We’re less than a month away from San Diego Comic-Con and, for the first time, Cinema Blend will have a crack staff of reporters there to cover anything and everything that’s worth reporting on… and probably a few things that aren’t. Needless to say, we’re pretty psyched about it.
Even a month away, several things are rearing their heads as potential threats to the Convention and serving as buzzkills for our good time. First of all there’s that potential actor’s strike that could bring the industry to a second grinding halt for the past year. Striking actors not only won’t be filming on their respective projects, but aren’t likely to show up and be drooled over by fans and geeks to promote something they aren’t working on. This one isn’t actually killing me completely, because directors, writers, and producers are still likely to show up, strike or not.
Suddenly there is some studio buzzkilling going on. You might remember that last year Fox pulled their entire slate of films from SDCC a week before the convention began. Today Variety’s Anne Thompson brought out the news that Paramount was planning the same thing this year. Understand, with no Paramount we’d lose out on news on Star Trek, G.I. Joe, Transformers 2, and The Last Airbender - some pretty substantial titles. The original story said that Paramount might do some viral things, but weren’t going to hold any panels or bring any stars.
Since that story ran earlier today, Paramount has changed their tune, stating they ”have a vibrant and exciting schedule of activities planned for Comic-Con.” Frankly, that doesn’t sound like a change of mind to me, but a misunderstanding in the initial report. I guess we won’t know for certain until we get to Comic-Con.
Even though I haven’t been before, I understand there’s a lot more to Comic-con than one studio pulling out or an actor’s strike interference can damage. Still, it would be our luck to have the Convention come crashing down around our maiden voyage to the geek Mecca.
