Word making its way out of San Diego Comic Con ’09 is that the Futurama panel was a major downer and that none of the cast members who were expected to appear were present. Naturally, this all stems from the current salary dispute between the majorly-talented voice actors and 20th Century Fox, who recently put out a casting call for new voice actors in case no agreement is reached (Read: FOX Hates Your Guts With Every Single Inch Of Their Being; Possibly Looking To Re-Cast “˜Futurama’). It’s being reported by Topless Robot that the only thing that came out of the Comic Con panel, was that show creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen basically just asked that we all cross our fingers and hope for the best, which we’ve all been doing for years now anyway.

Surprisingly, this isn’t all that came out of the Con, though. IGN actually found Bender Bending Rodriguez himself, John DiMaggio, at Comic Con and was able to ask him where things stood. DiMaggio, in his typical outgoing and happy style offered his own personal view of what was going on and what he thought would happen. He even opened with a little song by a man named Elvis.

We all know that one of the more popular things to do in comic book movies (namely Marvel) is for superhero characters to do crossovers and make cameo appearances in other movies. For example: we saw Robert Downey Jr. appear briefly in The Incredible Hulk as Tony Stark. Also, Samuel L. Jackson appeared at the end of Iron Man as Nick Fury before going on to sign a 9-movie deal, which will see him showing up in a bunch of flicks as Fury. And with all of these Marvel movies heading toward one juggernaut The Avengers movie, it can only be expected that other crossovers will be taking place.

With all of these crafty Marvel cameos, it would only be natural for the other big comic book company that’s making movies, DC Comics, to consider doing this as well.

A while back, Green Lantern co-writer Marc Guggenheim discussed the possibility that there may just be a cameo involved for a one Clark Kent. Recently, MTV Splashpage followed up on that possibility and asked Guggenheim where that idea stood.

The Harry Potter website, The Leaky Cauldron, has found out that actor Bill Nighy has told The Independent that he will finally be starring in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after a long, long time claiming to be one of the few British actors not cast in a Potter film.

The Leaky Cauldron apparently caught wind of this a long while back, but only now is it seemingly being confirmed by Nighy himself. Though the actor decided not to say who he would be player, experts are confident that he’s a shoo-in for the role of Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour

Here is what Bill Nighy had to say:

As we all know, this past week or two has been incredibly unfortunate with the passing of many beloved celebrities, including David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. As depressing as all of this loss was, at one point in the chaos that occurred on the day that Fawcett and Jackson were lost, there were also various reports that actor Jeff Goldblum had also died after falling off a cliff in New Zealand while filming. This news never really seemed legit and we later found out that it was in fact false — but it had actually gotten as far as foreign news programs reporting that police in New Zealand had confirmed it as true.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to bring a little laughter to us at a time where many are mourning, Stephen Colbert decided to report the sad demise of Jeff Goldblum on The Colbert Report while touching on the journalistic accuracy of Twitter.

Click on over to the other side to watch the amusing video.

This is about as simple and subtle a news story as there can be, but considering the topic, it is indeed well worth a mention.

While promoting Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen over in the U.K., the BBC was able to obtain a tiny little morsel out of star Shia LaBeouf in regard to potential next Indiana Jones movie. Oddly enough, you can actually hear everyone take a deep sigh while reading that last line. When asked about the next movie, LaBeouf seemingly announced that director Steven Spielberg had actually figured out what the next story would be and that he was “gearing up” for it. This of course does not confirm or guarantee another movie is going to actually be made, but consensus seemed to be: if they figured out a good enough story, they would be up for doing another movie.

After the critically crucified fourth installment in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, fans were enraged and heartbroken and it was all just a really large mess. If they do plan on making a fifth film, it’s going to have to be remarkably better in order to win hearts back. Rumors have circulated that there was a possible plan to make Crystal Skull, and then keep making new Indiana Jones movies as the lead was slowly passed along from Harrison Ford to LaBeouf. This would take the Indiana Jones franchise to a veritable James Bond level where the character out-grows any particular face and different actors and directors could come along and create various stories of adventure. Some people seem to like this idea; others weep at the thought. I’m personally on the fence about it. All that I do know is: make one hundred movies using the formula that you used to make the first three, and many of them will be loved. Step away from that original formula again, and you will likely fail.