By Evan Ackerman
We’re not really a big pop sci-fi / fantasy blog here at OhGizmo, but I thought that you guys might (might) be interested in some of the stuff that went on at WonderCon here in San Francisco over the weekend. I sat in on a Q&A session with Richard Hatch (Tom Zarek in the new Battlestar Galactica), went to panels about Wall-E and the new X-Files movie, and wandered around the exhibit hall for a while. Even if you’re not into the genre, at least click through for an adorable picture of a zombie chewing on a teddy bear at the end of the article.
X-Files Movie
The new unnamed X-Files movie is currently being filmed up in Vancouver, BC. The panel included director Chris Carter, writer Frank Spotnitz, and of course, actors Gillian Anderson (Scully) and David Duchovny (Molder), in what is reportedly their first convention appearance together. You didn’t miss much when it came to the trailer at the beginning, since all we got to see were some government guys walking across what looked like a frozen lake, followed by a cry of, “we found it!”
The movie itself will be stand-alone in terms of plot, although it will of course incorporate elements from the X-Files series, and will be picking up “in real time” (5 or so years) from where the series left off. Nobody said anything of substance about the plot (besides something about a warewolf…?), although we were told that it won’t break with anything established by the series, and Chris Carter reminded us that in the X-Files, nobody is permanently dead. Amanda Peet, Xzibit, and Billy Connolly will all have parts as well. Most of the audience questions were not about the movie, but about the series, and whether or not David Duchovny would give anyone his pants. The release date is supposed to be July 25th of this year.
The most priceless quote came from Gillian, being dead serious: “I always thought that Molder should, um… I don’t think we did this… Autoerotic asphyxiation? …Maybe XF3?” David: “Um… Chris?” Chris: “Uh…” You can watch a clip of this exchange over at io9.
Battlestar Galactica
Richard Hatch played Captain Apollo in the original Battlestar Galactica series back in the late 70s, and currently plays ex-con turned politician Tom Zarek in the new BSG series. At WonderCon, he gave a fairly intimate Q&A session which lasted a good hour and a half. Here’s the meat… The fourth season, consisting of 20 episodes, is halfway finished, and as far as Hatch knows, it’s the end, although he personally hopes “it’s not the end of Battlestar.” He does say that this final season will be “the most powerful 20 episodes ever of Battlestar Galactica.” There may even be a movie on the horizon if the rights can be purchased from Universal, perhaps a prequel.
Most priceless quote: when asked what he would most like to see happen to Zarek in season four, Hatch responded “I wanna get laid in these next episodes… Starbuck, Boomer, Cylons… There are some very juicy women on Battlestar.” No kidding.
Wall-E
If you haven’t heard of Pixar’s Wall-E yet, be sure and check out our coverage over at BotJunkie. Andrew Stanton got up to answer some questions, and show some footage from the Wall-E movie. Turns out that the movie will not be entirely free of dialogue, which means that John Ratzenberger will undoubtedly have a cameo as he does in every other Pixar movie. The score will be written by Tom Newman. Stanton was asked about his inspiration for Wall-E (specifically regarding Wall-E’s similarity to Short Circuit’s Johnny 5). Stanton replied that Wall-E was based primarily on a pair of binoculars, and really nothing else, at least not consciously.
And now I have to apologize, since four new Wall-E clips were shown at WonderCon, but I don’t have any of them for you. Recording of any sort during the Wall-E video presentation was not allowed. I thought, for a few minutes, that I could ignore this restriction because of my press badge (many events seem to work this way), but after a minute or two some bruiser in a black suit came over and not only made me shut my camera off, he watched while I deleted all the Wall-E stuff off of my memory card. Geez. Suffice it to say that the four clips Andrew Stanton showed us were unbelievably awesome, and included new plot elements, most notably that Wall-E follows his girlfriend-bot EVE into space and all the way to her mothership, where he causes some sort of problem, and she tries to send him back to Earth. She can’t really let him go, of course, and there is a touching interstellar robot reunion facilitated by a fire extinguisher.If I wasn’t going to be on a plane to Ecuador on June 27, I’d be the first one in the door for this movie, whatever the cost.
The rest of WonderCon was the expo floor, and it was all about the comics and anime and stuff. There wasn’t much for me to cover, but I did take some pics, and here are a few that came out okay:
[ WonderCon 08 ]
