STACK NZ Aug #76

COMIC-CON EXTRAS

Comic-Con fact... The first sold out SDCC was in 2008

EXTRAS

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

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

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

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

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