NOS4A2 premiere date and creepy new trailer revealed at WonderCon

Based on Joe Hill's massive horror novel, the new AMC series NOS4A2 will premiere on Sunday, June 2.

That news was delivered by moderator Clark Collis early in a panel presentation for the show at WonderCon 2019 in Anaheim, California. The long-awaited series stars Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) as Charlie Manx, a supernatural being who kidnaps children in his Rolls-Royce and "takes them to "Christmasland," an eerie zone where they are transformed into vampire-like creatures that keep Manx alive and youthful.

Set against Manx is Vic McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings) a troubled teenager whose latent psychic powers could be the key to rescuing the children...but which also put her on Manx's radar.

The panel kicked off with a screening of the show's premiere episode, which focuses on the development of Vic's character while offering glimpses of the awful Manx on the road with his latest victim. Also in the mix is Maggie Leigh (Jahkara Smith), a librarian with psychic powers of her own who is on Manx's trail.

During the panel discussion that followed, showrunner Jami O'Brien revealed that the series will pick up in the second section of the book, when Vic is a teenager, and will cover about a third of the total length of the novel.

Acknowledging that Vic is around eight years old in the book's first section, O'Brien explained, "I knew we were going to cast an adult actor, so we thought, let's give ourselves a little leeway on Vic's age and not miss out on all that juicy stuff in the story, including when she meets Manx."

O'Brien added that her goal "is that it takes us a couple more seasons to get through the book," adding that there is enough peripheral material in the novel that "hopefully there's a world in which we could have 30 seasons of this."

Asked about why he wanted to take the role of Manx, Quinto -- who has spent several years playing Spock in the Star Trek movies and doing independent films -- said that it felt like a good time for him to come back to TV, where he first broke out as the villainous Sylar on Heroes.

"A lot of it had to do with the people involved," he said. "I was a little resistant at first because I've gone down evil roads before...(but) I hadn't done TV in a few years, and I know people like to see me do this kind of things, so I thought it would be a good springboard for me to come back."

As for Hill, who's an executive producer on the series, he was asked what inspired him to write the novel in the first place. "I hate Christmas music, especially in October," the best selling novelist and comic book writer (Locke & Key) revealed. "It's weird how the Chipmunks song invades your brain every fall. That feels particularly evil."

Hill also described Quinto's portrayal of the demonic Manx as "so unbelievable and scary and intense."

As we said above, NOS4A2 premieres on June 2 and the panel was capped by this brand new trailer: