The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones PosterYesterday it was all about “Ender’s Game” and “Divergent,” and tomorrow, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” takes over, but right now, the Hall H stage belongs to “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.” Young adult book-to-film adaptations have a significant presence at San Diego Comic Con this year and we’re about to find out if “Mortal Instruments” will live up to the hype.

Keep refreshing this page to get a sense of what the Shadowhunters have to offer as the panel progresses.

4:42 – And so it begins! Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly takes the stage to introduce the panel.

4:45 – We’ve got director Harald Zwart, author Cassandra Clare, and stars Lily Collins, Jamie Campbell Bower, Kevin Zegers, Godfrey Gao, and Robert Sheehan on stage.

4:46 – Collins says she was a fan of the book before being cast and having Clare give her her approval was the ultimate honor.

4:47 – Zwart compliments the source material and says, “The hardest part was to compress it.” He added that he worked closely with Clare and dubbed the process “smooth sailing.”

4:48 – Clare says, “It was a very sort of group process” because Zwart introduced her to making movies.

4:49 – On Jace’s arrogance – Bower jokes and calls him a “sassy b*tch.” “What stuck out for me about Jace … was this vulnerability about him.” He adds that that’s where his cockiness comes from. Bower says his Jace is “grumpy.”

4:50 – Zegers explains that you can get ahead of yourself and reveal things that shouldn’t be revealed just yet, so he tried to focus on just creating a character without looking too far ahead and making assumptions. About Alec’s sexuality, “That was something I considered, but we were just making a movie.”

4:52 – Clare says that she has a cameo at Magnus Bane’s party.

4:53 – It’s time for a clip from the film! In the scene, Clary tries to get answers out of Jace and Lena Heady deals with some “unwlecomed visitors.”

4:55 – Wow. That sequence was surprisingly impressive. The piece opened with two men barging into Jocelyn Fray’s (Lena Headey) home. Then it cuts to Jace and Clary having a discussion in an alley way. She’s asking him why she draws these symbols and he says something about knowing that she wasn’t Mundane (basically a non-Shadowhunter). That conversation continues to intercut with the attack on Jocelyn. Headey takes quite a beating, but gives her attackers one as well, giving them a number of brutal whacks with a frying pan and crushing one’s head in her refrigerator door. Back to Clary. Her phone rings and it’s her mother who insists she should not come home. In a panic, Clary runs through the street and arrives home to find the place totally ransacked. Before she can really process the situation, a rather vicious looking rottweiler approaches and she goes into battle mode. She smartly locks it in a room, but soon thereafter, it transforms into a squid-like creature of sorts and slithers through the home. Clary hides in a cupboard, grabs something flammable, dribbles the liquid around her, closes the cupboard door, and lights it up, seemingly killing the creature. But just before she can get much relief, it re-solidifies and moves to attack. Just when Clary is seemingly done for, the beast is zapped into a oblivion. Jace has arrived to save the day.

5:03 – That’s all for “Mortal Instruments.” “RoboCop” is up next, so be sure to switch over to that live blog post.

By Perri Nemiroff

By Perri Nemiroff

Film producer and director best known for her work in movies such as FaceTime, Trevor, and The Professor. She has worked as an online movie blogger and reporter for sites such as CinemaBlend.com, ComingSoon.net, Shockya, and MTV's Movies Blog.

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