Comic Con Movies: The Other Guys, Priest and The Green Hornet Panels

Sony Picture Entertainment provided its second group of panels is as many days, this time focusing on three films, two action comedies (August's The Other Guys and January's The Green Hornet starring Seth Rogen) and one horror actioner (Priest, which comes out next May).

The first panel was for Priest, which is a converted 3-D film featuring Paul Bettany as said priest except instead of commissioning holy sacraments, he fights CGI vampires. Scott Stuart (director) was on hand for the panel as were stars Bettany, Stephen Moyer, Maggie Q, Cam Gigandet and Karl Urban. 

In the year of every director having to justify 3-D at Comic Con, Stuart's explanation was ... different. He mentioned that it took six months to convert Priest to 3-D in post-production and they're going to keep working on it until the film's release. He would have shot in 3-D, but the possibility didn't become a factor until way after the planning stages were over. 

For obvious reasons, the footage drew a lot of comparisons to January's Legion (supernatural apocalyptic action with Bettany fighting supernatural creatures and it's the same director), a film decidedly not liked by most. Reaction was not strong enough to provide any indication the film would be significantly better than that flick.

The final clip shown from the film was an animated prologue created by famous cartoon animator Genndy Tartakovsky, who said he brought some of Disney's team on to create the sequence. Tartakovsky also worked on some pre-production for the film. This footage made much more of an impression on the crowds, explaining the history of the conflict between man and vampire and how "priests" were warriors trained to fight the vamps. The premise is a priest and a normal guy (Gigandet of Twilight fame, which got him some high-pitched cheers when he spoke) going after vampires who kidnapped normal guy's girlfriend.

The second panel was for the Adam McKay/Will Ferrell action comedy The Other Guys co-starring Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, a spoof of buddy cop comedies due out August 6. The three aforementioned names along with bombshell Eva Mendes were present for the panel. They showed a lot of footage, some new, some old, some that didn't make the final cut of the film and some that was good old R-rated.

As most of the comedy panels have gone and usually go, much banter ensued as people coming to the mic were made fun of by the panelists. A few boys who were definitely minors also did their fair share of hitting on Mendes.

Ferrell also gave "Anchorman" fans something laugh about by saying it was a pleasure to be in "a whale's vagina," referring of course to the city of San Diego. On the "Anchorman" note, McKay said that it's been tough making the desired sequel happen (much news has been out there about budget problems) but he thinks it's still possible down the road. His next project will definitely be the Garth Ennis comic The Boys. His take on that should be interesting to say the least.

The panel ended with McKay and Ferrell showing a trailer for a project coming out this fall that they co-produced called The Virginity Hit, which is about a high school kid who plans to broadcast the losing of his virginity but has some problems when the girlfriend finds out. The cast is all young unknowns. It comes out September 10. 

The last panel belonged to January's anticipated action comedy, The Green Hornet. Presenting some never-before-seen footage of the project that was announced two years ago at Comic

Con were stars Seth Rogen and Christoph Waltz, producer Neal Moritz, writer Evan Goldberg and director Michel Gondry.

Some of the footage was in 3-D as "Hornet" is yet another convert. Moritz became the umpteenth to say they didn't rush and took their time with the process. However, the 3-D sequences seemed to generate some buzz from the crowd, taking advantage of the depth of field and making Gondry look pretty good. Rogen seemed to understand that the audience wasn't sure exactly what they were getting with this film, but this footage appears to make it all make sense.

Waltz said the film is more comedy than the public has actually seen even though the trailer came off as an odd mix of drama, action and comedy. Rogen said the focus was about
character relationships (presumably between Kato and Brett Reid) and approached the film in that way first rather than approaching it as a superhero story.

As far as upcoming film news, Rogen said he has plans to create a feature-length version of the short Jay and Seth vs. The Apocalypse with (of course) himself and co-star Jay Baruchel.