TAGGED AS: comiccon
Tom Hiddleston will return as #Loki on Disney+ in Spring 2021! pic.twitter.com/ScZnram3fD
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) July 21, 2019
The major Marvel panel in Hall H included exciting announcements about the upcoming feature film lineup, Disney+ fall 2020 series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and spring 2021’s Loki and WandaVision series (learn more in RT’s Marvel special report). But the Marvel extravaganza wasn’t the only newsworthy Comic-Con panel on Saturday. The TV news out of San Diego included epic trailers for the likes of Star Trek: Picard, Westworld season 3, and Snowpiercer; and much more. Read on to find out more about some of Saturday’s biggest SDCC TV news.
One word: Borg. Star Trek: Picard, expected in early 2020, released its first trailer to thrilled fans on Saturday. Patrick Stewart reprises his iconic role from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Saturday’s blockbuster Star Trek panel featured CBS All Access Star Trek architect Alex Kurtzman providing insights into his world-building (which we will expound on in days to come), including the much-anticipated series that will not only bring back Stewart, but also, it was revealed in the new trailer, old friends like Brett Spiner as Data, Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, and Jonathan Del Arco as Hugh. Jonathan Frakes (William T. Riker) and Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) will also make appearances in the new series.
Who says androids can't be funny? @BrentSpiner tells us about his first phone call with producers after he found out about #StarTrekPicard at the @Comic_Con panel. #SDCC #StarTrekSDCC pic.twitter.com/PF1Mh9IZCY
— Star Trek on CBS All Access (@startrekcbs) July 21, 2019
The panel featured cast members Isa Briones (Dahj), Santiago Cabrera (Cristobal “Chris” Rios), Michelle Hurd (Raffi Musiker), Alison Pill (Dr. Agnes Jurati), Harry Treadaway (Narek) and Evan Evagora (Elnor), who collectively heaped praise on Stewart as a television idol. In addition to Kurtzman, the Picard panel featured executive producers Akiva Goldsman, Heather Kadin, and showrunner and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Michael Chabon, as well as supervising producer Kirsten Beyer.
Star Trek: Discovery kicked off the Hall H event with star Sonequa Martin-Green (Michael Burnham) and executive producers Kurtzman, Michelle Paradise, and Heather Kadim. The panel also introduced new cast member David Ajala, who joins the season 3 cast as a new character, troublemaker Cleveland Booker, a.k.a. Book. Season 2 favorites Ethan Peck (Spock) and Rebecca Romijn (Number One) joined the stage to announce that they and Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), will return to the franchise with three U.S.S. Enterprise–focused Star Trek: Short Treks. Kurtzman, Peck, and Romijn debuted a trailer for the upcoming Short Treks: “Ask Not,” “Q&A,” “The Trouble with Edward,” “The Girl Who Made the Stars,” “Ephaim and Dot,” and “Children of Mars.” Tribbles featured prominently in footage from one.
Animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks also announced its voice cast and debuted character animations. Voice cast includes Tawny Newsome, Jack Quaid, Noël Wells, Eugene Cordero, Dawnn Lewis, Jerry O’Connell, Fred Tatasciore and Gillian Vigman. O’Connell took on moderator duty for the panel. The 10-episode first season of the animated
comedy series is coming to CBS All Access in 2020. Executive producers Kurtzman, Kadin, and Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty) provided insights on the new series as part of the panel.
Kurtzman also announced that Newsome will also host “Prime Directive: The Official Star Trek Podcast.”
The first full trailer for season 3 of Westworld — which, by the way, is currently filming and will not debut on HBO until 2020 — revealed more of the futuristic world introduced in a previously-released teaser and provided more intel about what the characters will face in the upcoming season. Namely: Nazis. And no Western scenes.
In addition to shots of a sleek, futuristic world, Thandie Newton faced off against Nazis in her WWII period best.
On the show’s Hall H panel, co-creator Jonah Nolan said the theme of season 3 will be “The New World.” And while the new world introduced in the trailer might look gorgeous, that doesn’t mean it’s not a dystopian future.
“The thing about dystopias is they can look pretty beautiful,” he said. “Just because the world is corrupt on the inside doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty and smoothed over on the outside.” Later, he added, “I like to say that when we started, Westworld was a dystopia. And now, three seasons in, I think it’s a best-case scenario, to be honest.”
DC Universe released news on several of its originals:
The last ever Arrow panel at Comic-Con on Saturday turned out to be surprising emotional. While the stars of the series still have several episodes to shoot, they all became overwhelmed with the prospect of letting their characters go. But during the session, a spontaneous outpouring of admiration for series star Stephen Amell led to the start of tears.
After the panel, several members of the cast and crew assured Rotten Tomatoes they did not plan to open the waterworks. “It’s always a benefit,” quipped executive producer Marc Guggenheim, before adding the whole group just found themselves navigating that territory in response to questions.
“It’s not every day you see Stephen cry,” added co-star Katie Cassidy-Rodgers. “The thing about this that’s really incredible is that it all started with Arrow and Stephen. it was time to pay respect.”
“I don’t do particularly well anticipating appreciation,” Amell explained. “It catches me off-guard.”
Nonetheless, a season of emotional closures is on the menu for the series’ final year.
“In the first three episodes, Oliver has closure with five characters that I never thought he’d get closure with. And it happens in very unexpected ways,” Amell said. “They may not know it, but he knows it. He’s left a lot of loose ends along the way, and I hope over the course of the year that we’re going to tie up as many as possible.”
The final season will see Amell’s Oliver Queen taking on a mission for The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett), which will presumably take Green Arrow into different realms of time and space. And considering the glimpses we saw of former nemesis Prometheus (Josh Segarra) during the panel, anything will be possible as Arrow prepared for its last bow.
Wondering how the Snowpiercer TV series will tie in to the 2013 film? Well, the first trailer for the long-in-development drama reveals that it takes place nearly a decade before the events of the movie. And showrunner Graeme Manson (co-creator of Orphan Black), revealed that visually, the series takes on the look of director Bong Joon-ho’s film, but the ideas of the French graphic novels on which the movie was based.
“We pull from [Le Transperceneige],” he said. “They’re a source of inspiration, and a number of things we’ve pulled out of that. I think the show has the feel of the movie and a lot of the ideas of the graphic novels.”
He also revealed that the series is able to visit so many previously unseen areas of the train.
“The difference between the show and the movie really is the movie was such a terrific adventure story that started in the tail and charged completely linearly up to the engine,” he said. The show, meanwhile, will spend time in every area. “Our heart is in the tail, but we spend time in every single class.”
The Expanse cast and series creators radiate excitement and gratitude when talking about season 4 — the season saved by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and a massive fan-fueled campaign. The series’ panel featured cast members Steven Strait, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, and Frankie Adams as well as executive producers Naren Shankar and Ty Franck.
Actor Burn Gorman (Pacific Rim) joins the cast this season, in which the U.N. sends the Rocinante crew on a mission to explore new worlds beyond the Ring Gate. The Gate has given humanity access to thousands of Earth-like planets, creating a land rush and heightening tensions between the opposing forces of Earth, Mars, and the Belt. The first of these planets to be inhabited, Ilus, is rich with natural resources, but also spotted with the mysterious ruins of a long-dead alien civilization. While Earthers, Martians, and Belters all maneuver for control of the planet, these early explorers are unaware of its dangers.
The Expanse season 4 lands on Amazon Prime Video on December 13.
.@hulu will be entering the galaxy as #TheOrville takes off as a new Hulu Original.
Season 3 of The Orville will stream exclusively on Hulu in 2020.
— The Orville (@TheOrville) July 20, 2019
The upcoming third season of Seth MacFarlane‘s space-set drama The Orville will have a new home: The series is moving to Hulu, where it will debut season 3 in late 2020.
“As the show has evolved and become more ambitious production-wise, I determined that I would not be able to deliver episodes until 2020, which would be challenging for the network. So we began to discuss how best to support the third season in a way that worked for the show,” MacFarlane explained in a press release announcing the news, which was revealed at the show’s panel.
Lauren LeFranc, showrunner of YouTube’s original sci-fi series Impulse, told fans at the series’ SDCC panel that the show will delve deeper into the mythology and origins of teleportation in its upcoming second season, due this fall. Injecting more action and humor into the mix, Impulse will continue to give voice to trauma survivors, while also be digging further into the dynamics of our core heroes — and there’ll be a few new baddies thrown into the mix.
Henry’s powers will evolve in a chaotic, violent manner, LeFranc warned. And if you’re expecting her to become a full-blown superhero, star Maddie Hasson says to expect the unexpected.
“We talk a lot about heroes in the first season, and in the second season we talk a lot about villains,” she explained. “You get to decide what Henry is, and it’s not always what it seems.”
The upcoming second season of History Channel’s UFO-themed Project Blue Book will delve deeper into some famous alleged government coverups that have remained unsolved to this day.
David O’Leary and executive producer Sean Jablonski told the crowd at the show’s SDCC panel that Area 51 and Roswell are just a couple of the cases they’ll be exploring. Combine that with the “Butch & Sundance” dynamic of Aiden Gillen’s Dr. Hyneck and Michael Malarkey’s Captain Quinn, it sounds like the new episodes will be a noir adventure that’s sure to make you believe we’re not alone in the universe. Project Blue Book returns to History in the winter.
