Comic-Con 2008: Summit Pictures Panel on “Knowing” and “Push” + Proyas Not Directing “Silver Surfer” Movie July 24, 2008 6:11 pm
Posted by Rosario T. Calabria in Comic-Con, Comic-Con 2008, Knowing, Movies, News, Push, Silver Surfer.trackback
Summit Pictures’ presentation today at Comic-Con included exclusive footage from sci-fi thrillers Knowing and Push. Summit screened never-before-seen footage from the two movies. Stars Chris Evans, Djimon Hounsou, Camilla Belle and director Paul McGuigan were on the panel for Push (February 2009). Here are some highlights from IGN’s report:
The opening credits of Push were shown, which recounts how the Nazis’ experiments into psychic warfare beget an ongoing persecution of those with psychic abilities by government agencies. Dakota Fanning, who also stars in the film, narrates the titles sequence, which is comprised primarily of vintage newsreel footage of government experiments, warfare and civil unrest.
Hounsou spoke about his role as federal agent Carver who is out to hunt down the psychics. A scene was shown where Carver uses his ability to push memories onto people to make a man shoot himself. Belle’s character Kira is, like Carver, a “pusher” who can push memories onto other people. She is the only survivor of a special drug that the government agency The Division has been using on psychics. Evans plays Nick Gant, a telekinetic (or “mover”) gambler who has taken refuge in Hong Kong.
During the Q&A, McGuigan and Evans explained that there are other super-powered people including sniffers (who can sniff a glass and find out the history of the person who just used it), wipers (who can wipe your memory), and shadows (who can cloak a person). All the panelists cited the script as the reason why they signed on.
Read the rest here.
Moving to Knowing, director Alex Proyas presented exclusive clips from the film, which stars Nicolas Cage as a teacher who finds a time capsure that prophesises the apocalypse. Proyas presented the trailer to the audience, which premired a few weeks back. More highlights:
Proyas sang Nic Cage’s praises and that he always wanted to work with him. Both director and actor wanted the character and story to be as realistic as possible, with Proyas citing The Exorcist as the kind of movie that melded realism with a fantastical premise that he and Cage hoped to emulate. The director also said that the relationship between Cage and his character’s son is the heart of the movie. Rose Byrne plays the daughter of the little girl who, as seen in the trailer, wrote these terrible predictions down. Although Proyas refused to get into details about how they came up with the numerical code because it would delve too deeply into plot spoilers, he did say that they did research into various theories to lend some credence of scientific fact to the code.
Also, Proyas layed to rest the rumor that he would be directing the Silver Surfer movie. From /Film:
“Unfortunately that is just a rumor. I don’t know where that came from,” Proyas told the crowd at Comic Con. “I do like Silver Surfer, but I’m not going to be doing it.”
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