Marvel Studios Panel - San Diego Comic-Con 2007

Here is a panel that has to deal with their toughest crowd- their biggest fans. When you adapt a comic book it's a bit different than adapting a well loved book or TV show. Comic book fans are critical, unforgiving, vicious, and represent one of the most prominent voices on the internet. Therefore, if you screen bad footage at Comic-Con, your film will suffer. In turn, if you show mind blowing footage, you're pretty much guaranteed a major boost in box office numbers based off internet coverage alone. Such was the case with Spider-man 3. Though the movie got mixed reviews, they came to Comic-Con last year with nearly the entire star studded cast in tow and footage that drove the crowd insane. 10 months later, their film shattered box office records. DC shies away from it's Comic-Con audience; they didn't represent Dark Knight or Man of Steel in any way...they didn't even screen the teaser for Dark Knight that was released on the internet the day after the studio's panel. Marvel embraces us, though, and that's why they gave these two panels to a 6,500 capacity room that didn't have a single empty seat.

Iron Man
Old news for those who attended the Paramount Pictures panel, but director Jon Favreau came out and rescreened the footage he had shown on Thursday anyway to another round of deafening applause. The panel consisted of producers Avi Arad and Kevin Feige, Favreau, and actors Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert Downey Jr. Not far into the Q&A, they were joined by Marvel legend and creator of the Iron Man character Stan Lee. It's incredible how at the age of 84, the man is still so active in the comic book universe. It turns out that both Terrence Howard and Robert Downey Jr were huge fans of the comic and pursued the roles avidly; Howard even before a director was attached to the project. The producers and cast members continually praised Favreau's vision, and from the looks of the footage, I think they're right when they say that he's going to turn out an awesome film.

The Incredible Hulk
Just a few weeks into production, there was unfortunately no footage to accompany this panel. The panelists, however, were enough: producers Avi Arad and Kevin Feige, director Louis Leterrier, and actors Liv Tyler and Edward Norton. It turns out that, as it had never been publicly disclosed, Norton also wrote the script when he signed on to play Bruce Banner. He gushed about what a fan he was of the Hulk, but also about how he had been slightly embarrassed to announce his inner geek when it came time to tell close friends that he had committed to the role. Much to his surprise, most of them were not only thrilled, but secretly fans themselves. Feige confirmed that this is the beginning of a new Hulk saga, while director Leterrier promised a lot of homage to the 1970's TV show. Feige further confirmed that the plan for Marvel is that once all of these individual characters are established in their own films (Iron Man, Hulk, Wolverine, etc.) that an Avengers film will happen.

Below are some pics from the Marvel panel:

The Iron Man panel from left to right: Producer Avi Arad, producer Kevin Feige, director Jon Favreau, Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert Downey Jr.