WonderCon 2013: Highlights from 'Mortal Instruments', 'This is the End,' and 'Evil Dead'

Sony Pictures rolled out a preview of some of their most anticipated spring and summer films Saturday at WonderCon: the film adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, the Sam Raimi produced Evil Dead update, and the apocalyptic buddy comedy This is the End. Moderated by EW’s own Dalton Ross, the clips were bloody, the panels lively, and the audience invested.

Check out some of the highlights from each of the films below. Just a quick warning, though: There are a few spoilers for Evil Dead and This is the End.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

Author Cassandra Clare was joined on stage by a few cast members of the first film adaptation of her extremely popular Mortal Instruments series, including Lily Collins (Clary Fray), Jamie Campbell Bower (Jace Wayland), and Kevin Zegers (Alec Lightwood). Clare said: “It’s extremely surreal to be sitting with Clary and Jace and Alec. They’ve been in my head for such a long time. The most weird thing was to walk on the set and to see everything that I’ve described in the books — the city of bones, the institute, the library, Clary’s house. Everything was real.”

Collins spoke of portraying the complex Clary: “I saw Clary as this feisty go-getter who never gives up…I think she has to handle [questions of her identity] in a way that doesn’t make her into a victim. That would be too easy.” Fans of the series can rest easy, too — Collins was a fan of the books before she got the role. “At the end of the day we want to make [Clary] a girl that everyone could be friends with that is thrust into these crazy situations,” explained Collins, who also said that she wants to live up to the expectations of everyone who has read and loved Mortal Instruments. Clare assured the audience that the film stays pretty true to the book, but that obviously some things had to be a little altered. “Otherwise it would be a 10 hour movie,” Clare joked. “Which I would watch, but no one else would watch.”

Evil Dead

The update of Sam Raimi’s 1981 cult-horror classic had its world premiere at SXSW, and hits theaters nationwide on April 5. Though Raimi couldn’t make it to WonderCon this year, Evil Dead fans did enjoy the company of Bruce Campbell (star of the original), director Fede Alvarez, and the new cast, including Suburgatory’s Jane Levy, Cult’s Jessica Lucas, Lou Taylor Pucci (Thumbsucker), and Shiloh Fernandez (Red Riding Hood). The exclusive clip and trailer catered to the hardcore Evil Dead fans, offering terrifyingly gruesome images, campy humor, and a lot of blood. In the very difficult to watch clip Eric (Pucci) walks in on Olivia (Jessica Lucas) hacking away at her own face – cutting a deep, Joker-like slash into her cheek. Alarmed, he backs up quickly, slips on a piece of errant cheek and smashes his head and back on the bloody toilet and bathroom floor.

“I think the hardest thing I had to do was get buried alive,” said Levy. Campbell responded with a gruff: “Oh big deal…Sam Raimi would be proud.” Alvarez added: “When you guys go to a movie, do you want to see a lot of fake stuff? Or do you want to see a lot of real stuff? I want to see real stuff. I don’t want to see people faking it, saying ‘oh I’m scared,’ when they’re not really scared.”

This is the End

Danny McBride and Craig Robinson were joined on stage by Seth Rogen and his co-writer and co-director Evan Goldberg to debut a green band trailer of the somewhat gruesome-looking apocalypse comedy, and an exclusive sneak peek at the initial panic scene, where everyone at James Franco’s party realizes that the world is coming to an end. In the film (out June 14), all the actors play themselves, or at least hyperbolic versions of themselves. “We thought it’d be funny to see really famous people die in super graphic ways,” Rogen joked. “People were into it. At first we thought they’d be insulted or something like that — and some of them were — but most of them weren’t. They were into it.”

And they are graphic indeed. Rihanna gets off somewhat easy, just falling down a sink hole, but not only does poor Michael Cera get a lamp-post through the stomach, it actually gets worse for him. Though Rogen and Goldberg couldn’t think of any other star that they would have liked to have killed off in the movie they did reveal their “favorite kills”: Martin Starr and David Krumholtz.

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