We told you about Homeland‘s Comic-Con panel this morning — but oh, dear friends, there’s so much more popping off at San Diego’s annual collection of nerds and movie stars. To the breakdown!
M. Night Shyamalan and Will Smith Are Giving You Literature
Guess what’s coming to a bookstore near you? Why, prequel novels based on the mythology surrounding M. Night Shyamalan and Will Smith’s new movie, of course. The flick is called After Earth, and it’s got a pretty solid sci-fi premise: One thousand years after Earth has been destroyed by some unknown apocalypse or another, humans live on a planet called Nova Prime. Big Willie plays a guy named Cypher Raige who, no, is not a shitty battle rapper, but rather a soldier coming home to his child the Karate Kid — no, not Hilary Swank, but Jaden Smith. Blazay blah blazay blah, and the two have crash-landed back on Earth, which is all messed up and scary and abandoned now. Mr. Raige is injured and dying because of the aforementioned crash, and the young boy has to save them both. Wait, so this now sounds like it mostly stars Jaden Smith? OK, so there are going to be prequel novels based on a Jaden Smith movie? Alert the Man Booker committee!
James Franco Is a Wizard
The trailer for Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful, which stars James Franco as the Kansas con man turned charlatan emperor, was dropped at Comic-Con.
https://www.youtube.com/v/H9ZTP2k0DRc?version=3&hl=en_US
Personally, ever since my ruiner-of-dreams freshman-year U.S. history professor explained the whole thing as a topical-circa-early-20th century allegory for an argument against the gold standard, I’ve never really been able to get into the whole magic and wonder of The Wizard of Oz. But that’s just me.
Teen Wolf Lives
Defeating all the odds, MTV’s sexed-up, Twilight-ed up version of Teen Wolf has just been picked up for a third season. So we only get the real Teen Wolf for 91 minutes, but we get this impostor Teen Wolf for dozens and dozens of episodes? Sacrilege! Register your protest by watching this footage of O.G. Wolf straight dunking on fools, over and over, for the next 45 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/v/RMyuv3wkTJs?version=3&hl=en_US
Vampire Kristen Stewart Eats a Mountain Lion in the New Twilight Movie
Vampire Kristen Stewart eats a mountain lion in the new Twilight movie. Vulture says: “Blood-lusty Bella initially sets her sights on an innocent deer, but her vamp senses soon pick up on the scent of blood from a human mountain climber thousands of feet away (and thousands of feet in the air). She immediately, like, jump-run-leaps up the mountain to get at the dude until Edward talks her down; still plenty hungry, she senses that a mountain lion is about to leap at that deer from before, and she zooms down, jumps straight at the lion, sinks her freaking teeth into it in mid-air, and then crashes to the ground while still going munchy-munchy.” I’m with it. Ask anyone: I’ve long said that most of Kristen Stewart’s performances, from Into the Wild to Adventureland, would have been improved by having her eat a mountain lion.
Bobby Digital in Theaters
You’ll be happy to know that RZA writes and directs movies — namely, his upcoming Russell Crowe–starring, eyeball-popping debut, The Man With the Iron Fists — the same way he makes groundbreaking hip-hop. Explaining his process to THR at Comic-Con, the Abbot says: “You thinking of creating lyrics for, instance. We always brag. I have a guy called Bobby Digital that says he ‘jumps off the roof down 40 feet / layin down and start rapping.’ It’s imagination. So I took my imagination, and [for Iron Fists] took ideas from ancient Chinese weapons.” I don’t know about you guys, but that sounds pretty “bong bong” to me.