Paramount Brings 'Turtles,' Christopher Nolan and 'Interstellar' to Comic-Con

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Christopher Nolan and Matthew McConaughey at Comic-Con 2014.

Image: Getty Images

By Josh Dickey2014-07-25 00:45:08 UTC

SAN DIEGO — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Rock, Matthew McConaughey and Christopher Nolan ... Paramount Pictures wasn't going to just sit quietly and let the superheroes walk all over it at Comic-Con.

The studio stepped up in San Diego with the first major studio summer film to present in Hall H, putting together a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles panel that included stars Megan Fox and Will Arnett — and the guys who created the first sketches that would become the heroes in half-shells.

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And in a surprise appearance, the U.S. distributor of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar also brought the Dark Knight director down to Comic-Con for the first time, along with his star and fellow Hall H newbie Matthew McConaughey. The studio showed a new trailer for the space- and wormhole-travel film, including a scene showing McConaughey and co-star Anne Hathaway exploring a distant planet of water and ice.

But with Turtles coming in just a couple of weeks, Paramount devoted the first half of its Hall H allotment showing it off. The panel opened with a brief history of how the Turtles came out of nowhere, starting as essentially a doodle-off between Eastman and Peter Laird: "When Peter and I created the Turtles, we were absolutely positive we wouldn't sell a single issue of the comics. It's been a blur since then ... I thank you," Eastman said.

Suffice to say, the franchise has come a long way since those primitive sketches.

Paramount showed two extended action reels — the first when April (Fox) meets the foursome, some of which is in the first trailer. The second sequence featured a chase down a snowy mountain between the Turtles (in a semitrailer, this is a Michael Bay Joint after all) and Shredder's thugs — a mix of bone-crunching, shell-cracking violence, corny jokes and, of course, a gratuitous shot of Fox's booty (recall: a Michael Bay Joint).

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson made a surprise appearance on Thursday afternoon as well, to pimp this weekend's Hercules, and give a little gift to San Diego.

After re-introducing himself to Hall H, where he admittedly hasn't been for awhile, Johnson invited everyone to a free screening of his film at three theaters he rented out around the Gaslamp district.

After a brief presentation of very different time-travel films Pro and Hot Tub Time Machine 2, Nolan and McConaughey took the panel's final slot — hey, I called it! — to talk about their film, which has been shrouded in secrecy — and will likely stay that way until it comes out Nov. 7. The new trailer they showed won't be released "for some time," Nolan said, in keeping up with the tradition of Comic-Con-only looks at upcoming films.

Before Nolan took the Hall H stage for the first time, McConaughey spoke about working with the director: "He wants an original take on everything. He also works by his instincts. We moved fast — I was very surprised, 2-3 takes, we're moving on. It was like an independent film in that way. ... It's by far the most ambitious film that Mr. Nolan's ever directed. When you see it, you'll see why."

Enter Nolan:

Nolan said a lot of new methods went into the making of the film — but one of them was squarely focused on getting an authentic performance out of his actors.

"A lot of innovative techniques, a lot of combinations of techniques. Really the driving force was to try go get as much reality for the actors as possibe. We wanted real views outside the capsule for Matthew and Anne (Hathaway). To feel some sense of what it might be like to really go and doing these things. The experience we hope will help take the audience on that ride."

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Topics: Comic-Con, Entertainment, Film, Teeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles