Clooney Surprises Fans at NY Comic Con’s Tomorrowland Panel

Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for Disney(NEW YORK) — George Clooney cut his honeymoon short to surprise attendees at New York Comic Con on Thursday. The actor wasn’t scheduled to appear at the Javits Center but he joined his co-stars for the Q&A panel for Disney’s upcoming movie Tomorrowland.

After some gentle ribbing by co-star Hugh Laurie, Clooney took the stage to loud cheers. “Hugh, it is not lost on me that I’m spending my honeymoon at Comic Con,” the newlywed actor joked.

He then admitted to the audience that it was his first such event. “Since my Batman, I’d been disinvited from Comic Con,” he admitted,” referring to his nearly universally panned portrayal of the superhero in 1997’s Batman and Robin. “I met Adam West back there, it was like, ‘Hey, I’m really sorry…sorry about the nipples on the suit….'”

For the record, West is a fan of Clooney’s Batman portrayal: nipple suit and all. West told ABC Radio that he reassured Clooney during their Comic-Con meeting. “I said, ‘George, you did not kill the Batman franchise, you were a good Batman,’ and he said, ‘Oh, you were the best,’ we had fun,” West said.

All joking aside, the real business at hand was giving audiences a first look at Tomorrowland.

In addition to Clooney and Laurie, the panel included Britt Robertson, Shiloh Nelson, director-producer Brad Bird, and screenwriter-producer Damon Lindelof. They all helped reveal a teaser for the film, which is set for a May 22, 2015 release.

The film follows an inventor, played by Clooney, who teams up with a teenage genius, played by Robertson, to uncover the secrets of a mysterious place that exists somewhere in time and space. It’s a loose theme-park adaptation, inspired by the futuristic Tomorrowland section of Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

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