Peter Jackson himself hit New York Comic-Con today to promote his upcoming film Mortal Engines , which the Lord of the Rings maestro is producing and co-wrote. His old pal Andy Serkis moderated the panel, which gave fans a close-up look at the project that's based on the Philip Reeve book. The first 25 minutes of the film were also unveiled during the panel.

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Set centuries after civilization was destroyed, mankind now lives in huge, roaming cities... moving lands that prey on smaller, weaker towns.Director Christian Rivers was also on hand along with writer-producer Philippa Boyens and stars Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Stephen Lang, Leila George and Jihae. And Andy Serkis had some fun right off the bat, talking about how he had recently lost three dear friends -- Caesar, Supreme Leader Snoke, and Ulysses Klaue! He needed his franchise fix, and so he was happy to host this panel…The panel opened with that first 25 minutes of footage, which was pretty stunning. Immediately we’re thrown into the scene of one giant moving city -- London -- pursuing a smaller, town-like place, with the latter rolling along in a high-speed chase that sounds like the most unlikely of circumstances but actually plays as a gripping chase scene.On the bridge of London, Hugo Weaving (as Thaddeus Valentine) oversees the pursuit over their overmatched soon-to-be victim town. The chase culminates with grinding wheels on the victim town falling apart, and giant harpoons being launched at the town, and it being “ingested” by London.Within London we meet Tom Natsworthy (Sheehan) and Katherine Valentine (George), who discuss the “60-Second War” of the distant past that almost wiped out mankind. But soon, Hester Shaw (Hilmar), a resident of the town that was just ingested, attacks Thaddeus and flees. Another chase follows as Natsworthy and Shaw find themselves amid her old town as it is essentially consumed by the larger city in a humongous factor of sorts. It all culminates in the pair, perhaps inevitably, literally falling together into the same dire circumstances that will no doubt result in the two having to work together for the greater good in order to avoid a potentially cataclysmic event.The footage feels like the next logical step for Peter Jackson after The Hobbit trilogy, which seemed to be one trip too many to Middle-earth. Here instead he’s able to indulge -- with his director, of course -- his thirst to create computer-generated landscapes that are alien and almost unimaginable in nature, but in this sort of steampunk/post-apocalyptic world, Jackson and his team are able to dream up new and strange places that are, at least in this footage, as thrilling as they are overblown. You will believe a city can hunt another!“It’s set about 3000 years from now, so it’s in our future,” said Jackson. “And what I like to think of it is it’s not post-apocalyptic, but it’s post-post apocalyptic. … [The war] redefined the map of the world, and many, many centuries passed, which was a pretty nasty time, and civilization eventually rebuilds itself. … And they wind up on these wheels, chasing each other. There are no more countries anymore, there are no more borders.”Jackson added that despite the predatory nature of these cities, which need the smaller towns’ raw materials in order to power their engines, the filmmakers still wanted to convey that a place like London is also a real city, complete with culture and theater and fashion and the such. Oh, and it’s not even the biggest of the roaming cities. Hmm…Mortal Engines will be released on December 14.