SDCC 2014: Rebels and Books

Two days down of San Diego Comic-Con and we’re already rolling in Star Wars news.  Well sort of.

Last night was the Rebels panel that featured the main cast along with Dave Filoni.  You can read StarWars.com’s liveblog of the event here.  While we didn’t get the official release date for Rebels (groan!), we did learn a few things.  The cast agrees that Vanessa Marshall is the biggest Star Wars fan out of all of them although apparently Freddie Prinze Jr. makes all the Force motions while recording.  The show will definitely be embracing the idea of this crew as a family and bringing in some comedy; both concepts they’re taking from the Original Trilogy.  Another point of note from the panel is that Filoni made mention of establishing a hierarchy of villains so if Darth Vader shows up, people should definitely be running.  Also, Rebels will be much more of a contained story than the Clone Wars as they won’t be jumping from character to character and creating new locations each week.

In addition to showing several clips from the show, they also debuted a second brand new trailer which you can watch below.

The Star Wars Books panel just wrapped up and needless to say, the highlight was the new book announcement.  Christie Golden will be penning a novel about Asajj Ventress and Quinlan Vos.  The book is due out in Summer 2015 and is taken from a plot line for the intended Season 7 of The Clone Wars.

asajj vos

As for the rest of the panel, it was moderated by Vanessa Marshall and there was a lot of discussion about John Jackson Miller’s forthcoming A New Dawn.  Vanessa has apparently read the book already and said it gave her a lot of insight into Hera.  Tarkin will be, as expected, akin to James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis and will take place very close to Revenge of the Sith.  Heir to the Jedi was described as a character study of Luke Skywalker and Lords of the Sith was dubbed “kind of a Vader/Palpatine road trip novel” by Jen Heddle.  You can read the rest of the live blog of the panel by the main site here.  I’d particularly suggest that readers take note of their comments about the newly minted Legends books.

If you’re looking for comic news though… well that’ll be dropping tomorrow during Marvel’s Cup of Joe Panel.  You’ve been warned.

SDCC Film/Television News Round Up

In completely and utterly unsurprising news, this year’s Hall H panels at San Diego Comic Con were the hot spot for all the film news.  Plenty of new trailers and clips were shown but here are some of the highlights or at least some of the ones that we thought were awesome and mention-worthy:

  • Zack Snyder will officially be directing a Batman/Superman film with an anticipated release date of Summer 2015.  The Hollywood Reporter also says that Warner Bros. is aiming for a Flash film in 2016 and a Justice League film for 2017 but that wasn’t announced at the panel (or at least as far as we are aware.)
  • Lionsgate treated audiences to a new Catching Fire Theatrical Trailer.  (The staff is still recovering from that one.)  The film will be out this November.
  • We also got to see some of the first footage for the Veronica Mars film.
  • The X-men were out in full force with first some footage from the soon to be released Wolverine and then with a trailer for X-men First Class: Days of Future Past.  Basically every X-men every was on that panel.
  • The anticipated Marvel Studios panel didn’t disappoint especially if you were in Hall H.  The audience was greeted by Loki.  Yes, Tom Hiddleston was in full Loki costume and character as an introduction for extended trailer/footage for Thor: The Dark World.  Then the cast/crew for Captain America: The Winter Soldier got to take the stage.  The cast talked about their characters and Kevin Feige mentioned that the Winter Soldier story will definitely stick pretty close to Ed Brubaker’s run on the book.  Obviously, the audience was treated to some exclusive footage.  Once more, the staff is incredibly jealous.  Marvel continued to overachieve by bringing out the cast and crew of Guardians of the Galaxy who all flew in specifically for the panel.  Even though they just started filming less than two weeks ago, they still brought footage with them.  Unfortunately, no new films were announced.  They did, however, have one last mic drop in the form of Joss Whedon taking the stage for the last few minutes to announce the full title for Avengers 2: Age of Ultron.   For those in the comic book know, Kevin Feige as said that the film is borrowing the title from the recent book and will not be a direct adaptation of it.
  • How I Met Your Mother got its very first SDCC panel for its very final season.  Usually, this wouldn’t make this post but we’ve poked fun at how the show has dragged on in the past and how those kids must be adults by now.  The crew showed they have a good sense of humor by putting together this promo for Season 9 in which the kids are finally done with Ted’s story.
  • And finally, even though the panel was Friday,  the trailer for Season 4 of The Walking Dead was also premiered and wow does it look excellent!  Season 4 will start airing on October 13th on AMC.