New York Comic Con: Liveblogging The Ghost Rider Panel

Sony Pictures is the first major studio to hold a panel in the IGN Theater at New York Comic Con, and though they announced it as just being for Ghost Rider, they brought footage from several of their upcoming projects and required 3D glasses to view it. I wasn't planning to liveblog it until the extra footage became part of the presentation, so here's what I've been able to type up. Refresh for updates as they come.

4:20 A long trailer for Underworld: Awakening introduced by Len Wiseman, talking up the fact that they've got Kate Beckinsale back and are getting back to what the franchise is about. The trailer is in 3D, showing Beckinsale's character escaping from a lab and wreaking the kind of havoc she's more than capable of . It looks… like any other UnderworldUnderworld fans in the audience seemed to dig it.

4:23 Total Recall is up next, once again introduced by Len WIseman, who is going to have a very busy 2012. Colin Farrell kicks things off asking a guy if he's happy with the lithe way his life has turned out to be. The bass goes insane as Farrell enters Recall. So far it's same footage thats crewed in San Diego. When Jon Cho shows up with bleached blond hair, the entire audience cracks up-- I guess Harold * Kumar sticks with you a long time. ThenJon Cho realizes Colin Farrell is a spy and shit gets real with guns and stormtroopers, and Farrell insists he's nobody before fighting back hardcore. He basically goes into a standoff with the soldiers who are after him, who send in some seriously high tech weapons to try and rout him out. Clearly some of the effects aren't finished, but Wiseman made no mention of that in his intro--that's a little strange. Then the trailer-ish portion of the clip shows up, and we get a look at Kate Beckinsale, some futuristic cars, Jessica Biel driving one of those futuristic cars, what looks like a Biel-Beckinsale fight scene, and lots and lots of shots of Colin Farrell shooting a gun and rounding around. The crowd, again, goes wild.

4:30 It's now time for Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor to take the stage and introduce some Ghost Rider footage. After some technical difficulties things start with a brief little behind-the-scenes featurette, kind of like what you'd seen on any DVD special feature, but with arrows pointing out that the directors are there putting themselves in all kinds of danger, swinging with stuntmen on wires, rollerblading down hills and generally going anywhere and everywhere for the sake of the shot. It's what they're known for, and the Con crowd is thrilled to see it.

4:34 The clip ends with the title "Fucking your shit up in 3D," which was on the footage shown at Comic Con but gets the crowd going wild all over again.

4:36 "You'll see real broken bones in Ghost Rider 2, by the way." -- Brian Taylor.

4:38 They introduce a new trailer, which features a lot of the same footage we've seen already-- including the pissing fire at the very end-- but perhaps even more insanity.

4:42 Taylor explains that the movie "doesn't really relate to the first movie so much," and someone in the crowd shouts "Thank god!" You can tell that the darker, crazier take on the character is what these guys are looking for.

4:46 Taylor cites Garth Ennis as a visual influence for what they were going for.

4:46 Taylor: "He's a weird superhero. He's not going to put on tights and save your cat from a tree." Neveldine: "He'll set your cat on fire."

4:47 Audience question: "What's Nic Cage like in person?" Answer: "He's like a Crank film."

4:50 Audience question: "You said you like stupid questions, so what does Nic Cage smell like?" Answer: "Vanilla."

4:52 So many of the audience questions are dedicated to Nic Cage. Taylor and Neveldine have nothing but nice things to say, but come on, what else are you going to say in public about a guy like Cage?

4:54 One audience questioner dares to unfavorably compare Captain America to Ghost Rider, and the crowd does not like that.

4:56 Taylor on the possibility of Crank 3: "We always knew Crank was destined to be a trilogy. The only question is when and where."

5:00 Talking about the 3D post-conversion process, Taylor fake-coughs Transformers as the name of a movie that was post-converted even though nobody wants to admit it. Nice to see some honesty in this world!