New York Comic-Con Turns 20: Ben Stiller Joins Shatner’s Star Trek Panel as ‘Princess Murders’ Debuts Disney-Style Trailer

TITLE: New York Comic-Con Turns 20: Ben Stiller Joins Shatner’s Star Trek Panel as ‘Princess Murders’ Debuts Disney-Style Trailer
KEYWORD: new york comic-con
DESCRIPTION: New York Comic-Con’s 20th anniversary lineup pairs Ben Stiller with William Shatner for Star Trek’s 60th, plus a gruesome Disney-parody comic trailer.

New York Comic-Con is celebrating its 20th anniversary this weekend with a lineup that spans from the final frontier to a blood-soaked fairy tale kingdom, proving once again that the convention has become one of the entertainment industry’s most reliable showcases for both nostalgia and the subversion of it.

The marquee moment comes Saturday, Oct. 10, when actor and filmmaker Ben Stiller moderates a conversation with William Shatner on the Empire Stage as part of a “Star Trek” panel marking the franchise’s 60th anniversary. Variety reported exclusively that Stiller, a lifelong “Star Trek” devotee who has long credited the original series with shaping his career, will sit down with Shatner for what promises to be one of the convention’s most anticipated sessions. The two have crossed paths professionally before: Shatner made a cameo alongside Stiller in “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” and Stiller appeared in “The Truth Is in the Stars,” a documentary Shatner hosted.

The conversation runs from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. ET and is just one part of a broader “Star Trek” presence at New York Comic-Con this year. Immediately following the Shatner-Stiller talk, the panel shifts to the cast and creators of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” Season 2, moderated by Collider’s Perri Nemiroff. That panel will bring together stars Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Bella Shepard, Karim Diané and Robert Picardo alongside co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau. Notably, Season 2 — which does not yet have a premiere date but is expected in 2027 — will be the series’ last, a detail Variety first reported back in March.

Stiller arrives at New York Comic-Con amid a packed slate of his own. He’s currently starring in “Severance” Season 3 for Apple TV alongside the streamer’s “Off Weeks” and “Protective Custody,” and he’ll soon return to the “Meet the Parents” universe in “Focker-in-Law,” co-starring Robert De Niro and Ariana Grande, which hits theaters Nov. 25.

A Darker Spin on Fairy Tales Also Debuts at New York Comic-Con

While Stiller and Shatner draw crowds to the Empire Stage, another corner of New York Comic-Con is reveling in a very different kind of franchise homage. Comic creators Tony Fleecs and Tim Seeley used the convention as the launchpad for “The Princess Murders,” an Image Comics series that mashes up the gauzy romanticism of classic Disney animated musicals with the bloody theatrics of Italian giallo cinema.

The series follows Princess Lottie and her scheming stepsister Edwige as they travel to the Kingdom of Sardinia to vie for the hand of Prince Carlo — only for a black-gloved killer to start picking off the competition. It’s a premise squarely in line with Fleecs and Seeley’s track record of twisting beloved aesthetics into something stranger: Fleecs previously reimagined the slasher genre through the lens of 1980s Don Bluth-style animation in “Stray Dogs,” while the pair collaborated on “Local Man,” a murder mystery steeped in 1990s superhero comic nostalgia.

Timed to their New York Comic-Con panel, Fleecs and Seeley released a trailer engineered to look and sound exactly like a classic Disney princess musical, right down to an original song, “Can’t You Feel It,” composed by Nima Fakhrara and performed by vocalist Maria Schafer. “We wanted Princess Murders to feel as close to those classic animated princess movies as possible,” Fleecs said, adding that the team wanted audiences to actually hear what the comic’s embedded songs might sound like rather than simply imagining them on the page. “It’s exactly what Tim and I imagined these princesses would sound like… before they get murdered,” he said.

“The Princess Murders” will run as an ongoing series co-written and co-drawn by Fleecs and Seeley, with colors by Brian Reber. The first issue arrives in stores Dec. 9.

Why These Panels Matter at New York Comic-Con’s 20th Edition

Taken together, the Shatner-Stiller conversation and the splashy unveiling of “The Princess Murders” illustrate what New York Comic-Con has become over two decades: a place where legacy franchises and irreverent reinventions of them share equal billing. For “Star Trek,” the 60th-anniversary programming offers fans a bittersweet moment, celebrating the franchise’s endurance even as “Starfleet Academy” heads toward its final season. For comics readers, Fleecs and Seeley’s genre mashup signals that even the most wholesome corners of pop culture, like Disney’s princess musicals, remain fair game for creative subversion.

With organizers also teasing expansion plans, including a possible Coney Island tie-in and the prospect of growing the event to five days next year, New York Comic-Con’s anniversary edition is shaping up as a milestone not just for its history, but for the breadth of entertainment it now commands, from decades-old science fiction icons to brand-new comic book series looking to make their own mark.

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