Comic-Con 2006: Superman Returns, Galactica Year Four

Source: Now Playing

It’s Friday night in San Diego and we’ve been talking to a ton of talent – Hollywood types, comics types, amateur types, and hot-girls-in-superhero-costume types – and there is much news to report. We’re trying to get some of this stuff up on the Now Playing Website as soon as we hear it ourselves, but open bars and glamorous parties are cutting into our after-con hours.

In a nutshell, here are a few tidbits we’ve uncovered so far:

Dean Devlin, the producer behind ID4, The Patriot, and the original Stargate film, is in town promoting his cool-looking World War I pic Flyboys. He revealed that he and his Stargate partner Roland Emmerich may be returning to the world of that famous space portal with a second and third feature film in the series that would bring back Kurt Russell and James Spader and be completely separate from the TV series. Nothing solid yet, but Devlin is optimistic that it will happen.

I bumped into Battlestar Galactica’s Chief Tyrol, Aaron Douglas, at the Diamond Select toy party last night, and he let loose with word that the show is currently shooting episodes 11 and 12 of season three, and that, yes, his character and Cally are in fact now the proud parents of a son named Nicholas. He also says that a season four for the show is all but a sure thing, citing the potential of a syndication package that would rely on at least a four-year string of episodes.

The voice of Optimus Prime in Michael Bay’s Transformers film has been announced as Peter Cullen, the performer who provided the character’s voice in the original old-school animated series. Fanboys grow feint with glee.

Bryan Singer and Warner Bros. had the discourtesy to cancel my one-on-one interview with him today, but that disappointment was alleviated a bit by the revelation from Singer in a press conference that he is in fact making a Superman Returns sequel, and that it will hit theaters in 2009. The director says we can expect more action in the sequel, and while story and villain details are being kept quiet of course, Singer did not discount the possibility that Zod and/or Braniac might show up. Kneel before him.

Sam Jackson was pimping Snakes on a Plane today, along with a snake wrangler and a few real live snakes, and he also talked to Now Playing about his Spike TV Afro Samurai cartoon. The man himself says that there’s talk about turning the toon into a live-action feature film as well, muther f---er.

At the Hasbro toy party, the company’s new Spider-Man 3 toys were shown, barely, as were some really nice Marvel Comics pieces. Now that Toy Biz is defunct, Hasbro is handling the Marvel toys, and they look pretty impressive so far. Also glimpsed at the party were a couple of clips from Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider, and you know what? They actually got us excited. Or maybe it was just all that Heineken.