Comic-Con: George Clooney and Cast Spill 'Tomorrowland' Secrets
The veil of secrecy surrounding Tomorrowland — the Brad Bird-directed, Damon Lindelof-scripted, George Clooney-starring Disney blockbuster set for release next May — slipped for the first time at the New York Comic Con yesterday. First, Bird and Lindelof took the stage to premiere the very first teaser for the film, giving audiences a taste of its previously top-secret storyline, which involves a troubled teenager (Britt Robertson) who comes into position of a magical pin that transports her to the titular, futuristic world, which she explores with the help of a former boy genius, played by George Clooney.
After that, the filmmakers sprang their second big surprise, as Clooney himself emerged from the wings, joining his already-seated co-stars Robertson, Raffey Cassidy and Hugh Laurie. “This film was larger than most things I’ve been around,” the just-married star told the hushed audience. “The beautiful thing about it is that Brad has a real vision of the film he wants to make and it was fun to play in this giant toybox with him.”
With Clooney’s encouragement, Bird and Lindelof offered up one last bombshell: A five-minute, action-packed clip from the film, complete with finished effects. In the sequence — which hasn’t been released online — Robertson’s character makes her way to Walker’s isolated homestead and, after being repeatedly rebuffed by the prickly inventor, rigs up an elaborate trick to get indoors. While she’s exploring his bunker-like dwelling, a team of federal agent-types turn up on the front lawn and force their way in. What follows is a spirited chase through Frank’s cluttered house, with our heroes fending off their mysterious, steel-boned invaders before barely making their escape — in a bathtub rocket-ship, no less.
It’s a scene that proves that Bird’s action chops have only gotten stronger since he asked Tom Cruise to scale a towering skyscraper in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. “The claustrophobia [of this scene] had its advantages,” Bird told us after the panel. “The fact that Frank has a destination within his house, but there are a lot of things standing in his way getting there made it fun.”
Clooney at the New York Comic-Con.
That rousing set-piece brought the crowd to its feet, demanding more. But Tomorrowland's veil of secrecy then dropped as quickly as it lifted, leaving us hanging until the summer to see what happens next. And although they declined to share any story details, Bird and Lindelof were kind enough to clue us in on a few other Tomorrowland secrets.
Bird and Lindelof’s wedding invitations got lost in the mail
Based on their good-natured ribbing during the panel, Clooney, Bird and Lindelof clearly hit it off during the making of Tomorrowland. But the director and writer didn’t make the guest list for the actor’s recent nuptials to Amal Alamuddin. “We let him know that we were going to be busy editing the movie so he wouldn’t feel awkward if he chose not to invite us,” Lindelof laughs. “Quite honestly, I think I would have been wildly uncomfortable being in the boat behind Bill Murray’s.”
The production had CIA-level security
After six seasons on Lost and two Star Trek movies, Lindelof is well-versed in keeping secrets and relied on similar techniques to keep details of Tomorrowland on lockdown while the movie was shooting. “It’s all the usual tricks, fake scripts, watermarked pages. Also, only one version of the movie exists, so it has to be flown around in a briefcase at all times. All that CIA stuff that makes our lives so interesting.” Maintaining that heightened security grew wearing for Bird after awhile, tough. “It’s kind of a drag that you have to do that,” the director says. “We published the scripts on this red paper that’s hard to see, so I had to get a light over it [to read it]. Because everyone carries a device with them that can ruin surprises that are years away, you get very jumpy and paranoid when all you’re trying to do is protect the fun of hearing a story for the first time.”
There are no hunger games in this Tomorrowland
Part of Lindelof’s motivation behind Tomorrowland was offering a vision of the future that’s more hopeful than the usual post-apocalyptic dystopias. “It’s very hard to project the future from now, and that’s why we see so many movies where we blow it all up. It’s easy to say Mad Max or The Road is what the future will be like, because you don’t have to build anything. But what we wanted to say is, ‘What did they think the future would look like in the early 1960s?’ Because that still feels futuristic and we wanted to find out why it didn’t happen. We were supposed to have our flying cars by now!”
Watch the trailer for Tomorrowland below:
