The annual pop culture extravaganza is underway in San Diego, with more than 100,000 fans expected to attend; CURRENT: LA chose 16 artists to make water-themed site-specific artwork around the city; "Lights Out" producer Lawrence Grey on why every big Hollywood director secretly wants to do a horror film. "Lights Out" is the first release from Grey's production company, Grey Matter.
The hype machines are in full force at Comic-Con 2016
As the Republican National Convention reaches its peak tonight and the Democratic National Convention starts on Monday, we look at an entirely different convention taking place — with just as many characters.
Comic-Con International kicked off in San Diego last night with an outdoor screening of the much-anticipated sequel, "Star Trek Beyond." Over the next four days, more than 100,000 people — many in costume — will converge on the convention hall to take part in panels and presentations. And Hollywood studios and TV networks will preview upcoming movies and series.
Among the hordes at Comic-Con is Erich Schwartzel, who covers the film business for the Wall Street Journal. When we rang him up this morning, he gave The Frame host John Horn the lowdown on the massive marketing campaigns that have taken over San Diego.
Interview Highlights:
One of the issues with Comic-Con is that every available square inch of anything down there has some sort of brand or marketing on it. Is that your experience as well, that everything is covered with some sort of promotion?
Oh, without a doubt. It looks like Times Square down here. Last night when I was walking to the marina to see the movie, I mistakenly went down several avenues [thinking], That must be the screening. Because I saw these huge contraptions with massive advertisements on them. The FX show, "The Strain," has taken over the façade of one of the major hotels. Everything has been licensed — down to the backpacks they handout whenever you collect your badge. Those are covered in promotions for the Warner Brothers movie, "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them." It's really the kinds of things that purists decry because it's gone a little corporate, but this is huge money for Hollywood. For example, on the "Star Trek" premiere, if that had not gone well and you had 2,000 people Tweeting and Facebooking and saying, Hey, Star Trek is pretty lame, that's going to eat into the box office this weekend.
Part of what you're talking about is seeding the clouds. If it's Guillermo Del Toro's TV series "The Strain" or if it's the "Fantastic Beasts" spin off from J.K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books, the idea is really to get people to start talking about these properties in a positive way. Does it ever happen that something doesn't play well and the bad word of mouth starts spreading quickly?
Absolutely. I was struck by that last year at my first time attending the convention. The narrative really does play out. You had the movie "Warcraft" last year and the audience was really tepid in its response. It seemed quite difficult for the film to really wash that stink off.
I know that Universal is not presenting anything at Comic-Con, but I suspect Disney and, more accurately, Marvel Studios is going to have a big presentation in the massive Hall H. Is that probably the highlight for the fanboys who are down there, whatever Marvel is going to unveil this week?
I think so. Marvel is definitely a key attraction here. Also, it's important not to forget the television shows that draw massive crowds here too. "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead" also have their own, as you said, Hall H presentation. They're held in the biggest hall at the San Diego Convention Center. But you're also seeing other new players get into the Hall H action. There is a panel there for Feral Audio, the podcasting network, and also one for the company behind Pokemon Go.
What is the convention doing in terms of security, not only with so many people there, but also when you have fake guns that are carried by so many people in costume?
This is a huge issue here. The costuming is a huge part of the experience for so many people. They do have a weapons check. Last night at the outdoor premiere, there were bag checks and folks with metal detectors wanding you as you came in. There's also a patrol of security guards who monitor the outdoor area where people will set up camp to try and get into Hall H the next morning.
'Lights Out' producer Lawrence Grey: 'All big directors secretly want to do a horror film'
The new horror movie “Lights Out” has very humble origins.
The film started off as a low-budget Internet short, also called “Lights Out,” that Swedish director David Sandberg shot in his apartment with his wife, Lotta Losten, as the only actor.
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Even though it was only a couple of minutes long, the short struck a real, visceral nerve and it eventually went viral.
Among the earliest people to catch Sandberg’s short was producer Lawrence Grey. He believed both the film and the filmmaker had potential, and he helped transform the short into a $5 million feature that opens this weekend under his Grey Matter productions banner.
Like some other fright films, the premise of “Lights Out” is the existence of an apparition that terrorizes people as soon as darkness falls. But most of those people in this film are adults — including actresses Teresa Palmer and Maria Bello — so now it’s also the grown-ups who need to look under their beds at night.
When Grey stopped by The Frame to chat with host John Horn, we started with his recalling the first time he saw Sandberg’s short:
I saw the short in my office on a bright Los Angeles morning and I just had this unbelievably visceral reaction. I'm a pretty tough person to scare, but it got me. I think it was because of the universality of that moment. We all know that moment when we're turning off the lights and going to bed and we think we see something out of the corner of our eye. There was just something to it. But when I reached out to the director, I wasn't thinking, Oh, what an amazing premise for a movie. I was just thinking, Who is this interesting person who made something that's so compelling? As I talked to the director, David Sandberg, and got to know him, he said, "What do you think about adapting this?" I started to key into some of [his] ideas and I could see he really knew it. He knew what the movie was going to be and the story and the characters. Most importantly, he had a deep vision and intelligence behind it.
But he hadn't made anything besides a short at that point?
David made the short film in his apartment with his wife for a couple bucks. The first film set David was ever on was his own film set of "Lights Out." This was absolutely a huge, huge curve for him.
What does that mean in terms of your job to take this idea and this filmmaker who has no experience and to bring everything together into a feature film?
There's two roads you're traveling. One road is: How do you arm up the package so that people who are risk averse see a first-time director in an unproven original story and say, Yeah, I want to give that guy millions of dollars. That starts with bringing in a guy like Eric Heisserer, who's one of the biggest writers of the genre. And bringing in James Wan, the single biggest director of the genre, [as a producer]. James started with "Saw," which I made when I was an executive at Fox Searchlight, James had directed a short film and brought it in to me and said, I want to adapt this and make it into a feature. So when I approached James, I [said], I think this guy could be the next James Wan. So that sort of pedigree goes into the package. But the flip side is then assimilating that director through the process, and especially a guy like David, who's so capable, but does it all himself. How do you help a guy like that see all [that] this other great talent can help?
Had you worked in horror as an executive at Fox Searchlight and Universal? Is that something you gravitate toward?
I gravitate supporting great filmmakers, so through that process I've made movies in a variety of genres. But some of those filmmakers, like Sam Raimi doing "Drag Me To Hell," Alex Aja doing "The Hills Have Eyes" — some of those filmmakers love horror. One of the great hidden secrets in Hollywood is that all big directors secretly want to do a horror film ...They don't want to admit it, because horror can sometimes be considered the ghetto of cinema, but there's something about great filmmakers wanting to create that really visceral experience for their audience, like [Stanley] Kubrick did with "The Shining." I've met and worked with some of the biggest directors, and you'd be shocked that they all secretly have a horror movie in there somewhere.
And some of them make them, like Danny Boyle made "28 Days Later." He would not call it a horror movie or a zombie movie, but it is, ultimately, a zombie horror movie.
Exactly right. Danny wouldn't call it either of those things. But, yeah, I think filmmakers do love the ability to create a large cinematic experience with a lot of control [and] a little bit of money. You get to do something very original.
This is a partial transcript. Listen to the full interview by clicking on the play button above.