a sign posted outside the room just before. If you’re the guy hosting the panel, I wonder what it feels like to watch curious attendees walk up, read the sign, confer with each other and then slink away. Probably not awesome. (GH) Room 6DE
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