SAN DIEGO, July 24, (Agencies): Francis Ford Coppola is turning big-screen movies into a live experience.
The filmmaker showed an audience at the Comic-Con fan convention Saturday portions of his upcoming creepy tale “Twixt,” a film whose theatrical release he hopes to precede by a national tour in which Coppola will oversee a different version each night. Coppola says digital technology allows him to add scenes, lengthen or shorten sequences, shuffle the action around, alter music and make other tweaks depending on how that night’s audience is responding to the film. “If the audience is the mood to go off on a little bit of a tangent, then you’d be able to go off on a tangent, but if the audience seems to want to cut to the chase, you could cut to the chase,” Coppola said in an interview after his presentation.

Filmmakers often have the experience in test screenings where they sense viewers’ interest lagging and the “audience is not so into it, so you go, ‘Oh, I wish the good part would come sooner, I wish the good part would come sooner,’” Coppola said. “With this, you can do that.”
“Twixt” stars Val Kilmer as a writer on a book tour in a strange town where he’s caught up in the mystery of savage killings and has ghostly encounters with a young girl (Elle Fanning) and the specter of Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin). The idea actually originated from a dream Coppola had two years ago about a mysterious girl and in which Poe appeared as sort of a spirit guide.
The film also will include a blend of 2-D and 3-D. Coppola is a fan of 3-D but does not necessarily like wearing the special glasses needed for the whole length of a film. He said he watched most of “Avatar” with the glasses off and put them on only for big effects and action scenes when the 3-D was most prevalent.

Viewers of “Twixt” will see an on-screen cue letting them know they should put on their glasses for a 3-D scene in the heart of the film and a 3-D finale, Coppola said.
Comic-Con — where thousands of fans gather dressed as superheroes, villains, fairy-tale princesses and other fantastic characters — seems like an odd spot for the filmmaker behind “The Godfather” saga to turn up. But he’s been here before, to promote his 1992 take on “Dracula.”
Coppola had wanted to do his live tour just before this Halloween, but the film does not yet have a distributor for general release. He is premiering the full film at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and hopes to land a distributor after that so he could release “Twixt” next spring, with his live, interactive tour coming just before that for about three weeks.
“I consider it more what I call malleable cinema than interactive,” Coppola said. “Because I didn’t shoot it with real alternative plot lines. I could have, but I was thinking of it more as a Halloween show that you tailor to the audience. Not, does he go into the left door or the right door? And if he goes into the left door, that’s a different story.”

Grimm
Meanwhile, “Grimm” plans to turn fairytales on their heads.
After previewing the first episode of NBC’s upcoming storytelling-meets-crimefighting procedural, which is loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood, the “Grimm” cast and crew promised Comic-Con attendees that other bedtime stories would be transformed into supernatural cases, including the Three Little Pigs, Cinderella and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
“I like all the fairytales where I don’t get thrown against the wall,” joked David Giuntoli, who plays detective Nick Burkhardt, one of the last surviving members of the Grimm family, which the show depicts as an ancient clan of profilers who have the ability to see baddies disguised as humans. In the first episode, he tracks down a big bad serial killer.
Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt, the show’s writers and executive producers, said that Burkhardt would solve a fairytale-inspired crime each week, but Greenwalt added there would be “arcs for all the characters and terrible things are going to happen to them.” It’s familiar territory for the pair: They worked on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel.”
The show takes place and will be filmed in Portland, Ore. Bitsie Tulloch, who plays Burkhardt’s fiance, Juliet, said the town is the perfect setting for the mythological procedural because it has a “built-in eeriness.” When asked by a fan if the storylines would move beyond the city, Greenwalt said “apparently, there’s a lot of monsters in Portland.”

Reminds
In another development, Comic-Con first-timer Colin Farrell did double takes and rewinds during multiple presentations for his films “Fright Night 3D” and “Total Recall” at the annual geek convention.
The “Horrible Bosses” actor debuted twice in Hall H after film director Craig Gillespie prematurely announced him, but then directed him to return back stage — Farrell did so by walking backwards — and then reappeared looking genuinely pleased to be in front of adoring fans.
Farrell also left a lasting impression on the 6,000-strong crowd in the cavernous hall after he unexpectedly granted a lucky fan her wish of getting his name tag after he was finished with the panel. He even signed it.

A visibly fatigued Farrell showed up at the San Diego Hilton Bayfront to a press conference for DreamWorks’ “Fright Night 3D” immediately after his debut in Hall H, joined by the film’s director, Craig Gillespie, screenwriter Marty Noxon, actors Anton Yelchin, Christopher Mintz-Palasse, Imogen Poots, and Chris Sarandon, who appeared in the original “Fright Night.”
During a press event for the vampire remake, a quick-witted Farrell joked with reporters who asked who would win if a fight ensued between the ‘other’ vampire and Jerry, the bloodthirsty character he plays in “Fright Night.” He said, “It depends on what we were fighting about. If we were fighting for a piece of meat, I would win. If we were fighting for the love of a woman, I’m afraid Cullen would have me.”
The “Fright Night” star was only able to answer a few questions before sprinting back to Hall H to promote his next project “Total Recall.” However, the Irish actor didn’t let his hectic schedule slow down his snappy retort to the last reporters’ question.
Before being whisked away back to Hall H, Colin managed to sarcastically answer if being a father has influenced his choice of roles and quipped, “Yeah, I choose savage killers, now.”