Twilight Ruining Everything…Still?

The other day TwitchFilm brought attention that LionsGate was going to re-release Kathryn Bigelow’s excellent Near Dark with a Twatlight inspired cover. While no amount of suck could ever ruin one of her films, this is disastrous for anyone expecting “another Twilight” when they see the cover because they’ll actually get an honest to goodness great film.

Now, Peter Sciretta of /Film has brought up another problem this poison is doing to our society to which I’m pretty much going to echo his thoughts. Anyone who remembers Comic Con 2008 and the Twilight panel knows what a disaster this is. For those not caught up, girls and mothers camped outside Hall H the night before to be the first ones in there. The problem was that Summit’s panel wasn’t until AFTER the 20th Century Fox panel that many wanted to attend. So as those types were lining up, Hall H was already full of people who didn’t want to see or care about the Fox panel, meaning many were turned away because of an already full hall that seats 6,000 people roughly. What happened after the Twatlight panel? 80% of the hall left to do other things at the convention.

This is a huge, HUGE problem this year because Summit is scheduled to go on after 20th Century Fox debut’s Avatar and Disney blows the pants off of everyone with their presentation. What’s basically happening is Comic-Con is forcing those who want to see Avatar and Disney to wait in line overnight to avoid being shutout like last year, or else the Hall will be taken up by fans who enjoy poison. Fans who could care less about Avatar or James Cameron or even what Disney has in store. Idiots who will likely screw true cinema goers and nerds out of being the first to see footage from one of the most anticipated films of the year.

There’s only one solution that doesn’t look like it could be done at this point and that’s moving Summit to the first panel of the day. Then you could get all the morons out of there if 80% will clear out anyway and make room for the people who will actually appreciate Disney and Fox. I understand that this line-up is all but final and schedules might have been printed, but this was a poor choice on somebody’s part and no one learned a thing from last year. Peter mentions doing two lines and while it could work, it may just cause more of a cluster at the already cluttered convention.

Something’s gotta give, or else Fox and Disney won’t reach their target audiences.