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COMIC-CON
EXTRAS
EXTRAS
included Preview Night got an
early look inside the Exhibit Hall
on Wednesday, July 21, and the
opportunity to have first dibs on
the coveted exclusive merchandise.
Given the excitement and anticipation
surrounding the event, you would
expect a rush of Boxing Day sale
proportions when the doors opened for
the first time, but the crowds were well
behaved and nobody was trampled.
Preview Night was particularly special this
year, complemented by the world premiere of
Star Trek Beyond
, which was beamed onto
an outdoor IMAX screen by the bay with full
accompaniment by the San Diego Symphony
Orchestra, and a fan red carpet for Trekkers
to show off their uniforms and alien forehead
ridges.
Like a slow burn comic book epic, Comic-
Con builds gradually, with attendance peaking
on the Friday and Saturday, which is also when
the mega panels and studio presentations are
held in the legendary Hall H.
The Exhibit Hall was still easily accessible on
Thursday, and the cosplayers were beginning to
arrive in force, despite the rising temperature
that threatened to turn stormtrooper armour
into an oven.
Key panels included DreamWorks,
presenting footage from its upcoming animated
feature
Trolls
, with voice-cast members
Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick in
attendance. And Alec Baldwin made a
surprise appearance – and his Comic-Con
debut – to promote the studio’s other
major animated offering,
Boss Baby
, in
which the actor voices the brash infant
of the title.
Trolls
will be in cinemas
December, with
Boss Baby
to follow in
2017.
Oliver Stone was another unfamiliar
face at Comic-Con, premiering a new trailer for
his biopic
Snowden
, in which Joseph Gordon-
Levitt plays the eponymous NSA whistleblower
who found himself in more trouble than
Julian Assange. True to form, Stone launched
a scathing attack on modern surveillance
techniques, even going as far as to describe
Pokémon Go
as “a new level of invasion.”
Luc Besson’s
Valerian and the City of a
Thousand Planets
looks set to be the sci-fi
movie event of 2017, with the director back
in
Fifth Element
mode and big on production
design for this tale of a time-travelling agent
(Dane DeHann) charged with protecting the
universe from a rogue planet.
And FX series
The Strain
, based on the
novels by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck
Friday brought the first
of the big Hall H panels,
with fans sleeping out to
be the first in line for the
Walking Dead
panel
Comic-Con fact...
The first sold out SDCC was
in 2008