Comic Con 2012 Update: Breaking Bad, Vampire Diaries, and Django Unchained at Comic Con 2012
Django Unchained:
• Quentin Tarantino, and the rest of the movie cast, discussed the upcoming film. Audiences were also treated to eight minutes of footage from the “spaghetti Western,” a term normally used to describe Western movies made by Italian directors. Tarantino reportedly stated that Django Unchained and Kill Bill were his two biggest projects, adding “and we’re not even done shooting Django.” Foxx, who stars alongside Christoph Waltz, stated that Tarantino asked him to completely forget his own celebrity status and work from the bottom. The experience has been an emotional one for Foxx, who states that even after growing up in Texas in a time of racial hate being prominent, it did not prepare him for this. The movie takes place two years before the Civil War and revolves around a liberated slave who, traveling alongside a dentist, stars taking bounties, destroying plantations and enacting revenge on his cruel oppressors in order to find his wife and kill his enemies. In the aforementioned footage, which lasted eight glorious minutes of stylized action, Foxx’s character reveals the soon to be famous line from the film, “I like the way you die, boy.” The movie will also be adapted into a comic book, a fact Tarantino announced at the DC Comics panel to much applause. Django Unchained premiers this December
Breaking Bad:
• AMC’s Breaking Bad is soon going to start its final season, with the first eight episodes starting their run this Sunday while the final eight will air next summer. The show is known for its portrayal of a protagonist, played by Bryan Cranston (Malcolm in the Middle), that becomes increasingly difficult to sympathize with as the story progresses, and creator Vince Gilligan stated, “he may get worse yet.” The new season will take the show to Hamburg, just as the previous season took it to Mexico. Gilligan, not known for revealing too much about his show, stayed tight-lipped about further details but was willing to share that Hamburg would be a location in the upcoming episodes. Several new cast members were announced, including Jesse Plemons and Laura Fraser, while Cranston revealed that he does not know how the story ends. Cranston also stated that the teaser for the final season was their most revealing ever, yet no one watching will know what it means. The series has sixteen episodes to go and Cranston admits that the central conflict has already ended; therefore they have 16 episodes to “regain momentum.”
Vampire Diaries:
• CW’s Vampire Diaries is scheduled to shake things up, according to executive producer Kevin Williamson. Williamson states that this is “a season of changes” and goes on to state that the biggest change will be for Elena, who was turned into a vampire at the conclusion of Season 3. Nina Dobrev, who plays Elena, has stated that everything about the character will be “heightened” as a result of this transformation. Also revealed, was the fact that Zach Roerig’s character, now the only human in the show’s setting Mystic Falls, would play a larger part this season. Finally, Julie Plee, the show’s second executive producer, revealed that characters’ back stories would be focused on this season and, as a nod to persistent fans, it was stated that Matt Davis could still appear on the show in the form of flashbacks, despite being part of the CW drama Cult.
Larry King Interviews Peter Cullen a.k.a Optimus Prime:
•An interview that works both as an affirmation of Larry King as the “King of Interviews” and as tribute to Peter Cullen, the man behind the most recognizable rendition of Optimus Prime. King asked Cullen how he broke into the industry, to which the voice actor replied, “by accident,” stating that he liked making a lot of noise as a child and had experience as a radio host, where he would often impersonate guests. When Cullen moved to Hollywood and was asked to voice the talking ball on the Sonny and Cher show, he was noticed in the voice-acting industry. King then asked about the inspiration for Optimus Prime’s voice, which Cullen revealed that he modeled after his brother, a former marine captain. Cullen later stated that he never really changed the voice, always just channeling the gentle but strong and truthful voice of his sibling. Cullen also stated that he enjoyed working with Frank Welker (Megatron) and was fond of the anonymity that voice acting brought because it allowed him to raise his family without being burdened by fame. Cullen then took some questions from the audience, during which he was asked what he thought of other voice actors in his roles and he revealed that he does not have time to pay attention to other voices for Optimus Prime. The most endearing part of the interview was King asking Cullen whether Prime was a father figure, to which Cullen replied that he felt it was and that he wanted to maintain that, something he tried to do by fighting over certain lines not appropriate for a fatherly figure in the third movie. The protests, however, were ultimately useless because executives felt otherwise.
