From Peter Jackson to The Big Bang Theory, Joss Whedon to Sherlock Holmes, Comic-Con on Friday was packed with geeky goodness. Here are your highlights:

1. Jackson and James Cameron talked with EW's Jeff Giles about the future of film, and how Jackson is using the latest in cinema technology to replace the King Kong ride at Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

2. Joss Whedon screened the now-infamous apocalyptic 13th episode of his Fox series Dollhouse, and revealed which acting alum from his Whedonverse will be appearing in its second season. Meanwhile, Michael Ausiello learned Amy Acker will be returning…but for how many episodes?!

3. In the Sony Pictures panel, Jackson answered burning questions about The Hobbit (or, really, didn't answer them) before wowing the crowd with footage from the upcoming alien refugee film District 9. And Paul Bettany and Tyrese Gibson traded gibes through their panel for the Biblical thriller Legion.

4. On of the stars of Legion, Friday Night Lights' Adrianne Palicki, told Michael Ausiello that she doesn't know if her film schedule will let her return to the DirecTV/NBC series.

5. The nerds of The Big Bang Theory communed with the nerds of Comic-Con, and show-runner Chuck Lorre said Jim Parson's Sheldon has "opted out" of any human romance.

6. The marathon Warner Bros. panel was packed with stars: Robert Downey Jr. and Rachel McAdams for Sherlock Holmes; Cameron Diaz and James Marsden for the psychological thriller The Box; Josh Brolin and Megan Fox for the western horror flick Jonah Hex; and wee Where the Wild Things Are star Max Records charmed the crowd with footage from the long-anticipated Spike Jonze film.

7. ABC announced that former Lost star Dominic Monaghan will star in its new Lost-ian series Flashforward.

8. Who's voice-ing the Ken doll in Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 3? Would you believe the man who headlined Beetle Juice?

9. AMC swings for the fences with its six-episode miniseries remake of the classic sci-fi series The Prisoner.

10. Elizabeth Mitchell confirmed to EW that she will be returning to ABC's Lost.

11. And, oh yeah, at the panel for the January 2010 thriller The Book of Eli (starring Denzel Washington), Gary Oldman lets slip that the next Batman movie will shoot in 2010 for a possible 2011 release. Shockingly, studio Warner Bros. has no comment. D'oh!

Peter Jackson has a storm trooper costume that he couldhave worn. James Cameron would have preferred to come as Peter Jackson:”I’d sign a lot of autographs and make a lot of deals.” Instead, the twovisionary filmmakers spent an hour with each other, and EW executiveeditor Jeff Giles, at their first ever Comic-Con. The two received aton of applause from the packed audience for their commitment to new technologies and originalstorytelling. Aside from the random guy who jumped the stage and poured himself a glass of water before being whisked away by security, there were no other major surprises, but there were plenty of deep thoughts. Some highlights:

Not surprisingly for two directors who have pushed the envelope of filmmaking technology, there was much talk of the future of motion-capture, digital effects, and 3-D. Cameron confirmed that a 3-D version of Titanic is in the works. The conversion process, he said, takes a year to 18 months. “We’veseen a couple of minutes already, and it looks great.” For his part, Jackson said Warner Bros. isn’t as enthusiastic to convert the Lord of the Rings films into 3-D. “They feel there aren’t enough 3-D screens out there.They are a bit more conservative.” To which Cameron countered that there would be a lot more 3-Dscreens if everyone knew Lord of the Rings was going into 3-D. “Warner Bros. needs to show a pairof balls here,” he said.

Of course, Jackson acknowledged, technology has also run in the opposite direction, making it easier for people to watch movies on portable gadgets. Maybe too easy. “If people wantto see movies on their iPod, I can’t do anything about it,” Jackson said. “But iPod moviesare postcards of the film experience. They can’t compete with thetheatrical movie experience.”

Jackson also revealed that the King Kong ride at Universal Studios is being revamped. (The ride’s old rubber Kong was destroyed in a fire a year ago.) The overhaul is a technologically complicated replacement that would involve the Universal tram ride pulling into a soundstage, where a motion simulatorwould rock the tram around Sky Island, putting riders in the middle of a battle royale between Kong and aT. Rex—complete with steamy hot dino-breath being pumped onto riders. The new Kong attraction should be ready for the park next summer.

Proof that it pays to come to Comic-Con: On Friday, rabid JossWhedon fans got to see an unaired 13th episode of Dollhousethat takes place 10 years into the future. Positioned as a veritableroad map for the fledgling series, the episode tries to address theapocalyptic outcome of the Dollhouse world – i.e., what happens when toomany memories are wiped and everyone becomes, well, zombies. Shot on video for about $1 million less than what atypical episode costs, according to one source, the episode features mostly new charactersdiscovering a deserted dollhouse, but Eliza Dushku's beloved Echo makesa cameo appearance. Sound confusing? Well, relax — it's not going to airand potentially upset the show's mojo (though it will be included in the DollhouseDVD). But Whedon did promise this to his fans at Comic-Con: "We intendto honor what you saw here."

That's true: Moving forward, Whedon plans to save Foxsome cash by only shooting Dollhouse on video (trust us, it still looksgood). Here are some other promises for season two: Angel alum AlexisDenisof and The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Summer Glau will makeappearances. And Whedon will "continue to deal with the abuse of powerand what it brings out in the characters."

That prompted one fan to inquire about Whedon'sobsession with big corporations. "Have you been in America?" Whedonreplied. "I consider myself a great documentarian… There is power andmanipulation [everywhere]. That's why I like this show so much."

Before Peter Jackson even brought out the director and star of District 9, the ostensible subject of his Comic-Con debut, he wisely chose to answer the question on everyone’s mind before anyone got a chance to ask it: No, he does not know who is going to play the title character in The Hobbit, and he probably won’t for another two months yet until a budget for the project is finalized. Jackson had, in fact, also shared this news last night at a reception following a District 9, and he had nothing new to report to the 6,000-strong fans packed into Hall H.

Then Jackson brought out District 9‘s star Sharlto Copley and introduced the film’s writer-director thusly: “If anybody was born to make movies, it’s Neill Blomkamp.” The seven-minute extended trailer for the film played like gangbusters to the crowd, who also drank up Jackson’s lengthy story about how the film was born from the ashes of the aborted feature film based on Microsoft’s blockbuster videogame Halo that Jackson was producing with Blomkamp to direct. Asked if they would ever revisit Halo should District 9 prove a hit, Jackson demurred with what was essentially a polite I’d love to, but I don’t think it’ll happen. Jackson did allow, however, that he was so inspired by watching Blomkamp do so much with so little — the film’s budget was just $30 million, and it looks like it cost at least twice that — that he very well may “find a little low-budge horror movie” to direct while Guillermo Del Toro is off making The Hobbit.

Jackson was indeed the main attraction at the Sony Pictures event, but before he arrived, the cast and co-writer-director of the January apocalyptic thriller Legion provided a fair amount of comic relief for the first half of the hour-long panel. In fact, it felt at times as if their constant banter was meant to draw attention away from the film’s heavy (and, perhaps for some, controversial) Biblical storyline: A fallen angel (Paul Bettany) comes to Earth to defend a pregnant woman (Friday Night Lights‘ Adrianne Palicki) from a marauding army of God’s angels apparently bent on humanity’s destruction. Or, as co-writer-director Scott Stewart put it: “Angels with machine-guns.” Much of the panel was dominated by co-star Tyrese Gibson, who playfully gibed Bettany about his amply displayed physique. “The most exciting thing for me was a chance to see Paul Bettany’s muscles,” Gibson said. “I think all of Albuquerque ran out of baby oil. I think Johnson & Johnson was one of the sponsors of the film.” The panel ended with Stewart debuting the poster for his next film, an adaptation of the graphic novel Priest, also starring Bettany. Deadpanned Stewart, “No religious themes here at all.”

Just like they did at Comic-Con last year, fans of The Big Bang Theory packed a ballroom today to hear cast members like Johnny Galecki muse that his character Leonard has "gotten more girls than ever" while Jim Parsons promised to leave his Emmy out "for friends to play with" should he win one in September. Executive producer Chuck Lorre thanked the fans and said "they were part of the conversation" every day in the writers room. "We ask, how will this play at Comic-Con?"

Lorre cryptically teased the new season, saying "things will change this year" and reveled in the fact that the show recently earned a two-year pickup. "People out there got what we were doing," he said. Fellow exec producer Bill Prady thinks fans connect to the show because "it plays like a sci-fi. Fans are connected to the characters."

In fact, one fan asked when Parsons' Sheldon will get a girlfriend (apparently, fan sites hint at — or beg for — an inevitable love connection between Sheldon and Kaley Cuoco's Penny). Alas, Lorre said since Sheldon's love is for science, a romance is not in the cards: "He's opted out."

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 Warner Bros.' panel was a cornucopia of facial disfigurement. Jackie Earle Haley was on hand to introduce the new Freddy Kruger in the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street – one that required 3 1/2 hours of daily makeup to put on, and an hour to get it off. Next came Frank Langella's mutated face in Richard Kelly's The Box. While Langella wasn't on hand to introduce "the old-fashioned" thriller, as Kelly calls it, Cameron Diaz and Jimmy Marsten did the job of presenting the 4 1/2-minute sequence that highlighted the movie's score from the band Arcade Fire.

Completing the facial disfigurement trifecta was footage from the movie adaptation of the comic Jonah Hex. Starring Josh Brolin as a cowboy, Jonah Hex is part spaghetti western, part actioner with supernatural elements. Adding to the film's interest were co-stars Michael Fassbender and Megan Fox. Besides the sex appeal that she exudes, Fox also proved to be quite a comedian. "I told Michael that if you need to smack me around, go ahead. It's only going to help." To which Fassbender responded, "And I said leave your fetishes at home. We're here to work."

But none of it proved to be easy. Says Brolin, "New Orleans was brutal. It looks like $70 million on-screen, but it was made for half that. This wasn't a big pay day for the actors. We did it for the love of the insanity."

WB capped off the presentation with everyone's favorite superhero, Robert Downey Jr. On hand to introduce his latest character, Sherlock Holmes (pictured), Downey loves Comic-Con almost as much as the audience loves him. "This is so fun," Downey Jr. said to the cheering audience. "I love you guys so much."

Sherlock Holmes for Downey Jr. was about going back to his past, specifically the role that earned him an Oscar nom. "It reminded me of doing Chaplin," he said. "This movie was all about the prep — martial arts and dialect. I get grumpy when I actually have to work but I do love the challenge."

"Robert was so committed — and ripped in this movie," said co-star Rachel McAdams.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. also charmed Comic-Con audiences with footage from Spike Jonze's much-anticipated Where the Wild Things Are. The movie's young star, Max Records, read notes off his hand to thunderous applause, reporting that author Maurice Sendak told him, "I really love this movie. I hope people like it. If not, they can go straight to hell."