NEW YORK COMIC CON: WANTED PANEL

NEW YORK -- Universal Pictures kicked off its comics-to-movies trio at New York Comic Con on Saturday with a presentation for Wanted.

Following are highlights:

* Director Timur Bekmanbetov kicked off the panel by introducing the action scene that was first shown at WonderCon.

* Bekmanbetov said he was contacted by Universal right after finishing his previous film, Night Watch.

"I like this comic book. I liked Wanted," he said. "I tried to be careful with tone and the character. We just changed the elments. The basis is the same."

* The director said Wanted creator Mark Millar was involved from the beginning. "When we were shooting, he was on the set and discussed with. He seemed to like it. It was very scary because we changed a lot," he said.

* Bekmanbetov said Wesley is very "self-ironic," which leads to a lot of the humor.

Another scene, with Morgan Freeman's Sloan and Angelina Jolie's Fox, was then shown, where Wesley is asked to shoot wings off flies -- which he accomplishes. Sloan then tells Wesley that he is going to shoot down the man who killed his father.

* Asked about the cast, Bekmanbetov said they were unpredictable. "Everybody who wanted to do something new, something original," he said. "Because I was not from the United States, it was important for me to have good actors."

* Asked about a sequel, Bekmambetov said, "Ask me in July."

* Asked about the costumes, the director said it was more important how they characters were inside than the costumes and that he wanted to ground it in more reality. He noted a super-assassin would be pretty identifiable walking down the street wearing a costume.

* Does Wesley's costume from end of the comic appear in the movie? "No," Bekmambetov said.

* Bekmambetov said he was impressed with how helpful cast members were to each other. "They have different schools, differnent education, but very, very talented," he said. "They were uncompromised. That was very, very important."