The air outside is getting cooler, school is back in session and if you live in L.A., traffic suddenly went from horrible to Armageddon in the blink of an eye, these are all signals that fall is in full force and it’s time to lock ourselves in our bunkers for all the TV premieres. And, as is always the case in TV land, some shows have fared better than others.

We’ve learned from losing some of our favorite shows (R.I.P “Selfie”) that, it doesn’t matter how good or bad a show is, all that really matters is how many people watch it.

So for better or for worse, let’s figure out how all the hyped about shows did during the first week of fall premieres (September 20 to September 27). Since there were so many premieres, we are going to focus mainly on new shows –except in the case of incredibly bad or unexpectedly good numbers for those returning.

We divided the shows’ performances into one of three categories, and added a little analysis where necessary. We’ll also do the same for the next two weeks of premieres.

Awesome-sauce:

Blindspot (NBC, Monday at 10pm) 10.61 million viewers, 3.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic

The Muppets (ABC, Tuesday at 8pm) 9.01 million, 2.9 rating

Quantico (ABC, Sunday at 10pm) 7.1 million, 1.9 rating

With all the pre-premiere hype around “Blindspot” we’re glad it’s turning out to be an early breakout.  The constant ads and buses plastered with Jaimie Alexander’s naked and tatted-up bod must’ve contributed quite a bit –and it’s a good thing because otherwise it would’ve been a lot of marketing dollars spent for nothing. NBC has already ordered nine more scripts and we’re pretty sure it will end up being a full-season order. Meanwhile, ABC’s “The Muppets,” garnered the second-highest rating of any new series last week and did better than any of ABC’s Wednesday night comedies outside of “Modern Family.” Did the audience tune in just for curiosities sake? Nostalgia? We’re not sure, but the plethora of celebrity cameos is sure to keep it afloat for at least a little while.

“Quantico,” also made it on the awesome list because it was ABC’s biggest Sunday night show and improved greatly on its “Blood & Oil” lead-in (6.3/1.4), which doesn’t usually happen, especially in that difficult time slot. That means bringing in former Miss World Priyanka Chopra as the title character worked and viewers are actively seeking this show out. Plus, the show is chock full of other attractive characters for viewers to gawk at –and there’s drama, lots and lots of drama. It’s a very Shonda-Rhimes-esque formula. “Quantico,” could be a sneaky hit for ABC and help fix its Sunday night desert.

Meh:

Scream Queens (Fox, Tuesday at 8pm) 4.04 million viewers, 1.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic. *7.3 million adjusted across multiple days/platforms

Life in Pieces (CBS, Monday at 8:30pm) 11.28 million viewers, 2.6 rating

Limitless (CBS, Tuesday at 10pm) 9.86 million, 1.9 rating *13.4 million adjusted across multiple days/platforms

Heroes Reborn (NBC, Thursday at 8pm) 6.09 million, 2.0 rating

On the surface, “Life in Pieces'” numbers look great, but the new CBS single-camera comedy dropped off significantly from its “Big Bang Theory” lead-in, losing 7 millions viewers, and that is NOT good. It was also below what “The Millers“ did in its debut (13/3.3) last season.

Another bummer was “Scream Queens'” whose initial numbers looked pretty mediocre considering all the effort Fox put into marketing the Ryan Murphy show. A quick gander on Twitter during premiere night did not reflect the sad 1.7 the show first received. However, even though the show started off fairly slow, “Scream Queens” experienced the biggest percentage lift, 59 percent, in the three days following premiere night. Murphy’s new horror-comedy drew in an audience of 1 million on streaming platforms Fox Now and Hulu – the largest three-day non-linear lift ever for a Fox premiere, with a final tally of 7.3 million. The network also estimates that the total social activity over the first three days grew from 1 million to 2.3 million. “Scream Queens” appears to be a model for contemporary viewership where people watch shows on their own time and from a variety of different platforms. So, not all is bad for the new show, Fox just has to hope people keep buzzing about it.

“Limitless” had a totally bland debut for CBS and barely did better than “Person of Interest” in the same time slot last year. But, “Limitless” also saw a big three day gain when accounting for multiple platforms and DVR viewing, shooting up from a 1.9 in the demo to a 2.9. Its ratings were also higher than “NCIS: New Orleans'” in the hour before (1.7). Lastly, while 2.0 is nothing to throw your head in the oven over, NBC probably expected better digits for “Heroes Reborn” considering the original series’ popularity (and its initial debut of debut 14.29 million viewers and 5.9 rating way back in 2006.) The premiere also didn’t face a full roster of competition; The CW and Fox both aired repeats that night. This week’s ratings, which will be the first with “The Blacklist” added to NBC’s Thursday block, will be something to keep an eye on.

Girl, Bye:

Nashville (ABC, Wednesday at 10pm) 4.9 million viewers, 1.22 rating in the 18-49 demographic.

Once Upon a Time  (ABC, Sunday at 8pm) 5.8 million viewers, 1.8 rating

The Player (NBC, Thursday at 10pm) 4.68 million, 1.2 rating

Blood & Oil (ABC, Sunday at 9pm) 6.3 million, 1.4 rating

Minority Report (Fox, Monday at 9pm) 3.10 million viewers, 1.1 rating in the 18-to-49 demographic

While “Once Upon a Time,” didn’t have the lowest number on our list of low ranked shows, but it did experience an extreme drop for a popular returning show. Last year’s season premiere drew in 10.2 million viewers and a 3.7 in the demo versus this year’s 5.8 million and 1.8 in the demo. That’s nearly a 50 percent drop off. It’s sad to see that fans didn’t return for this one because the premiere was a significant improvement over most of season 4. Several TV critics made note of how happy they were the show was coming back to original form.

Entertainment Weekly made note of how boring the “Frozen” storyline felt.

“It’ll be interesting to see where this season lands overall. Last year, we spent months entombed in a ‘Frozen’ arc that seemed to stretch on for so long, it made even the warmest of fans feel icy.”

And…
“Putting Emma in the spotlight as the Dark One seems like an attempt to bring some focus back to the show’s themes as well as its central characters, despite the fact there are certainly going to be many new ones popping in (and out) over the season.”

Fingers crossed that the positive reviews bring in more viewers next week. Also, it should be noted that “Once” did better than all of Fox’s Sunday night lineup, but if things continue on this route, it could still end up being the last season of the beloved fairly tale show.

“Blood & Oil” spelled even more bad news for ABC.  Surprise, surprise, people don’t really want to see a drama about oil drilling in North Dakota. While the show’s total numbers were slightly higher than Once Upon a Time’s, it took a dip in the demo from its lead-in (1.8) and didn’t do “Quantico” (1.9) any favors as a lead-out . When a new series does worse than the shows on either side of it, you can usually expect the network will scramble to shake things up. Maybe that means swapping time slots, or maybe ABC will do something more drastic. All we know is, there’s a reason North Dakota is the least popular midwestern state –nobody cares! I mean, is anyone really surprised a show about North Dakota isn’t a runaway hit?

Other underwhelming premiere’s included “Nashville,” and “The Player.” “Nashville” saw it’s worst premiere ratings in four seasons and “The Player” (1.2) got a very slow start, dropping down 14 percent from last fall’s final-season premiere of “Parenthood.” The action drama will get a second shot next week with “The Blacklist” as its lead-in, we’ll see how much that helps.

Honestly though, considering how terrible things have been for networks recently, even the worst numbers weren’t actually that bad of a week for shows. Except for “Minority Report,” which pulled a dismal 1.1 rating. The show dropped significantly from its “Gotham” lead-in (1.6) the hour before, and did half of “Scorpion’s” (its time-period competition) numbers (2.2). When you look at Sunday night and “Minority Report” together, this season is looking pretty disastrous for Fox, no two ways about it. No wonder they’re banking on all the “Scream Queens” Twitter hype.

Originally scored by composer Brad Fiedel, the “Terminator” franchise has one of the most iconic and identifiable movie score hooks in the history of film. DUH-DUN DUN DUH-DUN! So how do you write a movie score that can stand by itself, but still pay tribute to and incorporate the original?

“Terminator Genysis” composer, Lorne Balfe. Photo credit: Peter Oso Snell

That was the task Lorne Balfe (Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes, Iron Man) had in composing the music for one of 2015’s big releases, “Terminator Genisys.” Balfe has worked on several summer blockbusters and has collaborated with iconic movie composer Hans Zimmer on multiple projects including massive video game franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, and Crysis –to name a few.

‘To me, the reason I kind of love film and I kind of love TV and games is the whole point of escapism. It’s that period of 90 minutes where you get to forget about your problems in life and just escape and delve into another world,” Balf said about why he likes working on blockbusters. “Critics are always going to have a point of view regarding something, and such is life. But the thing is that just being able to go and have that piece of escapism and have action and have laughter and have fun and feel emotion is surely what this is all about.”

The “Terminator” family of movies has always been considered a dark saga of films –with little to no hope on the horizon for the human race– and the scores for the previous films were created to reflect that darkness. According to Balfe, what always fascinated him about the original score was that, “it was music, but it wasn’t necessarily what we would describe as music, it was more organic sound being manipulated.”

We asked Lorne about another movie franchise, “Superman,” of which legendary composer John Williams did the original score and the decision by Hans Zimmer to move away from that score in his composition of “Man of Steel.” If you listen to “Man of Steel,” very little, if any of John Williams’ “Superman” themes are used during the course of the film.  This is likely attributed to the new look and tone of the film. While the original stories are somewhat similar, in “Man of Steel,” the tone is much darker and serious and the score reflects that.

Balfe decided not to use the same approach as Zimmer.

“The tricky thing with it is –that it’s always one of the first conversations that happens, really, especially with franchises and sequels– what are we taking from the past? And obviously visually, the characters may be the same, the characters’ names might be the same, but of course it will look different, or there’s a different angle to it,” Balf said of the approach he took in creating the score for the latest installment. “And I think right from the beginning, we kind of all knew that, especially because there are scenes like Griffith Park when Arnold is walking up to the punks, it’s identical and it’s like why do a brand new piece of music underneath that arrival? You lose the whole point of it, it’s an homage, it’s meant to kind of bring you back to that feeling of when you first watched it. If we didn’t do it, we would have ended up cheating the fans really.”

In writing for “Terminator: Genysis,” Balfe made it paramount to stay true to the roots of the original music and in doing so, was able to weave in some synthesizer laden beats that you can hear throughout the orchestral score of the film.  More importantly, purposefully using the original theme at certain points during the movie was a strategy that Balfe employed to “represent the legacy of the original score.”

The latest installment in the “Terminator” franchise, “Terminator Genisys,” is a film that completely turns the original storyline on its head while straddling the line of charming and quirky with some of its dialogue. In the end, the score is an entertaining homage to the original and successfully lays the groundwork for the series going forward.

Fans everywhere rejoiced on Thursday when director J.J. Abrams unveiled the second teaser for the upcoming “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” at the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, CA.

The roughly two-minute clip features an ominous voice-over, which may belong to actor Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker. “The force is strong in my family,” the voice says. “My father has it. I have it. My sister has it.” The voice ends his message with: “And you have the power, too.”

The internet was buzzing with reactions throughout the day and the trailer itself already has more than 20 million views. We’ll leave the clip here for you to watch, and figure out your own reaction. What do you think? Does it look good? Fans on the internet frequently said it gave them goosebumps so that’s a YES. Will it be good? Abrams thinks so. When asked at Celebration about living up to the expectations of the franchise’s legions of fans, he replied, “We just will.”

Watch the new teaser below along with some fan reactions.” Star Wars: The Force Awakens” hits theaters Dec. 18.

Every Summer, movie goers around the globe anticipate being treated to an array of movie blockbuster experiences.  Some movies strike gold, and build potential billion dollar franchises and others tank leaving industry executives thinking “what the hell did we just sink a nine figure budget into?”

“Elysium,” starring Matt Damon and helmed by 2009’s “District 9: director Neill Blomkamp, has been one of this season’s highly anticipated summer releases.

I’m going to go off script here and just be me, and being me involves making obscure movie references. Have you ever seen the movie “Donnie Brasco,” starring Johnny Depp? Fantastic movie! It’s based on the true story of undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone and his infiltration into one of New York City’s crime families.  Pistone’s goal in the movie is to maneuver his way up the food chain within the crime family from mob associate, the lowest mafia rank indicating a person with mob ties or ‘a friend of mine,’ to a ‘made man,’ a person officially inducted into the mafia aka ‘a friend of ours.’ (For a quick rundown on this Mafioso terminology watch the video below.)

I make the “Donnie Brasco” reference, one because I recently re-watched the movie, and two because I find there to be similarities between how Lefty Ruggiero, played by Al Pacino, recruits Donnie Brasco, and how Blomkamp chooses Ryan Amon as “Elysium’s” musical composer.

The “Elysium” project consists of ‘made’ components. The cast: Matt Damon and Jodie Foster are both “made actors.”

Blomkamp, as previously mentioned, directed “District 9.” With a production budget of $30 million, “Distrct 9″ opened with a number one ranking at the box office, during the summer of ’09 and went on to gross $210 million worldwide.  A director that’s able to put together a sci-fi project with a summer release date and generate a 7-1 return on a production budget, by industry standards, merits ‘made guy’ status.

OK, so now who do you get to do the music for the project? Certainly you’d turn to a ‘made guy’ with regard to movie scoring to help compose the soul of the movie. Nope. Blomkamp, in an attempt to find a powerful and organic sound for “Elysium,” employed Amon, whose previous credits had primarily been composing music for movie trailers.

While Living in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Ryan received an email out of the blue from Blomkamp. The email consisted of one sentence, asking “is this you?” followed by a YouTube link to one of Ryan’s Trailers. A fan of Ryan’s had posted some of his work online and Blomkamp happened to come across it.

‘What a huge blessing, just completely out of nowhere,’ says Amon about the opportunity of a lifetime.

Coming into college, music had been a hobby for Amon. He grew up with classical training on the piano. Played the saxophone in his high school’s Jazz band. After initially attending college and double majoring in art and biology, Ryan began to realize his true passion.

“Something was shifting in me probably when I was 19 or 20 years old, where I started having more fun skipping class and picking up a guitar and writing a song,” Says Ryan.

He made the decision to drop out of his double major degree, and enroll in a two year music program at the McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul, Minnesota to pursue his dream of composing music scores for feature films.

Fast forward to the summer of 2013, and after his impressive work on Elysium, Ryan Amon can now be referred to as “a friend of ours.”

“Elysium” opened in theaters on Friday Aug. 9.

Reach reporter Mike Zepeda here.

With the exception of a couple of superhero movies earlier in the summer, the summer block buster has been struggling, but “The Wolverine” is looking to end the losing run for big budget films.

Marvel and 20^th Century Fox’s newest superhero film earned a strong $4 million on its opening night in North America, which began at 10 p.m. Thursday. According to The Hollywood Reporter, early audience tracking shows the movie opening in the $65 million-plus range domestically.  The Los Angeles Times is predicting numbers in $75 million to $80 million range. The numbers are even stronger overseas, where it is rolling out in a slew of markets coinciding with the North American launch.

Fox spent just under $120 million on “Wolverine,” a pretty good number for a superhero movie.

Other more expensive block busters that have come out this summer such as, The Lone Ranger,” “After Earth, “and “R.I.P.D.” have not had the turnout expected and received harsh critic reviews, but superhero films have continued to keep audiences entertained. Two of the top grossing films since May are “Iron Man 3” and the Superman reboot “Man of Steel.” (“Despicable Me 2″ just recently beat out “Man of Steel,” but Gru can also be considered a superhero right?) Hollywood.com reports that movie attendance is down about three percent this year, while ticket sales are off about one percent.

“The Wolverine” was directed by James Mangold (“3:10 To Yuma”, “Walk the Line”) and stars Hugh Jackman returning to his role as the Wolverine—also known as Logan.  It starts off some time after the events of “X-Men the Last Stand.” Logan is in turmoil from having killed Jean Grey and has decided to live alone in the woods. However, he’s pulled back into the superhero world when a Japanese man he saved during WWII requests to see him on his deathbed. The man offers Logan the opportunity to give up immortality and save him from death in exchange. He also asks that Logan protect his granddaughter.

Jackman first played the clawed mutant in 2000’s “X-Men.” The film went on to gross nearly $300 million worldwide and prompted studios to take on more films based on comic books. His character appeared in subsequent “X-Men” sequels, but Wolverine first took center stage in the 2009 spinoff “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” Unfortunately, neither fans nor critics enjoyed Logan’s first solo appearance. Luckily, the new film is already faring much better.  “The Wolverine” has a 67 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 80 percent fan rating thus far.

Jackman will also be featured in “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” which is set for release next summer. It will be his seventh time playing Logan.

iZLER at Comic-Con (Photo by Michael Zepeda)

Nothing enhances a moving going experience more than a good score. The visuals in a movie can be stunning, the cinematography can be flawless, but if you think about it, an argument can be made that the staying power of a great movie resides in movie’s music score being relevant.

Think of some of the best movie scores throughout the history of cinema: “Star Wars,” “Doctor Zhivago,” “ Jurassic Park,” “Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump” and the list goes on. The ability of a score to recreate a fan’s connection with a movie when listening to the music by itself is a crucial aspect in film, and something that has gotten away from Hollywood in recent years.

If someone were to play you the main theme from any big blockbuster movie from the last half-decade, would you be able to pick out what movie that theme was from? Sure there are easy ones to pick out such as Iron Man. The original music by Black Sabbath was practically built in to that franchise. But if you were to partake in a movie score “Pepsi challenge,” would you be able to pick out the main theme from your favorite movies? Marvel’s “The Avengers” is nearing a Billion and a half dollars worldwide and counting, yet the main musical theme for that movie isn’t memorable. If you were to play the score for fans that had seen the film multiple times they probably wouldn’t be able to tell you what movie it was connected to.

We had a chance to sit down with some of the TV and film industry’s up and coming musical talent at CW3PR’s “Behind The Music With CW3PR: Perfect Sound for TV and Film” on the final day of Comic Con 2012 to talk about the film industry’s growing ambivalence towards musical scores.

Among the interviewees were Danny Jacob, the composer for Disney’s mega-hit animated series “Phineas and Ferb,” iZLER, the composer of ABC’s hit suspense series “Revenge”, and Trevor Morris, the Emmy nominated composer from Showtime’s “The Borgias”, and “The Tudors.”

Aaron Jacob, son of Disney composer Danny Jacob and who also provides vocals on some of Disney’s ‘Phineas and Ferb’s’ tracks, said this about one of the most renowned composers to ever work in the film industry, “you can hum the first three notes of any John Williams score and say that’s ‘Jaws’ or oh, that’s ‘Star Wars’.” And he’s exactly right! John Williams is a master at giving life to the score of a movie. Most, if not all of his music has the ability to stand on its own. Even the casual fan knows the beginning sequence to “Star Wars.”

Of course not every movie score can be like “Star Wars” in the sense of how iconic and identifiable it is. The question still remains however; do the recent musical scores of large-scale movie productions lack a musical signature?

iZLER, the composer for ABC’s hit TV series “Revenge” agrees to an extent, but provides a more in depth analysis to this question: “Musicality aside, it has a lot to do with the project you’re involved with,” and what “makes John Williams such a genius is that the music can not only stand up by itself in the film, but you can also listen to the score as a piece of music.”

The upside for a music score is always going to be tied to the magnitude of its project. In other words, had the theme for “Star Wars” been used for something on a smaller scale, it likely would not have turned into one of the most iconic movie scores of all time.

“I really think (being iconic), the hugest thing is melody for me, which is where every emotion I know as a composer comes from and I think that is the one thing you can’t teach, I really do. I think there are some people that have an incredible instinct for it, like Williams does and some people don’t. Some people are very adept composers, they’re great orchestrators, but they don’t separate themselves from the pack.”

Morris, composer for Showtime’s “The Borgias” agreed with iZLER, saying “music and its ability to have a life on its own and a good melody is really what separates the men from the boys.”

The two composers agreed that it’s a composer’s ability that makes a score standout. So are these movies being assigned to the wrong people on the film industry’s biggest stage? While iZLER and Morris make valid points on some people having a natural talent for melody, it’s hard to imagine that “The Avengers” composer Alan Silvestri, a legend within the industry whose composing credits include such films as, “Back to the Future,” and “Forrest Gump,” doesn’t have it anymore. The issue at hand is the film industry getting caught up with a movie’s visual enhancements and getting away from how important a musical signature is to a movie franchise.

iZLER hit the nail right on the head when he said “I think there are some directors who respond to music in different ways to others, some like the music to almost sort of melt into sound design, it’s something that becomes musical wallpaper and it’s certainly functional.”

Today’s movies may be visually stunning, but when you talk about movie scores being memorable, production teams for the most part are missing the mark. Is it the fault of the composer, the director, or has the evolution of sound design in movie productions hindered the ability of movie scores to obtain a distinguishable musical signature relative to their films? Let us hope that composing a legendary movie score isn’t becoming a lost art.

Reach contributor Michael Zepeda here.

Disney kicked off the first day of Comic-Con with a special press conference promoting three of the studio’s upcoming movies, “Frankenweenie,” “Oz the Great and Powerful,” and “Wreck-It Ralph.”

The first conference of the day was for “Frankenweenie,” Tim Burton’s newest animated feature. It is an adaptation of a short Burton made nearly 30 years ago. The film is entirely in black and white and uses stop animation technology. Writer-director Tim Burton, producer Allison Abbate, producer Don Hahn and the voice of Edgar, Atticus Shaffer attended the conference

Take a look at the just released Comic-Con homage trailer along with some quotes and clips from the press conference.

Q. It seems like you bring back a dog in almost every one of your children’s films. Why is that?

A. Tim Burton: When you’re young, it’s the first kind of pure relationship you have. It’s something that connects right to your heart. I was lucky enough to have a special pet that I had that kind of relationship with. Yeah, the whole kind of Frankenstein element is sort of wish fulfillment in that kind of way. I always found those movies like Frankenstein kind of emotional. So it seemed like a fairly natural connection to combine the two.

Q. Since we’re at Comic-Con, do you have any desire to take any of these properties or anything original and write/draw your own comic? How do you feel about the convention?
A. Tim Burton: It’s amazing that it’s [Comic-Con] come from like the Holiday Inn to this. Also, it’s just fun to see Halloween in July. It’s great. It’s something that’s very special about this place.

Q. What character would you dress up as [at Comic-Con]?

A. Don Hahn: I’m in costume right now.

Tim Burton: I’m actually dressed as a human being

Frankenweenie press conference clips:

The “Oz the Great and Powerul” conference started immediately after “Frankenweenie.” Director Sam Raimi, cast members Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams, and producer Joe Roth attended the panel.

The movie is a prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” that focuses on how the wizard (played by James Franco) ended up in Oz and became so powerful.

Q. What lessons did you learn making Drag Me to Hell, and the limited audience it had?
A. Sam Raimi: I learned a lot from every movie that I make. I learn what not to do. I make 1000 mistakes. I’m painfully aware. It’s not like you have to recognize [that.] I’m always aware where I make wrong moves. I learn lessons and went forward with this picture with those 1000s of lessons from that picture. The type of comedy that film was, that dark comedy, is just a completely different thing from this film. This is a very straightforward family picture. I would say it’s a classically Disney movie. It’s about the characters, their interactions, the friendships they made. Some characters are sinners. They hurt others. It’s about how those sins can grow. It’s about finally recognizing the things you do in this world have consequences. How to be the best person you can be is really the story of this film.

Q. Sam Raimi how was it working with two of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood? And ladies what was it like working with Sam?
A. Sam Raimi: [Growls flirtatiously at the question of working with them] Rawrrrrr. It’s great. It’s great to work with them because they’re great actresses. As beautiful as they are, that would become meaningless if they weren’t brilliant actresses. They both have complex roles, complex interactions with other characters in the piece and they just do a beautiful job performing them. It’s very funny and realistic, and they’re fun to watch. And yes, not hard on the eyes.

A. Mila Kunis: Sam is amazing. I would do craft services for Sam if he asked me to.

Oz the Great and Powerful press conference clips:

Finally, Disney ended the day with a press conference for “Wreck-It Ralph,” starring John C. Reilly, Jane Lynch, and Sarah Silverman.

The movie follows a video game villain who desperately wants to be a good guy. He decides to sneak into other games in order to make a fresh start, but inadvertently causes more trouble.

John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, director Rich Moore, and producer Clark Spencer attended the conference.

Q. What were some of your favorite video games as a kid?
A. John C. Reilly: Well, I am dating myself by saying this but I was the test audience for Space Invaders. I remember that was the first game that wasn’t a pinball game. I spent a lot of money on some Space Invaders in the form of quarters. But I have a family now, so I don’t have a lot of time to play video games. That’s probably a good thing.

Q. For those who aren’t familiar with video games and these famous characters, how will you introduce them?
A. John C. Reilly: The main characters of the flick are from games that are made up for the movie.
And we explain them, so you don’t need to know anything about video games to appreciate the journey the characters take.

Press conference pictures (photo credit: Frances Vega):

Check out HitFix’s press line interviews before the conferences begin:

Reach Senior Entertainment Editor Frances Vega here.