Luke Y Thompson's Deadline ComicCon Daily
I’ve been enjoying reading Luke Y Thompson’s coverage of ComicCon for the LA Weekly. (Does anyone think Nikki has seen a single entry before Luke has posted them to the site? My guess is her first glimpse is to see it on the site and then to call and SCREAM at the LA Weekly web folks to tell them to post the notice that Luke works for her. And to remove the images of the Nikki Finke dolls that are on the convention floor this year. She did get an e-mail from someone telling her that The Weinsteins were mocked at the Fanboys press conference… and those fans won big… the movie, which was shot 2.5 years ago is actually going to be released and forgotten this fall, before the 3rd anniversary. WOW! And I have a surge I can sell you as rationalization that the Iraq War was a good idea too!)
(CORRECTION, 8p, Fri: Luke was kind enough to return an e-mail from the ‘Con floor and corrects my notion that Nikki never even sees his entries. She does, as he sends them to her. My apologies all around.)
But the coverage reminds me… I am so happy NOT to be there.
ComicCon is a great experience for the 125,000 or so people who go down there every year. It is what a convention in any industry is. And has such, has become pretty much as irrelevant and unavoidable.
How ironic is it that every studio in L.A. is scrambling to get to San Diego this week/weekend, but The Dark Knight barely did anything (except for very basic viral marketing stunts) last year and underperformers Beowulf, Halloween, The Incredible Hulk, Shoot ‘Em Up, Southland Tales, Drillbit Taylor, Spiderwick Chronicles, Hot Rod, and others all had a big presence at The ‘Con.
Yes… Iron Man was there. And Iron Man did huge business. Does anyone really think that a dime of that business was garnered at ComicCon? Was the no-footage appearance by Indiana Jones the reason why that film got slammed by so much of the geek-edia?
Really… party on… commuinity comes together… good food, good drinks, good times… and as long as most studios are there, most other studios will argue to the bosses paying the bills that it’s a million bucks well spent. And if you have a low profile film, it surely is. But does Watchmen need Comic-Con? Well, you got the answer loud and clear last week… no… or they would have held the trailer release until The ‘Con. Yeah, they’ll all be down there, pushing it out to the geeks. But that trailer, which is being watched all over the world right now, is what will sell the movie. People walking through the Owl ship will not.
Of course, the greatest irony is that most of the geek-edia that is down there has already experienced a significant percentage of what they will encounter on sets over the last year. Grease is the word.
It’s about giving the fans an experience. Iron Man and Batman don’t need to press the flesh but Red Sonya certaintly does.
I’m thankful for the geek media coverage because I can’t be there. I’m on the other side of the country but I still get the gist of the experience.
I’ve been to Comic Con and also find it unnerving (and unrealistic) that these studios think they can BUY comicdom street cred.
It used to work. Show up. Pay our kind some attention, and we’d turn out.
Problem is, EVERYONE shows up now. So we can afford to be choosy. And some projects beg to get made and others are pretty much a stretch.
Also, the comic industry has changed. It used to be geared to the comic book readers. Now its geared towards future feature pitching (A HUGE pet peeve of mine is when an artist draws a character in such a way that it is clearly supposed to be a certain actor – Clive Owen, Sam Jackson, etc).
So recognize that the comic fans are sophisticated, the comic creators are sophisticated, and as such, any marketing strategies on the studios behalves need to be.
Comic Con is big business and VERY hard to impress these days.
Dunno, everyone IS talking about that Owl Ship.
Watchmen needs SDCC because there is a massive level of uncertainty that the trailer did not answer. This is the film that IO’s claims better be real about, because the audience snickered and guffawed at that trailer before TDK, and not at any other. Not even at Keanu.
And the more Marvel pulls away in favor of NYCC, the bigger the unnecessary SDCC becomes. When Dave doesn’t go, a guy who was there when SDCC met the web, that says something.
I was conversing with someone somewhere today… and we pretty much agree… the ‘Con jumped the shark 2 years ago… it’s now unavoidable to studios, but not a happy choice… and people senior to this person are at The ‘Con, dancing their jig.
Really… I want to be clear… I am not mocking those who enjoy it… I’m just saying that it is a classic example of something that was special in its way becoming so overloaded that it is now just another budget line to studios that everyone kinda knows means nothing in the long run, but means headaches if you miss it. The exhibitor version is ShoWest, which was a not-for-profit and a joy in the pre-internet/pre-exhib-consolidation era and is now just wasted money that cannot not be spent because of relationships, but hasn’t changed the course of a film for the positive in over a decade.
Watchman is not going to be any better than that trailer by being at The ‘Con… if that trailer is a problem, only a better trailer will help. And as we learned with Snakes on a Plane (and many others), judging your campaign by that crowd is suicide unless that crowd is all you are after.
David, don’t you get tired of being wrong? You could have simply picked up a phone and asked me instead of speculating erroneously. But then you never bother to do any reporting. So, to set the record straight: I pursued Luke to cover Comicon for DHD, I’m paying him out of my own pocket, I’m editing him, I’m putting in his pics, etc. (FYI, I am solely responsible for posting on my site, including all text and graphics. No one else. The LA Weekly web folks only assist me when something goes wrong with the site.) Also, I decided to include that small notice how “I don’t do geek” because I wanted to ensure that Luke gets all the credit for his posts on DHD. And he deserves it. Now, how about correcting what you wrote since it’s not fair to Luke, and it’s not fair to me…
How Mrs. Finke, how goes life? Everything good over there in your world? We did get the “YOU EDIT EVERYTHING” memo, but good luck with that last bit.
Heat Machine stated; “…judging your campaign by that crowd is suicide unless that crowd is all you are after.” IRON MAN, Heat. Iron-Man.
Comic-Con pretty much set-up that Iron Man was going to be what it was going to be this time last year. Thanks in no small part to that presentation getting on you tube, that picture hitting with the cast, and the anticipation beginning.
Sure, you do not want to base a freakin ad campaign around those people, but those people can give you a sense of things with the right property. The right PROPERTY being key.
Oh yeah Martin, you know things about things. Do you really think that Watchmen can do much after it’s first weekend with that ending? It can be a damn awesome film, but that ending could be the straw.
Oops… made my correction before reading Nikki’s screed. Thank you for clearing up your perception of reality, Nikki.
Luke, for the record, is not upset. But Luke is sane and peaceful and decent, even when his hair is multicolored.
Calling you – I don’t think I have your number… or want it – would only create another opportunity for you to lie to people about the content of our conversation. This is why I no longer exchange e-mail with you. You are a liar and a con artist and more than a bit of a scumbag. But you know that.
As for your relationship with LA Weekly, my only perspective is when you called on them to attack me for embeding a video that had an embed link on it and was, it appeared, intended to support the WGA strike. But apparently, it was meant to promote you. I’m still waiting on your lawsuit, amongst the many threatened over the years.
P.S. My only fear about this exchange is that you will somehow take it out on Luke as you take out so many things on your colleagues. Please do not. He did nothing to show you the slightest disrespect and deserves no pain for not treating me like an enemy.
^ I Love Friday Nights!
You succeeded in making me laugh. At you.
Yeah, lady, let me be the first to tell you. You really should not play, but good attempt at a wicked burn.
Okay, now that got me laughing.
David, with all due respect: You made an accusation without checking your facts. Somebody in MSM does that, you jump all over them. (And rightly so.) You do it, and then get called on it, and you make a joke about it. Now, this is your sandbox, and you’re entitled to make any rules you want. But the next time you want to complain that you’re not taken as seriously as MSM, well…
IO – that’s a good point. The way I’ve been seeing it, is if Zack can get the genital public to buy into the initial conceit, then they will accept alien calamari. Manhattan and Rorshach will go over, but the others…
It comes back to when we were debating The Avengers. We agree that if Marvel put the cart before the horse, – a team film before individual entries – people would have been utterly confused because 75% of the possible audience is not familiar with the characters. But WB had the ability to approach it as a JLA film first, because the opposite was true; people know Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
So what the hell are the Watchmen to the general pop? How does a play on superhero teams work, when most people are going to be, at best, tangentially familiar with the premise due to the X films?
It’s really screwed up when you think about it. Moore came up with the idea as a way to deconstruct decades of established norms, and now the movie is coming out before the norms have been established in film.
Look at it this way; Nolan talks about TDK’s “grounded realism” – real city streets, real Visual FX, real cause & effect…and Snyder shoots Watchmen, the standard-bearer for “real superheroes”, with vibrant HD hues on greenscreen. IMO, there’s a real disconnect when the word from the panel was that the clips have an 80’s aesthetic to them. That now makes it twice-removed from the audience – a retro movie accounting the historical actions and interactions of an alternate reality. I don’t know if that’s bad or good.
The only thing I’m sure is that Snyder is one of the few people working who realizes he has three masters – the fans, the creators and the financiers. He might have very well taken the smart angle to do a 1:1 translation. This way, the strengths and weaknesses are inherent from the book and not brought about by him. So if people don’t like something, it’s not his baggage and thereby cannot be faulted.
Dave – no one thinks you’re mocking the con. When G4 first went live, they might as well have handed out Jim Jones flavored Kool-Aid as you passed through the gates.
An East Coast example was the Chiller Theater horror convention of the 90’s. It was a haven for oddities and bootlegs in the pre-DVD days, but you knew it was over when some clowns from the Sci-Fi channel showed to cover it. Some things are not meant to be brought to light.
I am really interested to hear about attendance in this economy.
” . . . if Zack can get the genital public to . . .”
The genital public? What exactly was on your mind when you wrote that, Martin?
Hmmm….I’m sensing some chemistry here. Maybe a movie or another two-critic show….
Dear Ms. Finke,
Go back to your rock and crawl under it.
Respectfully,
Aris
Joe – I don’t complain about being taken less seriously than MSM. With due respect, I am and have been for years. What I am not is given the professional courtsey that MSM gives itself, even its least reliable outlets. That has nothing to do with my credibility… or haven’t you noticed that my position on Par is suddenly being taken up by the LA Times, Nikki, and others after months of tap dancing the other way?
Moreover, the phrase “My guess is…” does not suggest to my readers that I researched the issue. It suggests that I am guessing. Had I written, “This is how it works with Nikki…” you might be more right.
This is the mindset you stick to. You still want to defend the past, no matter how wrong they get it, no matter how much better my track record on accuracy is than so much MSM coverage.
Do you think I expect the NY Times to send me a note or to wrote a piece about how wrong they were about The Slump and worse, their ongoing efforts to cover up the mistake with crap like “ticket sales are down”? Of course not. Because they aren’t as honest as I am. My minor correction went up same day, in the middle of the story. How does Variety handle their mistakes? NYT? LAT?
Blogs are blogs and news is news and the distinction matters. It is a distinction that I make very specifically, day in and day out.
Yes, I have to be 10 times “better” to make up for the inherent bias against the web. Perfect – except for typos – for you. Once sentence, posed as a guess, corrected within hours, completely openly, and you are telling me about how lacking in credibility I am… while discussing someone who overwrites stories every day, claims false exclusives, lies endlessly, spins in her masters’ direction, etc.
I know you are a sincere man, Joe. And most of the time, I really like you. But sometimes, your head is just up your ass.
And Nikki… if you were doing anything but grandstanding, you would just run a “Reported by Luke Y Thomson for Deadline Hollywood Daily” at the top and everyone would understand.
Having someone cover for you when you’re unable to leave the house makes some sense. We have discovered over the years that the return on investment from doing that isn’t what we’d like it to be, so we’re not doing it on ComicCon or Cannes. But good for you for trying something new.
But the whole “I don’t do geek” thing is grandstanding bullshit. You didn’t “do” box office until it got you Drudge links. Now its most of your transcribing and most of your page views. I’m sure Matt is sick of the e-mails you’ve been sending, begging for a link to the ‘Con stuff. But you being you, he will eventually link one just to get you off his back.
We understand. You “do” anything that you think will get you some positive attention. You sucked WGA’s asshole and you still had the guild telling people not to listen to the false rumors you were unknowingly spreading for AMPTP. But you got your mentions from Bill Scheft and all was well.
You are a very bright and skilled person, Nikki. And if you had a single scruple in your entire bag of tricks, you could be the best of us. But instead, you are the Lead Weight Around The Neck Of Entertainment Journalism ’08. And like all the others, we hope you won’t become a cancer… just a stone that can be painfully passed.
Oh sweet merciful nipples of Hera, I made Jeff laugh. Someone mark the date.
Martin: The Watchmen graphic novel has become a best-seller at Amazon. Thanks in no small part — I would imagine — to that trailer inspiring people to figure out what the hell that movie is about. So I think some of the moviegoing populace will have some idea what it’s about by March. Nevertheless, Synder did tell the G4 folks that going back to the green screen sets after shooting on sets bummed him out. So I guess he’s starting to have a problem with his own aesthetic choices.
I hope to God that Zack Snyder allows himself to try other forms of filmmaking before too long. I really hope that Watchmen, with a strong foundation in the gn, is a great, great movie movie.
But actors working as actors is a beautiful thing indeed. And if Zack is really good at that – and Dawn of the Dead suggested that possibility more than 300 – he will be more than The Guy With The CG Gimmick.
IO – I’m sure enough EW handjobs and whatnot will get the Watchmen idea out there, but as you certainly know, Watchmen is Watchmen because everything in the damn GN is a reference to something past in the comic world. The best example is the older team photos; at its core it’s a knock on the JSA, but superficially, it some really bad outfits posed to look as if from the 1940’s. So what wins out? The idea of a layered history or the initial reaction to the image.
I guess my biggest problem with this movie, is that I’m from the Cronenberg school of adaptation; take the theme and evolve it to fit a new medium. There’s a part of me that believes Snyder gets it, because he’s been the only guy to come along and break the film into three parts that will be recombined for DVD. It’s a simple but perfect idea.
Dave – forget Nikki and co. If geek is below her, than why did she run the “DC for sale” story a few weeks ago? That’s about as inside fanboy baseball as it gets right now, and she missed the caveat that Legendary’s capital gives them not just first option to buy, but more input than Icahn on the final decision. DC is the literal backbone that formed Time-Warner, so it’s not as simple as she made it out to be.
As for Snyder, I agree. He best careful or he’s a got a gimmick and not one as interesting as M. Night.
“Watchmen needs SDCC because there is a massive level of uncertainty that the trailer did not answer…the audience snickered and guffawed at that trailer before TDK, and not at any other. ”
Watchmen is my biggest fear since Vendetta. Vendetta ended up okay since it was not really a fanboy or kids film and it stuck to it grim 1984-ish reality while making itself appeal to a wider audience based on the theme of cultural intolerance in the movie. and most people love Natalie Portman.
Watchmen is such an alternative universe of anti-heroes and exists in the doomsday mindset that I am worried it will be a movie to ridicule if they give it the Fantastic four treatment. No No No.
it was a great grim comic…it wasn;t meant to be blockbustery or cgi. Everybody I grew up with has already bought the gn again off Amazon–I don’t think it’s kids as much as 30 somethings and geeks buying it again since I have long misplaced my copies of the issues. I wonder HOW this movie will have an appeal to general audiences at all– unless uncertainty about the economy can be a point of resonance with the themes in the movie.
I Hope it will be a great movie, but snickering at a trailer…I hope that isn’t representative of the movie.
I stopped going to comicon, jumped the shark indeed…and many rude s.o.b.s doesn’t help.
David: So when I had something good to say about 21, you asked if someone from the film blew me. And now, I have my head up my ass. You know, I can understand your feeling the need to up the potty-mouth quotient to appeal to some of the children who post here. But, geez, aren’t you getting a little old for that sort of thing?
BTW: Go back and read this: “I don’t complain about being taken less seriously than MSM. With due respect, I am and have been for years.” Er, you have been taken less seriously for years?
And: “Yes, I have to be 10 times ‘better’ to make up for the inherent bias against the web. Perfect – except for typos – for you.” Er, just how is this perfect for me?
Look: curse words were invented by some rather clever people. Do not hate on people who curse, because it takes takes talent to do it effectively Mr. Leydon.
You also have to realize that Mr. Poland sort of works like Ric Flair. He’s classy, limo driven, and all until you push him. Once he’s pushed. He becomes the dirtiest player in the game. This is how he rolls.
So know your opponent. Also, did someone at Universal send you a free copy of 21? You earned it, dawg.
io — with all due respect to dp, your statement that ‘he’s classy…limo driven’ just shows how much you DON’T know…..
*sigh*…such a tool……
IO: Nah, no freebie. Maybe I did not say enough nice things in my Variety review. LOL.
BTW: I have in my files somewhere a very sweet photo of my son (very young at the time) and Ric Flair before a Wrestlemania event. Mr. Flair was/is a gent.
This thread OWNED.
Someone should’ve asked NIKKI if she was a LEXFAN.
I’ don’t know if the Rick Flair comparison is accurate, but I laughed out loud. That and “The Finke” appearance has to make this one of the greatest Hot Button Comment Threads of all time. Glad I stayed home this weekend, look what I might have missed.
Went to WonderFest last week (to accept my Rondo Award). Much less crowded, people more normal and congenial, good time all around (save for the godawful heat/humidity, but that wasn’t their fault). Reminding me again why going to ComicCon is such a chore.