Good Omens
Neil Gaiman, David Tennant, Michael Sheen. We don’t even have to keep listing the talent because you’re already on board and so were we for this first thing panel at MSG Theater. We strolled in late by about 8 minutes, but there were still some seats left in the far back right. So, the photo opportunities weren’t amazing. The dialogue and previewed content, however, was excellent. Whoopi Goldberg moderated, Neil Gaiman and Douglas Mackinnon provided a lot of insight as the writer/director, and the star studded cast Michael Sheen, David Tennant, Miranda Richardson, and Jon Hamm(!) were there.
I had no idea Jon Hamm was in this, so that was a nice surprise! He was hilarious and a bit political, comparing his character (archangel Gabriel) to a bad boss, who is always wrong but can’t be convinced he’s not right. The panel yielded a lot of details and backstory, including why Neil chose Queen. He explained that he and Terry Prachett had a Queen’s Greatest Hits cassette in the car one day, but neither had any idea where it came from. So, they decided all cassettes left in the car long enough become Queen’s Greatest Hits. Before he knew Terry was going to be writing the novel with him, he’d already put it in.
Neil confirmed the footnotes will be in the show in some form, some more blatantly than others. Apparently there’s an epic montage showing the history of Aziraphale (Sheen) and Crowley’s (Tennant) relationship, which both David and Michael were stoked about. The main actors explained their working relationship was like a dance, where they got into their mutual rhythms over time. All six episodes were shot in about 5 months time, moving locations almost every 2 days! So there will be some major epic scale to this.
Audience Q&A yielded a few gems, including someone asking Hamm if he was going to be the next batman. David was very supportive, saying how he’d love to see Jon Hamm as batman… it’s possible he just wanted to say “Batman” on stage though. Someone asked what superpower everyone would have, and Neil’s was my favorite. He said he wanted to be able to stretch time; to lean on a Friday and have it gone on for as long as you needed.
The show looks really good, in fact I think I’m going to read the book! It comes out in 2019 on Amazon Prime.
Legacies
So, apparently, the creators of The Vampire Diaries are going to give the Supernatural fandom a run for their money for longest running world, because Julie Plec and the CW brought the new show in Mystic Falls to NYCC. We got to screen the world premiere of Legacies! Need a refresher on how The Vampire Diaries and The Originals became Legacies? Here’s a trailer and a guide:
Before the cast and showrunners came out for a super fun Q&A, the audience got to screen the first episode, and I should say: in a world where we have an embarrassment of riches of Powerful Kids in Magical School media, this is a GREAT show. Part of that is the mythos of what we know and remember from TVD; as a consequence there is less explanatory world-building than other shows. You don’t have to tell the audience about vervain. We got it. Also, aside from cameos from former cast members and characters from the very first seasons of TVD (I don’t want to give away how old they are now), there are a ton of easter eggs and the world feels rich.
What’s the deal? The Salvatore School is educating supernatural teens on how to live and be in control, headed by the one and only Alaric Saltzman. He has two twin witch daughters, and is mentoring the world’s only tribrid: Hope Michaelson. Mystic Falls is different now. The protagonists aren’t just supernatural creatures, but they are really (actually) teens, not 100s of years old. The regular folks in town are the dicks. And looks like THESE kids will know not to go to any Founder’s Day parties. There will be surprises, backstories, and love triangles. Just like you’d expect from a spinoff of TVD.
Coming to the CW on October 25th!!!
Conversation with Sophie Turner
Standing room only for this interview. Well worth it though as Sophie was a delight. She spoke about her time on Game of Thrones and the upcoming film Dark Phoenix, in which she reprises her role as X-Man Jean Grey. She didn’t have much to tell about Sansa, but she did explain how they shot fake scenes to throw off the papparazzi and that they had a drone killer to make the pappz drones literally fall out of the sky. She reminisced on getting high with Masie during the evenings in Belfast and brushing themselves with makeup brushes in the bath. When asked if she took anything from set, she said her corset.
She admitted to bawling her eyes out on her final day of shooting. David and DB apparently bring out a storyboard of their favorite scene of your character with a little note on the back, and then present it to the actor. She said she cried for 3 hours, but said it wouldn’t feel truly real that GoT is over until she doesn’t go back to Ireland next year to shoot.
She had a lot to say on Dark Phoenix, but assured the audience you didn’t need to rewatch the other films, that only the characters are the same, but it’s not connected per se. One thing she really loved about the role was that Jean is clearly dealing with a lot of mental illness. Sophie’s family has a history of mental illness, so when she read the script she had a critical eye for realism and appropriate portrayals. She said it 100% held up and that made her more excited to dive into it all.
They asked about doing stunts, and she laughed because Jean’s telekinetic, so she doesn’t really do much tactical work. She said she practiced for hours in the mirror her hand motions and expressions for the telekinesis though. Then she explained how she floats/flies, which was this weird platform thing that essentially held her up by the crotch. Reshoots were done with wires, which she said was way better. Dark Phoenix comes out June 7, 2019.
Daredevil
Every cast member showed up for this epic Daredevil panel to promote season 3. Jeph started with an announcement that Charlie Cox just got married and had his new wife (Sam Thomas) stand up for the crowd.
Photo by: Patrick Lewis / StarPix for Netflix
Quickly we launched into the conversations about the show itself. Sounds like we’ll be getting some backstory on Karen Page and get to meet Foggy’s family this season. The new show runner Erik Oleson could barely contain his excitement when mentioning there will be an incredibly epic fight sequence. He said they rehearsed it an entire day and then shot it in one take.
The biggest reveal was the new villain for season 3. They had the actor there (Wilson Bethel) and weren’t really talking to him, and then finally they play the scene where you first really see him in action. Then Jeph had Wilson tell us his character’s full name, which is Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter, aka Bullseye. The crowd went insane at this and Charlie Cox ran across the stage to draw a bullseye on Wilson’s head. Vincent D’Onofrio then spoke about how Wilson Fisk’s character interacts with Dex, which sounds really compelling.
Photo by: Patrick Lewis / StarPix for Netflix
Overall an excellent panel with a lot of great sneak peeks at the new season. The good news is you don’t have to wait long because Daredevil Season 3 airs October 19 on Netflix.
Photo by: Marion Curtis / StarPix for Netflix
Deadly Class
On Saturday, Beth and I (Bekah) headed to the Hammerstein Ballroom because we knew that Lara Jean from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, kisser of Noah Centineo, was in a new show called Deadly Class. I knew nothing about it.
It’s rare that you walk into something without having any expectations and end up being TOTALLY blown away!
Before the cast panel, we got to screen the first episode of Deadly Class and it was AMAZING. I immediately texted my boyfriend and told him to clear his schedule January 16th because we’re figuring out how to hack someone’s cable and get SYFY to start watching this show together.
Here’s what it’s about: Deadly Class is based on the graphic novels by the same name and follows Marcus Lopez, an orphaned, homeless, troubled kid who the cops are after for murdering a bunch of kids in his boys home. He comes across a group of badass teens who help him avoid the cops and ends up finding out about a secret school for devious kids. Like, really devious kids.
Led by Master Lin, played by Benedict Wong (Wong in Doctor Strange and The Avengers Infinity War), this school trains kids to become the next generation of top assassins for crime families throughout the world. Gym class is hand to hand combat where it’s totally cool to break your opponents hand to get your grade. Master Lin assigns a murder one day as a pass/fail for the class. A murder.
It’s like a dark version of Harry Potter if Hogwarts was in Hells Kitchen in the 1980s (It takes place in San Francisco but I didn’t realize that until I googled it). The school is just like any other, except with murder, with cliques of kids from mobster families, latino gangs (led by “Chico” who makes it his mission to kill Marcus from day 1), the preps who are sons and daughters of CIA and FBI agents, the stoners, the weirdos, and, of course, the Nazi’s.
And then there’s Saya. Played by Lana Candor (of hot tub making out with Noah Centineo fame), Saya is a loner, a reclusive, and the perfect love interest for poor misfit Marcus, who will never be on her level.
This isn’t a CW drama with “fun” murders. This is a dark, somewhat-comedic, graphic novel to TV adaptation. It gets deep about who deserves to die, the responsibility of the assassins, and what Marcus really has to live for. The nerdy comic boys in the audience were yelling with glee at seeing this story come to live on screen. So if they’re into it, you know it’s going to be good!
Airing in January on SYFY, don’t miss Deadly Class!
Outlander Panel
OH, and there was this other screening that we planned to attend for a show called (let me check my notes) um, Outlander. Have you guys heard of it?
Bekah and I ate some delicious poke and then hoofed it over to the Hulu theater. Sure, we got there half an hour early and we still weren’t led to our seats until the show had already started, but we DID get to see the entire first episode of season 4! Over the years, we’ve been in a lot of theaters in a few different cities, screening the premieres of different seasons of Outlander. I think this one was the biggest (that could have ALSO been folks waiting around for The Walking Dead right after). LOTS of cheers for the new opening credits.
And here is where I tell you all the good stuff about the episode.
You knew that wasn’t going to happen right? You would rather hear about the lady who had a seat in the VIP section but instead of moving down the row so everyone else in that section could follow her in (because they were in the complete dark), she chose to stop at the first seat on the aisle and refused to move. So everyone had to stumble over her, yell at her while the episode was playing, etc etc because she was super selfish. Or the fans who KEPT ON VIDEOing even when a theater employee LOUDLY told them to stop. Or how about the deluge of fans who started flocking down the aisles when they opened it up to fan questions as if they were going to be able to ask more than six in total. Or the fan who DID get to ask a question only to spend 10 minutes talking about her English class, her personal history, her feelings on the current politics and more! I think it took her 7 minutes to even remotely get to something resembling a question, and even then it had to be distilled into coherence by the moderator. Or my least favorite moment: when a disproportionately large group of fans GIGGLED at a moment in the show when someone asks Jamie if he’s ever been sexually abused. Yeah, GREAT folks in there.
Thankfully, the panel was moderated by Lola Ogunnaike, host of Entertainment Weekly the Show and People Now, and she was amazing. She was a perfect moderator with a mix of show knowledge, fan knowledge, good questions, fun and the ability to steer a terrible fan question into something manageable. My favorite panelist was Diana Gabaldon, Herself. A last minute (surprise) addition to the panel, she reminded us that the best lines are always from the book and that the history of the Scots in America is robust and important. Did you guys know that 1 in 3 colonist at the time of revolution was Scottish? Me neither. Thanks, DianaG!
Want to know more about the episode? Keep up with us and we will give you ALL the good Outlander news when the show premieres on NOVEMBER 4th on STARZ!
