The Buzz About Comic-Con

By Meg White on July 14, 2012

Source: ScreenRant (http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Comic-Con-2012-Coverage.jpg)

 

 

It’s Comic-Con weekend, ladies and gentlemen! Since Wednesday, July 11th and through Sunday, July 15th West Harbor Drive and its neighboring streets been flooded with pop culture fans, clamoring to get a look at what the next year will bring in terms of film, television, anime, and comic book-based entertainment at the 42nd annual San Diego Comic-Con International.

Beginning in 1970, the convention has continually proven to be one of the biggest weekends of the year for fans and entertainment studios alike. At its core the event is one part instructional—hosting panels for those interested in breaking into the film, publishing, or comic book industries—and one part promotional. This year’s Comic-Con counts Hollywood power players like the NBC; Marvel; Warner Bros.; the Walt Disney Studios; HBO; and Showtime among its sponsors, and many of these studios will use the convention as a means to gain early  exposure for their upcoming productions. Or, in other words, to generate one of the things that the entertainment industry loves the most—free buzz.

By giving both prospective and die-hard fans at least a taste of what there is to come, the response can either be enormous or give a property’s producers something to think about. In 2010, the strategy to debut The Avengers’ core cast and crew worked to Marvel’s advantage by arousing a great sense of excitement around the film and winning over many skeptics. Harnessing the interest of fan sites as well as entertainment blogs, The Avengers demonstrated the power of being in the right as the right time and giving the public what they want.

In the two years since, other studios have followed in Marvel’s footsteps by choosing Comic-Con as the place to debut the pilots of new television series and movie trailers. Beginning with preview night on Wednesday, Warner Bros. Television has already given fans a taste of its fall season pilots including the much hyped about Revolution. On Thursday, sneak peeks of New Line Cinema’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Disney’s Oz: The Great and Powerful were two of the biggest draws while panels that focused the future of the Avengers-franchise including Iron-Man 3, Zack Snyder’s re-tooling of Superman in Man of Steel, and the upcoming conclusion to Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, were at capacity.

Friday was filled with comic-book panels, television screenings, and reunions. Some of the major events included screenings of The CW’s new series Cult, several new shows from Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, a glimpse of the final season of AMC’s Breaking Bad, and the 10-year reunion of Joss Whedon’s cult hit, Firefly. The day also belonged to those looking to break into either the entertainment business or the comic book industry with instructive panels, hosted by industry professionals, on topics ranging from how to score an agent to what is the next big craze and even to the rights a person has to his or her work. This no-holds barred look at how the business is ran gives the next generation of artists, writers, filmmakers, and designers not only a window into its future, but also a chance to learned from those its members have admired for years.

Saturday, however, was a day of renewing interest in existing properties. (Just to prevent any fall off during the summer hiatuses, of course.) Beginning with the arrival of the cast of ABC’s Once Upon a Time as they approached the San Diego Convention Center in fairy tale fashionable black carriages; fans got a look at the characters in store for them in the show’s sophomore season. Then Seth McFarlane and his cast and creative team from Family Guy presented a host of new clips while other long-running hits Glee and True Blood answered fans questions and dropped hints regarding their upcoming seasons. Even Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel offered new information on the futures of their hits animated shows, SpongeBob Squarepants and Phineas and Ferb respectively.

Although Sunday is the final day of the convention, it is not light on content. It is in fact scheduled down to the last second with everything from panels discussing the art of creating new superheroes and their archrivals to Q&A sessions hosted by the casts of Merlin, Fringe, Supernatural, and Doctor Who as well as the San Diego International Children’s Film Festival and the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival Awards. However, these dizzying past few days seem to have already paid off as fan sites, IMDB, and Facebook-s are already exploding with new information, highlights, and speculation about the futures of favorite shows and franchises.

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