COMIC-CON’S FIRST NIGHT IS A REAL HORROR SHOW FOR FANS OF ‘WALKING DEAD’ AND ‘IT’
More than 125,000 SAN DIEGO people have descended on Comic-Con, and if that wasn’t scary enough for the nerd crowd, a few horror movies plus a terrifying TV show were on display during the event’s annual preview night.
DON’T PET THE WALKING DEAD’S UNDEAD.
The San Diego Convention Center’s floor is packed with booths for all sorts of movie studios, TV networks and comic-book companies, with big properties such as Star Wars and Justice League. AMC always puts out a nice spread featuring The Walking
Dead, and this year’s presentation is no slouch: Next to the massive fort-like structure is a fenced area where zombies hiss and snarl at onlookers. If that’s too frightening, there also is a chair where visitors can pose like King Ezekiel next to a lifelike tiger Shiva.
THERE’S NO CLOWNING AROUND WITH IT.
At a New Line presentation at a nearby theater, director Andy Muschietti introduced never-seen footage from his upcoming Stephen King adaptation It (in theaters Sept. 8). The audience got to see the young members of Derry’s Losers Club (played by Wyatt Oleff, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis and Jeremy Ray Taylor) in a couple of scenes that bring the group together — from diving off a cliff in their underwear to a rock fight with local bullies — and gave a quick glimpse at the evil clown Penny- wise (Bill Skarsgård) waving a disembodied arm. Executive producer Seth Grahame-Smith compared the kid characters’ vibe to the friends in Stand by Me: “We believe they have that same kind of relationship.”
ANNABELLE IS KOOKIER THAN EVER IN CREATION PREQUEL.
Keeping the “children in peril” theme, director David F. Sandberg presented an early screening of Annabelle: Creation, which digs into the 1950s origin of the supercreepy doll from The Conjuring and pits her against a pack of orphaned girls.
It marks the third horror film for 11-year-old Lulu Wilson. The actress, who also appeared in 2014’s Deliver Us From Evil and 2016’s Ouija: Origin of Evil, says there’s “a great range” in fright fests, especially for a child actor: “You can experience things from great joy to obviously great fear and great sadness, and it’s a lot of fun because you get to use parts of your imagination that I don’t know you would ever use before. It’s awesome.”
THE NUN SHALL PASS.
The audience also was the first to see a sneak peek of the next Con
juring spinoff, The Nun (out July 13, 2018). Director Corin Hardy’s movie featuring the demon nun (Bonnie Aarons) from The Con
juring 2 recently finished filming in Bucharest in June, and the scene showed Taissa Farmiga’s character entering a chapel in the middle of the night surrounded by black-hooded figures and a large mirror, where she gets a glimpse of the seriously sinister sister.