For their appearance at Comic-Con this year, Legendary Pictures hosted a panel showcasing four of their upcoming films. Two of those were the fantasy projects The Seventh Son, Sergey Bodrov's YA adaptation featuring Jeff Bridges and Ben Barnes, and Alex Proyas' Paradise Lost, which stars Bradley Cooper as Lucifer. (Click here to read Russ' coverage of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, also part of the Legendary panel.) Read panel highlights and check out concept art for The Seventh Son and Paradise Lost after the jump.
Highlights from the panel:
Barnes, on the appealing aspects of the project. "The characters are slightly darker and more surly [than those from comparable films], the relationships don't come together as fruitfully as you might hope, I think it's going to look amazing... Jeff Bridges is in it."
Brokov compared the source material to Harry Potter, but he and the actors all promised something "slightly dark." "[It] takes a lot of twists and turns you're not expecting," promised Bridges.
Brokov told a story about a friend asking how he had convinced Bridges to join the project — had they smoked together? "No, we didn't smoke," Brokov revealed, "but we will someday."
Also at the Legendary Pictures panel were Proyas and Cooper, promoting Paradise Lost. Milton's classic poem tells the tale of the Fall of Man — you know, all that stuff with Eve and the garden and apples. Cooper will play the devil himself.
Some highlights from that panel:
The epic will cover the major plot points from the poem, including the war of the angels, Lucifer's fall from grace, and his battle with the archangel Michael.
Cooper revealed that he was a big fan of the source material, having studied it in college. He won the role by "begging" Proyas for the role and submitting an audition tape filmed in his kitchen.
Cooper on the plot: "I relate a lot to this character and this story... To me, it's a very small story about an intimate nuclear family, two brothers and their father, and what happens when one son feels utterly betrayed." He also described Lucifer as written in Paradise Lost as "a very sympathetic character."
Proyas revealed that he tried to be "as faithful as we can" in putting together the film, and that the team even hired a Milton scholar to "keep us in check."
Proyas also spoke on trying to create the worlds of Heaven, Hell and Eden with current technology: "I guess you try and raise the bar each time, but at the end of the day you just try and do something that works and suits the story." However, one challenge was "trying to avoid historically what's been done visually to depict these ideas, and trying to do something unique."
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Paradise Lost would be shot using motion capture technology. Production has not yet begun, but the film is currently slated for a late 2013 release.
Here's the concept art for both projects, courtesy of Cinema Blend:
