A wizard is never late, nor is he early, but the question of whether he will arrive at San Diego Comic Con is always one worth posing. And with the event only a month away, studios have necessarily begun to show their hands. Hollywood has been playing hard to get with Comic Con lately. At the time, I remember it being blamed on Universal Pictures throwing a ton of Comic Con branding power behind Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, only to have it open fifth at the box office and make “respectable cult classic” money instead of “special effects laden action/comedy” money. That was in 2010, and it’s true that since the biggest Comic Con reveal I can remember was for The Avengers, and not even of footage, but simply of its cast.
At the moment, though it looks as if Disney and Marvel will be back for sure, along with Warner Bros., and yes, they’ll be bringing your favorites.
For the first time in a while, Marvel Studios doesn’t have much to show, with Iron Man III having only just begun to shoot, and the rest of its Avengers continuations two or three years out. Last year, it didn’t have a presence at the show at all, reserving its energies for Disney’s D23 convention. But both filmmakers are back this year, and we can probably look forward to seeing more about Wreck It Ralph, a.k.a. Roger Rabbit for video games.
Warner Bros. will have two very geek friendly movies to show, and it’d be shocking if we didn’t see a presentation from them anchored in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and sub-anchored in Man of Steel, both movies due this holiday season. And though “sources” say we’ll see footage from Guillermo del Toro‘s basically-live-action-Neon–Genesis–Evangelion movie Pacific Rim, neither Legendary Pictures and distributor Warner Bros have not commented on the idea.
Summit Entertainment will be back of course, with the final installment of the Twilight series, but Fox, Paramount, and Dreamworks appear to be laying low or skipping the con entirely. Which not only means that Paramount won’t be editing the date on a bunch of G.I. Joe: Retaliation posters and trying to remind everybody that the movie is still coming out, but more surprisingly, that Comic Con might go without a mention of J.J. Abrams’ next Star Trek, which just wrapped filming.
We’ll just have to wait until next month to see.
(via MTV Splash Page.)
