It’s not often that you get a Comic-Con panel that’s about actual science, but that happened on Saturday July 25th with a presentation about Cosmos: Possible Worlds, which premiered earlier this year on National Geographic and comes to Fox September 22nd on Tuesdays at 8/7c.
The virtual panel included the following presenters:
- Seth MacFarlane – Producer
- Ann Druyan – Creator/Director/Writer/Producer
- Neil deGrasse Tyson – Host
- Brannon Braga – Director/Writer/Producer
- Jason Clark – Producer
- Jeffrey Okun – Visual Effects Supervisor
Watch Cosmos: Possible Worlds Comic-Con@Home 2020:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0eGtnzfjAk
Highlights of the panel include:
- A special introduction by Seth MacFarlane, who put the series in perspective of these uncertain times.
- A Conversation from all panelists about how the show redefines our meaning of the word “World.”
- Ann and Brannon talked about how the themes in this season almost predict the drama that has ensued in 2020.
- Neil talked about seeing the original series with his father and being inspired by it. He quoted something he remembered from Carl Sagan about how air molecules don’t need passports to travel wherever they want to go.
- Brannon talked about the complexity of planning out the entire series through “cross boarding” to make sure they made the most of each filming location.
- Neil talked about filming in the world’s largest telescope in China, joking about how they used a green screen to film him in front of the Brooklyn Bridge, which is close to where he lives. They shared that they chose this because he had six pages of dialogue on the telescope but only a paragraph in front of the bridge, which used timelapse footage to make the traffic speed past him.
- Ann shared that the reason they got to do a second season of Cosmos is because of Seth MacFarlane and his commitment to giving them complete creative freedom.
- Jason talked about taking visual effects artists who work on Marvel movies and helping to bring this story to life.
- Ann talked about getting Viggo Mortenson to voice the animated segments about Nikolai Vavilov.
- Neil shared that Ruth Carter, costume designer for Black Panther, dressed him in the series.
- Jeffrey had to redo sequences about black holes after NASA captured groundbreaking images of a real black hole in 2019 that changed the look of them.
- Neil shared how emotional he got about the title, “Possible Worlds,” which to him is the “Summation of the hope of the human spirit coupled with wisdom as well as the methods and tools of civilization.”
- The entire team shared stories about how working on the project gave them hope and how they hope viewers carry that message with them.
You can watch Cosmos: Possible Worlds starting September 22nd at 8/7c on Fox.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is now streaming on Disney+.