Saturday is always one of the busiest days at New York Comic Con, and 2022 was no exception. One of the day's most anticipated panels, attended by over 5000 people, featured Jamie Lee Curtis talking with Drew Barrymore about the Halloween franchise and its latest installment, Halloween Ends, out in theaters and on Peacock on October 14. "No matter what I do — whatever the fuck I do forever — Laurie Strode is because of you and I thank you," Curtis told the packed house, continuing, "endings are a bitch, but so is Laurie Strode."
Another popular panel focused on Tim Burton's new Netflix series Wednesday. He didn't attend in person, but stars Jenna Ortega, Liz Guzman, and Gwendoline Christie were there, and attendees got to see the full-length trailer, which you can watch below, featuring Uncle Fester (played by Fred Armisen) and Ms. Thornhill (played by Christina Ricci). Armisen appeared as a surprise guest, and talked about shaving his head for the role, saying, "I shaved my head because this was like a role as soon as I heard about it. I was like ‘Oh, I gotta be Fester.’ I really wanted to do it, and I wanted to do it right and not like have like a bald cap or anything. So, I just shaved my head and I was proud to do it."
In a separately ticketed NYCC event, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd looked back on the Back to the Future films. SyFy Wire attended, and they write:
Despite his decades-long battle with Parkinson's disease, Fox reaffirmed his commitment to showing up in person for the fans.
"You guys have given me my whole life," he declared, later admitting that he would not change his diagnosis if given the chance; that helping others has given his life a profound new meaning. "The best thing thing that happened in my life was this thing. Parkinson's is a gift. I've said to people it's a gift and they say, 'You're nuts.' I say, 'Yeah, but it's the gift that keeps on taking.' But it's a gift and I wouldn't change it for anything ... It's not about what I have, it's about what I've been given."
At the very end of the panel, Fox and Lloyd were asked to leave the crowd with nuggets of wisdom. Lloyd appropriately chose a Doc Brown line from the end of Back to the Future Part III, stating, "Your future is what you make of it, so make it a good one!" Fox opted for an oxymoronic line from his favorite movie, Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove: "You can't fight in here, this is the war room." His takeaway? No matter how crazy things become, just "suck in your breath, go ahead, and carry on."
Ahead of the series finale of The Walking Dead, cast members Scott M. Gimple, Norman Reedus, Lauren Cohan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lauren Ridloff, Paola Lázaro, Eleanor Matsuura and Michael James Shaw attended a panel where they reminisced on series and teased The Walking Dead: Dead City, which is filming in New Jersey and is set to premiere in April of 2023. More from Deadline:
One of at least three TWD spinoffs planned after the mothershow wraps up on November 20 after 11 seasons, Dead City sees Morgan’s once villainous Negan and Cohan’s Maggie in the streets of the now-decimated metropolis. Even as the two characters have become more trusting of each other over the last two seasons of TWD, there is no doubt tensions remain between them even in their new adventure …after all, Negan did kill Maggie’s husband Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) with a baseball bat back in Season 7 of the series, which is based on Robert Kirkman’s comics.
Also on Saturday at NYCC: Levar Burton sang the Reading Rainbow theme song during the Star Trek: Picard panel.
See pictures from Saturday, including lots of cosplayers, below, and catch up on the rest of our NYCC 2022 coverage with Thursday HERE, and Friday HERE.