20th Century Fox panel up in the air

Twentieth Century Fox pulled some of its high-profile projects out of Comic-Con on Wednesday, a week shy of the massive movie fan convention in San Diego.

The studio previously announced plans to promote its movies with a  star- and filmmaker-studded panel next Friday in the main hall.

The movies included "Jumper," directed by Doug Liman and starring Hayden Christensen; directors Colin and Greg Strause's update to the popular "Aliens vs. Predator" franchise; the Vin Diesel action film "Babylon A.D."; and "Hitman," starring Timothy Olyphant, based on the wildly popular video game of the same name.

Photo: James Dittiger / Twentieth Century Fox

"The material wasn't ready, and we only want to go out when we can put our best foot forward," Sean Dudas, the studio's vice president of national publicity, said Wednesday.

Later in the day, however, the studio was reconsidering its position. Executives said they were still hoping to have some kind of "surprise" for fans at the convention.

The last-minute cancellation is something of a upset as the major Hollywood film studios and their requisite genre divisions have increasingly made the annual trek to Comic-Con to launch and tease eagerly anticipated films and franchises, such as "Spider-Man," "300" and "The Chronicles of Narnia," directly to fans and media. An estimated 123,000 will be attending the convention.

This year Paramount, DreamWorks, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney, Universal, Warner Bros., New Line, Lionsgate and others have announced star-filled panels, screenings, sneak peeks and major promotional events.

"Obviously, we will have to find other ways to get materials out to the fans, and hopefully those will be ready soon," Dudas added.

In addition to debuting clips from "Jumper," "Aliens vs. Predator 2," "Hitman" and "Babylon A.D.," the studio had planned to tease Fox-Walden's "The Dark Is Rising" and "City of Ember." Fox-Walden did not return calls seeking comment.

Fox Atomic, the studio's youth-oriented genre division, still plans to hold raffles and giveaways around the Kevin Bacon film "Death Sentence" and the Rainn Wilson picture "The Rocker." The boutique division is also showing a line of graphic novels based on "28 Days Later," "The Hills Have Eyes" and "The Nightmare Factory."

David Glanzer, Comic-Con's director of marketing and public relations, said the cancellation was surprising.

"Every major studio usually has a presence at Comic-Con, so for Fox to pull out a week before is very unusual," Glanzer said, adding that organizers were still trying to figure out how to fill the studio's time slot. "We're still going back and forth. We have in excess of 350 hours of programming, so scheduling is like a giant Rubik's Cube. Otherwise, this year every major studio has committed to show up and participate."

-- Sheigh Crabtree

Comments

[Bex]

Something smells a little fishy. I could see one film not being ready, but all? Sounds like hogwash. I wonder what it was really about. I bet some kind of fight between Comic-Con and Fox.

[sheigh]

Hi Bex,

Interesting point... Did you go to the Fox panel last year?

Sheigh

[thorin01]

Fox should be deeply ashamed of themselves. They are a major movie studio grossing 100s of millions dollars and they pull out of one of the largest conventions in the States with barely a weeks notice. WTF? There are over 115,000 attendees that go to Comic Con each year. Many of them specifically go to attend the studio panels. For Fox to treat them and Comic Con in this kind of manner is a slap in the face.

Fox is seriously screwing over Comic Con and is being incredibly unprofessional. This close to the convention and Comic Con probably already printed up the 120,000 or convention guides with the schedules and there is no time to reprint all of them (and those books have to represent a serious expense for CC). Not to mention that Hall H is the largest exhibition space at the convention (over 5000 seats). Finding something that can be moved over is not going to be easy, especially with the staggered nature of the scheduling. The obvious choice is to move something over from Ballroom 20 or Room 6DCEF the next two largest spaces. But that just creates more changes in the schedule which will have to be communicated to attendees (again over 100k of them). This is going to create all kinds of confusion.

If I did something like this in my job, my boss would fire my ass in a second and I wouldn’t blame him.

[Willie Lumpkin]

It's not a "massive movie fan convention" it's a massive COMIC fan convention. sheesh, it's called Comic-Con, give the comic books some respect!

[sheigh]

Point taken, Mr. Willie Lumpkin. Comic-Con serves many media overlords. But, as you must know, a fair number of Con conventioneers show up solely to see movie stars.

[Marita]

LET THE OTHERS HAVE THEIR DUE.
You know...I am so fed up with this constant inconsistency from FOX.
There's just NO flippin end to it.
Persecute all the others because of a few give me a break! So pull the ones they DON"T want to show but PLEASE! Let the others have their due time. Munimize yes but pull completely out! I am so appaulled as to how stupid and neglegent they are to not only "not" be prepared for something like this but that they never had a back up plan!
Dagit...get someone in there with the intelligence to know what the heck they are doing!
I don't care if your entire foot isn't ready you idiots...WE don't care about the entire FOOT.. Give us the toes..the heel ..WE don't CARE but give us something! Best foot forward my Arse! Bring us something!
I got a few simple words for ya FOX.... "We the People want our sneak peaks wheter they are ready or not. Whether YOU are ready or not."
Give us what we want!
I want my Vin Diesel dagit!

[smokey ling]

Here's an interesting bit of news I found on joblo.com...which is kind of scary as I'm a fan of the uncensored clips and the such.

UPDATE - After looking into the situation, it seems the decision was the product of an ongoing dispute between the organizers of the Con and Fox. The Con people were trying to clean up their act after a lot of R-rated footage screened last year (300 and BORAT among others). Fox felt that didn't jive with their line-up, hence the decision to sit this one out. Most of the footage was already cut though so expect to see a good deal of it making its way online sometime soon.

[Chrissypoo]

You know, Comic-Con's organizers do have problems if they think that it's their duty to parent those who attend their convention. A simple warning that this presentation might not be suitable for younger attendees should suffice. But if they are trying to control content by making everything PG, they are going to have a backlash on their hands. Besides, I've always heard that the comic-con organizers hate how big the con has gotten, hate the celebrities and long for the days it would return to the convention room of a hotel.

[Brian Carter]

We're having a special show this Friday night at the San Diego Comedy Co-op for a bunch of the folks who are coming into town for comic-con... in particular for college university, peeps who make funny online comics.

Come on out and check us out, FREE, BYOB, so cheap drinking ya know- and we may have a headliner down from L.A., yet to confirm that. At least 6 funny guys confirmed to talk about cartoons, comics, animation, and all that.

9pm @ SD Comedy Coop

11211 Sorrento Valley Rd.
San Diego, CA 92121