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Christopher Nolan made his first ever trek to Comic-Con with a surprise appearance at the tail end of Paramount’s Hall H panel to show off his upcoming sci-fi adventure movie Interstellar.
A new trailer for the film, shown at the panel on Thursday, won’t be available to the public online for several more weeks.
The crowd was on its feet cheering and yelling for The Dark Knight director. Earlier, Interstellar star Matthew McConaughey received similarly raucous applause for his first Con appearance.
“I thought I’d see what the fuss was about,” said Nolan, who is a fanboy icon for not only his Batman trilogy but also for movies like Memento. The director is one of the most secretive filmmakers in Hollywood and has not spoken about his new movie at all, thus lending an even greater importance to the panel.
He kept up the secrecy, but he did chat about the origins and influences for the project. Nolan said he grew up in a time “where being an astronaut was the highest ambition. And the idea that we could keep exploring further and further. I felt that has fallen off greatly over the last few decades.”
For the movie, he said he was using new “innovative techniques.” He added, however, that “I’m not going to tell you what they are because I wanted you to see the film.” He revealed that the techniques were designed to bring as much reality from the actors as possible.
“We’re trying to show the biggest imaginable phenomenon that exists in the universe,” said Nolan.
McConaughey was first on stage and didn’t even let on that Nolan was in the wings. The actor recounted his first meeting with Nolan for the movie, a three-hour meeting in which the two did not even talk about the possible project. A week later, he was sent the script. “I read it, I liked it quite a lot. And I was in,” he said.
He also described Nolan’s process. “We moved fast. Two, three takes and we moved on. It felt very much like a big independent film,” he explained, also adding that the project was “by far the most ambitious film Mr. Nolan has directed.”
The presentation came at the end of a panel that Paramount had packed with a ton of goodies. Dwayne Johnson came through the crowd before taking the stage to say he had bought out three theaters in San Diego so select Con-goers could go see Hercules.
Megan Fox made her first appearance with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Michael Bay-produced time travel movie Almanac brought out its stars and director, and was set to screen Thursday, five months before its release date.
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