The second part of the Sony Pictures panel is The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. For those unaware of the film, the movie and book the story is based on is about a teenage girl who discovers she is from a long line of “Shadowhunters”, beings that hunt demons and the like. Dalton Ross, the new moderator, begins the panel with, “Are there any Shadowhunters in the house?” which elicits applause. Looks like there are some fans of this The Mortal Instruments adaption in Hall H!
The moderator begins with a description of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, a book written by Cassandra Clare, that is about a “Seemingly ordinary girl, enters an extraordinary world” containing demons, and such. The moderator introduces the cast and crew, Harald Zwart as the director, Cassandra Clare, the author, Jamie Campbell Bower, playing Jace in the film, Robert Sheehan playing Simon, Kevin Zegers playing Alec, Godfrey Gao playing Magnus Bane, and the main protagonist of the film, Lily Collins, playing Clary Fray.
The moderator asks Lily Collins about her character. Lily discusses that within the movie there are, “the romance comes into the story, drama, comedy”, but that her character’s main focus is finding her mom, and she really likes this character because her character is “tenacious and strong”. Moving to the director, Ross asks, “How true are you going to be to the source material?” Zwart says they didn’t really need to change anything, but had to compress the movie down to a “reasonable length”, and they consulted Cassandra regarding changes. The moderator then asks Clare’s involvement in the film. She reveals she was involved in “almost everything”.
The moderator then talks with Jamie, discussing his character’s attitude. He talks about condensing the movie down to fit in a movie format, and discusses his cockiness as a “facade”. Moving on to Robert Sheehan, discussing the differences between this character, and his character in The Misfits. Sheehan discusses the misfits as having powers that are, “extensions of their own insecurities”, while his new character is more demon/human hybrids.
Dalton talks with Kevin Zegers about his character, Alec. He discusses his journey with the character, and trying to “not get ahead” of himself, referring to some plot points later in the film that must be deeper in the story that shouldn’t be revealed yet. Godfrey Gao is up next for questions, who plays a Warlock in The Mortal Instruments.
Dalton then brings out a clip of the film, involving a conversation between Jace and Clary. The scene then moves into the Mom’s disappearance, and Clary dealing with a demonic creature that is still in her house. She “McGyvers” a bomb to blow it up, however this doesn’t do the job. Luckily Jace comes and rescues her in the nick of time.
The panel then opens up to audience questions. The first question asks how Cassandra makes time to use social media with how much work she has to do. Cassandra responds by explaining that she sets goals for herself, the example she provides was, “write 3000 words” for the day, and then she can do whatever she wants. She says that social networking is important for her to figure out what people like and don’t like about her stories.
The second question asks the most difficult aspect of the characters. Lily reveals it was difficult doing her stunts in her dress and such. Jace’s hardest part was not eating chocolate. For Sheehan, it was hard to play a coward-ish character. He reveals that he had to “cower behind the women”. Zegers jokes that his most difficult part of the film was “hanging out with Bower” for the entire film. But on the bright side, he got to eat a lot of chocolate in front of Bower as revenge. Godfrey jokes about taking his pants off, which must be something referred to into the book? I didn’t really understand this reference, but Cassandra jumps in about Godfrey’s underwear, so it had to be movie-related, and not just spontaneous de-pantsing.
The final question for the panel was asking the Shadowhunters of the panel, “What rune would you draw on yourself?” Cassandra says she would go with Fearless, and the director jokes his rune would be, “Direct a hit movie” rune.
The panel wraps up, and they leave the stage. The Mortal Instruments is set to hit theaters August 21st, 2013, which is right around the corner. The trailer is linked below if you haven’t seen it yet. Up next on the Sony Panel is the remake of Robocop. You can move onto the Robocop panel here.
Here is the trailer for The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones:
