It is now just a little over 2 weeks from the start of San Diego Comic Con International, the biggest and most talked about Scifi/Fantasy convention on the geek calendar. We at TheOneRing.net have been busily planning for an epic week of Hobbity goodness to share with all of you, attendee and stay-at-home fans alike. This is your handy dandy little guide to when and where you can find us throughout the convention.
This year we will only be at one location on the Exhibit Hall floor, sharing space at the WETA booth #3613. We won’t have a huge amount of room in this booth, but then that is because WETA is pulling out all the stops for the final Hobbit film and ‘Bringing It’. You will want to make Booth #3613 a ‘must see’ location, even your non-Tolkien fan friends will want to visit WETA. So stop by the booth, say hello to TORn and WETA folks alike, buy some stuff, have your camera ready and enjoy the geekiness of all things Hobbit.
The full SDCC panel schedule will officially be announced beginning this Thursday, but here is advance notice of when our panel will take place.
An Unofficial look at the final Middle-Earth Film “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” Thursday, 7/24/14, 5:00p.m. – 6:00p.m., Room: Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront
The Hilton Bayfront is next to the Convention Center down near Hall H, and the Indigo Ballroom is probably the biggest room we have yet had at SDCC, so don’t be late and risk missing our sneak peek at the final film in the series.
Edited to Add 7/8/14: Warner Bros. has announced their slate of films for SDCC and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies will be among them. Their panel will be at 10am on Saturday, July 26 in Hall H. Peter Jackson was confirmed to be attending, and will be joined by Director George Miller with Mad Max Fury Road. Also mentioned was Jupiter Ascending and there will be a sneak peek screening of Richard Armitage’s Into the Storm on Wednesday, July 23 at 10pm at the Reading Gaslamp Theater, but no word yet on how to snag tickets for that.
Throughout the weekend TORn staffers will be tweeting, posting pics and videos to Facebook, posting stories here, live streaming, and giving you as much Hobbit news as we possibly can. This will include some of the new projects the actors are working on that are also at SDCC, such as “The Strain” with Sean Astin, “Legends” with Sean Bean and “Outlander” starring Graham McTavish. See the video below for a message from Graham regarding SDCC:
Graham McTavish has confirmed he will be at SDCC, so consider this your official invite to our Laketown Luau on Friday night, beginning at 7pm at the Kona Kai resort on Shelter Island. The SDCC website has finally posted the shuttle routes and we can now announce that the Kona Kai is on the Teal shuttle route. You can find the shuttle schedule here and remember to click on the PDF link at the bottom for the map of the hotels and route information. The Teal route is set to take about 30 minutes to get you between the convention center and the hotel, but if you have a car, the distance is only 6 miles away.
You can only attend the Laketown Luau by purchasing a ticket at our Eventbrite page. With loads of games and a relaxed, outdoor environment, this will be a family friendly party, so bring the kids.
We will update this post or make a new one as soon as we have confirmation of what Warner Bros. might be doing for film previews, including “The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies” and whether PJ will put in an appearance. Same goes for confirmation on other film projects, such as Richard Armitage’s ‘Into the Storm” and Luke Evans’ “Dracula Untold”. We already know Outlander will have a premiere event during SDCC.
The Official Day 1 of FantasyCon was yesterday, July 3 and was filled with cosplay, LARPing, music and heraldry. A few awesome Middle-earth costumers visited our booth, and we even had a Dwarf in a Barrel. The barrel and the 4 Hobbits standee proved to be quite popular with those holding a camera, especially the children.
At 11am TheOneRing.net hosted their first panel at the convention with the Preview of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies to an enthusiastic crowd. We fully expect that the trailer will be out by the time San Diego Comic Con rolls around in a few weeks, at which point our Preview panel will be dramatically updated.
Near the end of the day, the entirety of the Tolkien programming track was introduced on stage at the Middle-earth kickoff party. Artists, musicians, writers and TheOneRing.net staff on hand, plus an Avalanche of Dwarves, as John Rhys-Davies put it, a Wizard and a pair of Hobbits converged on the Main Ballroom stage to thunderous applause. Moments later, the entire room went silent, you could almost hear a pin drop, along with one wee Hobbit singing his heart out.
During the panel, numerous questions were asked of many Dwarves, Hobbits and a Wizard, but none were handled with quite so much originality as the one about the Dwarven prosthetics.
The day ended with the Red Party, a less bloody affair than the Red Wedding. Costumed denizens of Westeros and many other realms all danced the night away.
SALT LAKE CITY — Elijah Wood isn’t joining fellow Fellowship actors Billy Boyd, Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies for autographs and panels at FantasyCon July 3 – 5, but he is joining the adventure in other ways. The Daily Herald broke the news yesterday that Wood will DJ an evening event the night before it all starts to get FantasyCon rolling.
The event follows an invite-only charity event that same evening for seven different children’s charities that helps kids get access to FantasyCon that otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend an event like a big public convention. You can read more about Wood’s event RIGHT HERE and read more about the guests at FantasyCon here. Those who purchase VIP tickets (ticketing here) to FantasyCon look to have access to the event that will likely have very limited availability to the public. Continue reading “DJ E-Wood? FantasyCon lands Elijah Wood for its opening night party”
TheOneRing.net is a major part of FantasyCon coming up on July 3 – 5 in Salt Lake City and there is a pretty incredible lineup of of Middle-earth content at the show. We are counting the top 10 reasons to attend one of the largest Tolkien gatherings in the history of conventions. Continue reading “The top 10 reasons for Tolkienites to attend FantasyCon”
SALT LAKE CITY — At a press conference to announce its inclusion of Simon Pegg as a guest, FantasyCon said it has the largest contingent of Tolkien guests at a fan convention ever, including parts of the staff of TheOneRing.net.
Coming from the Lord of the Rings films:
Sean Astin
Billy Boyd
John Rhys-Davies.
Scheduled for visits from The Hobbit films are:
Adam Brown
John Callen
Peter Hambleton
Jed Brophy
William Kircher
Ken Stott
Graham McTavish
Sylvester McCoy
Other Tolkien-related content:
TheOneRing.net
Doug Adams
Artist Donato Giancola
Artist Justin Gerard
You can read the full article, including the announcement of Simon Pegg, right here.
SALT LAKE CITY — FantasyCon, with an already potent lineup of guests from “The Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” movies, announced that Billy Boyd will be joining the show. The convention, with its obvious fantasy theme, is striving to be different from the many popular-culture events that dot North America with increased interactivity and an emphasis on fantasy art.
Set for July 3 – 5, capitalizing on the 4th of July weekend in Salt Lake City, the convention is self described as “the first convention of its kind to answer the call for an interactive, immersive experience that encompasses all things in the genre of pop culture fantasy.”
Boyd joins LOTR partners Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies, along with Hobbit actors Slyvester McCoy, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, William Kircher, and Jed Brophy. The convention is Stott’s first convention appearance in North America.
FantasyCon is also a major sponsor of TheOneRing.net and the show will feature several of our own staffers, including FantasyCon Program Director Larry D. Curtis, MrCere here at TheOneRing.net. According to him, “There are more Middle-earth names to come, and by the time all the announcements are done we will offer a unparallelled Tolkien lineup. We mostly have all of these guys for three days helping us celebrate fantasy and of course signing autographs and providing photo ops with fans.
Billy Boyd at TORn’s booth, DragonCon 2012“FantasyCon’s founder Josh Patel had most of these pieces in place before he reached out to me so I was delighted immediately with his plans. I just talked to these guys about the show while we were together in Germany at HobbitCon 2 and they are excited and we are doing some really fun programming stuff, not just talking from the stage. This is a chance for fans in the U.S. to meet an army of talent from these franchises. What is more, there is a lot of other really good related content. We are having a world-class Middle-earth convention inside a spectacular fantasy convention.”
The convention also includes a group of masterwork fantasy artists, many who are bringing commissioned paintings to the event. Artists include TORn friend and Middle-earth artist Donato Giancola and Brom. The full list of artists can be found right here.
The show starts Thursday July 3rd and will finish Saturday July 5th in Salt Lake City. The Salt Palace Convention Center will host the event, close to many hotels and close to the Salt Lake airport.
It is now just a little over 2 weeks from the start of San Diego Comic Con International, the biggest and most talked about Scifi/Fantasy convention on the geek calendar. We at TheOneRing.net have been busily planning for an epic week of Hobbity goodness to share with all of you, attendee and stay-at-home fans alike. This is your handy dandy little guide to when and where you can find us throughout the convention.
