‘Mortal Engines’ Surprise: First 25 Minutes Now Screening At New York Comic Con

https://deadline.com/2018/10/mortal-engines-screens-25-minutes-new-york-comic-con-1202477159/

Serving notice that it will be a potential holiday sleeper franchise launch, Mortal Engines surprised the crowd at New York Comic Con today by unveiling the first 25 action-packed minutes of the film.

Andy Serkis moderated a panel that includes Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens (who with Fran Walsh wrote the script and the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies), Christian Rivers (a longtime Jackson protege making his feature debut), and most of the cast.

Jackson said during the panel that the film had the mythology and the literary pedigree to launch a franchise, and he was hopeful that would happen.

The movie featured jabs to the present, like when the immigrants of a smaller, swallowed city are told that parents might be temporarily separated from their children. The footage also included a museum in London complete with an exhibit for the “Screen Age,” which included sculpted figures of the Minions — a nod to the pic’s distributor Universal.