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Monday Mixer: It was a very SDCC sort of weekend!

Posted Monday, July 28, 2014 at 1:43 PM Central

by John Couture

Well, I'm back and boy am I tired. No, I wasn't out in San Diego covering Comic-Con, I was finally finishing our move into our new house. I'm happy to report that we did in fact close on our house on Friday and we have successfully unloaded all of our junk stuff from various storage places.

Of course, all you really care about is the mention of Comic-Con. Don't worry, we've got all the news that's fit to print from this weekend's festivities. I must warn you though, unlike Comic-Cons of past, there seemed to be a noticeable lack of "Wow factor" from this iteration.

That doesn't mean that there wasn't still plenty to get excited about. Marvel was still there and our good friend Kevin Smith debuted a trailer among many, many cool things. It just felt that there wasn't anything Earth-shattering that we've come to expect from past Comic-Cons.

This is OK as there was still a ton of cool things to pimp out, but the almost complete lack of anything related to Star Wars: Episode VII was a bit odd and glaring. With a release date hovering around Christmas 2015 though, I expect that Star Wars will be back at Comic-Con (and Disney's D23 event) in 2015.

For now though, there was still plenty of stuff to talk about. So, let's grab a beverage and stay hydrated as we look back on the busy weekend that was SDCC.

Box Office 411

But first things first, we must take a look at this weekend's box office performance. The Summer box office continued to perform weakly which may be more a reflection of the substandard fare rather than a general decline in filmgoing in general.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was finally overthrown from its throne thanks to two newcomers in Lucy and Hercules. Apes was still able to net $16.4 million to bring its total up to $172 million and some change.

In the classic brains vs. beauty vs. brawn battle, brains and beauty easily outmuscled brawn to the top of the box office. The ScarJo-starrer Lucy was yet another success story for Universal this year as it conquered its way to the top with $44 million. With a budget rumored at only $40 million, I think it's safe to say that we'll be seeing a couple of sequels in our future.

The brawn in the equation above belonged to none other than The Rock himself, Dwayne Johnson. Unfortunately, his film Hercules failed to live up to the lofty expectations set by the mythical character himself. Perhaps it was Hercules overkill with multiple Hercules movies debuting this year, but I know they were expecting this film to open to a lot more than $29 million.

Actually, I'm surprised that any films earned more than $10 million this weekend what with all of the geeks tastemakers out in San Diego. So, we should probably take a look at all of that action, eh?

Quick Hitters

  • Star Wars may have been the first film to show up at Comic-Con back in the 1970s, but lately, the Con has been ruled by Marvel and The Avengers. So, it's not surprising to learn that they owned the Con yet again with exclusive footage and bringing almost the entire cast of Avengers: Age of Ultron.

    Naturally, they did not disappoint with the first official footage from the film. /Film has a pretty thorough description of it. It will have to do until Marvel releases it to the world.

  • Good news: Firefly is putting the band back together.

    Bad news: It's only for the online game.

  • Here's a first. A trailer for the title treatment of an upcoming movie. The film is Warcraft and it's due in theaters on March 11, 2016.

  • Not to be outdone by the rivals, DC had a pretty impressive Comic-Con as well. Not only did they show off the new Batman suit that will be worn by Ben Affleck in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but we also got our first glimpse of Gal Gadot in her Wonder Woman getup.

    Gone is the traditional blue, red and yellow outfit. In its stead, they have gilded a bronze outfit that looks pretty badass, but I'm sure some traditionalists will howl as they always do.

  • In case you forgot, there's a new Mad Max film coming out next year. After watching this trailer, you won't forget again.

  • Finally, there's a little film coming out in October called Horns. I had seen bits and pieces of it here and there, but it never clicked for me. I just thought of it as the next in a long line of Daniel Radcliffe post-Potter flops.

    Then I watched the trailer below and realized that it's based on a Joe Hill novel. Joe is Stephen King's son and quite the accomplished writer of his own. This looks quite good and could be just the flick that will finally set Daniel Radcliffe free.

Well, that's most of it. Some of the bigger trailers will be up in a bit in their own stories, but that's the best of the best as it were from Comic-Con. Now, rest up and until we meet again, Mix Well!