Lucca Comics & Games, the biggest pop-culture festival in Europe, is back from 28th October to 1st November and this year director Tim Burton has been confirmed to attend!
On 31 October, the director will be in Italy for the European Fan Screening of the first episode of Wednesday, the highly-anticipated Netflix series out on 23 November. Burton directed the first four episodes of Wednesday created by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar and starring Jenna Ortega.
The festival will also celebrate Atari’s 50th anniversary with founder Nolan Bushnell attending and participating in debates and insights related to the gaming world every day of the festival. His career will also be presented via an exhibition.
That’s not all! CD PROJEKT RED will be celebrating its 20th Anniversary at the festival, and the creators of The Witcher series of games, Cyberpunk 2077, and GWENT: The Witcher Card Game, will host a number of activities at Villa Bottini, the 16th-century palace located in the fascinating center of Lucca. The garden will serve as a portal to Toussaint, which players had the chance to explore in Blood & Wine, the second of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s expansions. Visitors will be able to participate in an immersive Witcher-themed treasure hunt, take part in various crafting activities, as well as join in on other attractions, all brought to life with the help of experienced live-action role-playing professionals and cosplayers.
The studio will also be hosting a special exhibition showcasing many rare and never-before-seen artifacts spanning 20 years of the studio’s game-making history, as well as a Cyberpunk 2077 & The Witcher art gallery, displaying historically inspired works from across both franchises and panels with special guests.
There will also be a special concert specifically conceived for Lucca Comics & Games in collaboration with Teatro del Giglio, which will be dedicated to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its expansions. Tracks will be performed by musicians from the Fiesole’s Orchestra Giovanile Italiana (the Italian Youth Orchestra), accompanied by the Polish folk metal band Percival Schuttenbach. From the podium, Eimear Noone, author of 26 film and video-game scores and the first woman ever to conduct at the Academy Award Ceremony, will be conducting the concert.
The Italian premiere of One Piece Film: Red will also take place at the event from Toei Animation, in collaboration with Anime Factory. The event will feature appearances from Director Goro Taniguchi and Director of Animation Masayuki Sato. There will be live drawing sessions, signings and the biggest One Piece karaoke of all time! Fans will also be able to enjoy a Treasure Hunt which will occupy the entire walled city of Lucca.
Lucca Comics & Games will also have over 150 exhibitors from the games world (including board games, role-playing games, miniatures at Miniature Island and collectibles) PLUS a Performance Area, where artists paint live.
Each year, the festival has a theme and this year’s theme is Hope – which has been depicted in the 2022 festival’s poster (above) created by Canadian artist Ted Nasmith, who is known for his illustrations of J.R.R Tolkien’s works of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the cover for the first edition of The Silmarillion, a posthumous work edited by Christopher Tolkien. In Nasmith’s artistic vision for the festival, ‘Hope’ is the Lady of the Dawn. The Goddess HOPE is inspired by Yavanna, who represents the ‘healer of nature’ in J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe.
“Fantasy is on the side of those who dream, of those who want to build alternatives, parallel worlds, better scenarios, new roads,” said festival director Emanuele Vietina. “For us, HOPE is a certainty, not a doubt. HOPE is the future of a generation, as Greta Thunberg would say, something that comes from actions, not words. Above all, HOPE, is the only thing that remains in Pandora’s box when it is opened.”
Lucca Comics & Games will be taking place from 28th October to 1st November. More information can be found here.