Nappaland's Entertainment News & Notes
Welcome! Here is this month's
brief rundown of interesting tidbits and happenings in pop culture and media...
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Comic-Con 2008 More Crowded Than Ever
Tickets to Comic-Con, the comic fan convention held annually in San Diego, were completely sold out a week before the July 24-27 convention this summer. Last year had been a record-breaker with 125,000 in attendance. This year crowds were even bigger. The popularity of the show has grown largely because so many movies and television shows are using the convention as a way to drum up early publicity for upcoming releases. In fact, you don’t even have to be a comic book geek to have a great time at this event.
A few highlights from this year’s show:
• Watchmen—a superhero graphic novel—has been adapted into a movie, and was shown to 7,000 fans.
• Rutu Modan, the Israeli cartoonist who created Exit Wounds, won the Eisner Award for best new graphic novel.
• DC Comics announced a new imprint, Vertigo Crime, which will be a line of crime graphic novels.
• Marvel heralded their a new project with Stephen King and Scribner—an online motion comic called N, which will be available to view on the web and on some cell phones.
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Meet the President—in a Comic Book?
Parents and educators may find a new way to get kids interested in the 2008 presidential elections with a new set of comic book biographies that detail the lives and views of the candidates. In October, comic book stores will release IDW Publishing’s newest comics, Presidential Material: Barack Obama and Presidential Material: John McCain.
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Breaking Dawn Has a Big Breaking Day
Certainly you’ve heard of Stephanie Meyer, who broke into the teen fiction realm similarly to J.K. Rowling—both were unknown writers and young mothers who wrote while their children were napping, and both became overnight successes with their books about witches and vampires. It’s also interesting to note that Meyer, who focuses her stories on teen vampires, is a Mormon.
Meyer’s newest novel in her Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, was released on August 2, 2008, and it’s estimated that 1.3 million copies were sold that single day. The first three titles in the series have sold 8.5 copies.
The first novel in the series, Twilight, is being made into a movie that will release in November, 2008. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (who also directed The Nativity Story), the movie stars Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, and Robert Pattinson (who played ill-fated Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) as Edward Cullen. Remember those Comic-Con fans we mentioned a few minutes ago? Seems 6,500 of them waited in line just to see the cast of Twilight. It’s sure to be big!
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Potter Has Ups and Downs
And speaking of J.K. Rowling, her sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was scheduled be released on the big screen this November, but the latest news is that it’s been moved to July 2009. In fact, Twilight, which was originally scheduled to release in December of 2009 was moved up to November to take advantage of the Potter fans who are disappointed and might be willing to watch a movie about vampires instead.
Half-Blood Prince is sure to disappoint some, simply because the book, at 652 pages, is too long to adapt into a movie without cutting a number of characters and plotlines. However, the key players are all still there, and will certainly be spellbound as the story gets darker and more dire. The final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (at 759 pages), is being split into two movies which will release in 2010 and 2011. Movie execs worry that by then fan interest may have waned (since the last book released in 2007), but our guess is that the lines of kids (and adults) carrying wands, wearing robes, and with lightning bolts drawn onto their foreheads will still be lengthy.
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Olympics 2008 and 1924
There’s been a lot of protest over religious persecution in China, and restrictions against proselytizing were expected to be enforced at the Olympics in Beijing this summer. However, the release of a new book, Running the Race, may make it past the censors and into the hands of people hungry for Jesus.
Running the Race is a biography of Eric Liddell. Liddell, whose story and 1924 gold-medal win, was remembered in the 1981 movie, Chariots of Fire, was born in China, died in an internment camp in China, and was a missionary there as well. John Keddie, who wrote this biography, has traveled to China during the weeks of the Olympics and has been able to distribute copies of the book to some of the athletes, and has been invited to tour sites related to Liddell (including the school where he taught).
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Upcoming Releases
Keep your eyes open for this DVD coming soon:
• Horton Hears a Who
This family-friendly animated feature based on the Dr. Seuss classic was a big hit in theaters in March of this year. It will be released on DVD on December 9, 2008, (just in time for Christmas) as a two-disc set. Look for lots of media hoopla for this release, including Horton’s inclusion in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and a whole line of Horton-inspired hair-care products from L’Oréal Kids. Around the Nappaland offices however, we’re just hoping for great extra features. After all, with a voice-cast of comedy greats like Jim Carrey, Steve Carrel, and Carol Burnett, it doesn’t seem like too much to expect lots of laugh-out-loud outtakes, bloopers, and interviews.
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--AN
Note: All graphics in this column are standard publicity/promotional shots and are owned by their respective publishers and/or studios.