Last year, the organizers of San Diego Comic- Con were eager to put on their annual event sans pandemic cancellations or COVID protocols — until the SAG-AFTRA strike forced almost every studio to pull their panels. With no obvious impediments in sight for this year’s event, which runs from July 25-28, the largest fan gathering in North America is finally set to mount its first regular convention in five years.
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” says chief communications and strategy officer David Glanzer. “We’ve learned to always expect the unexpected but, in the end, try to produce the type of show we want to attend.”
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Comic-Con will have ample opportunity to deliver on that promise this year. Teams from the latest iterations of “Star Trek” (including “Strange New Worlds” and “Starfleet Academy”) and “The Walking Dead” (“Dead City” and “Daryl Dixon”) will be showcasing the upcoming seasons of their shows. The ensemble of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” will discuss Season 2 of the fantasy epic, while the cast of “The Boys” is scheduled to celebrate its just-concluded fourth season. Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry will appear to promote the animated feature “Transformers One,” while Lupita Nyong’o and Kit Connor (“Heartstopper”) will do the same for DreamWorks Animation’s “The Wild Robot.”
The rebooted DC Studios is largely sitting out this year’s convention; co-studio chief James Gunn couldn’t fit in an appearance between his directing duties on “Superman” and Season 2 of “Peacemaker.” But the upcoming HBO series “The Penguin” with Colin Farrell and the Max animated shows “Harley Quinn” and spinoff “Kite Man: Hell Yeah!” are scheduled to appear, and an insider says DC Studios still plans to break some news.
By contrast, Marvel Studios, keen to reset fan expectations after its wobbly 2023, will hold two panels inside the cavernous Hall H: one for “Deadpool & Wolverine” on July 25, in advance of the film’s premiere the next day in theaters, and the other a presentation by Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige on July 27 that’s expected to include the first looks of films like “Thunderbolts*” and “The Fantastic Four.”
“I think it will be a really good show,” Glanzer says of the four-day convention, which is expected to host upwards of 130,000 attendees. “Finally, we’ll be back to normal.”
It couldn’t have come soon enough. The back-to-back pandemic cancellations of the entire convention dealt a punishing financial blow to the nonprofit organization, with operating losses totaling $6.8 million in 2020 and $4.7 million in 2021, according to public tax filings. While Glanzer says there weren’t many requests for ticket refunds in 2023 after so many studios withdrew from Comic-Con, weathering another year like it might have been one blow too many.
“It’s been a challenge,” Glanzer says. “We knew that if there was ever some kind of a catastrophic event, we would be able to withstand a year without conventions. We never thought that it would last more than one year.”
There are still headwinds on the horizon. Just two weeks after San Diego Comic-Con, Feige is due to showcase Marvel Studios again at Disney’s D23 Expo — one of several fan events, like Lucasfilm’s Star Wars Celebration and Netflix’s Tudum, mounted by media companies in recent years. Notably, Star Wars and Netflix have largely skipped Comic-Con of late, but Glanzer isn’t fazed by the new competition.
“Comic-Con is a big umbrella,” he says. “We’re not owned by any publisher or entertainment company. We host everybody. The tickets still sell out well in advance in record time, months before our schedule’s even announced.”
Glanzer does admit, however, to concern over whether Comic-Con will remain in San Diego, which has hosted the event since its inception in 1970. Recently, he says, some local hotels have stopped providing Comic-Con with room blocks at a discount for attendees. The convention’s contract with the city extends to 2026, but Glanzer says organizers are open to considering other cities beyond that year.
“We want to stay in San Diego,” he says. “But if the rank-and-file attendees can’t afford to stay in San Diego, we have to take a serious look at what we’re going to do.”
