If you took July 8th to the 12 off of work in the hopes of keeping FilmBuffOnline up and refreshed constantly to see what Marvel Studios news would be coming out of San Diego Comic Con, you can tell your boss that you’ll be able to come in. For the first time since 2011, Marvel Studios will not have a panel at SDCC.
Also, if you wanted to find out what was up with the new Ghostbusters reboot or what the future of the Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises held, you can head in to work too. Sony and Paramount have joined Marvel in choosing not to have a Hall H presentations.
Once though the sure fire road to box office gold, the luster of a Hall H presentation wore off after films such as Doom, The Spirit, I, Frankenstein, The Giver and many other high-budgeted films had disappointing returns from the costly SDCC investment.
However, Marvel Studios was a juggernaut with hit after hit and a line of films custom made for the SDCC audience. Of course, you can also argue that Marvel’s cinematic success had little to do with its SDCC presence, but the SDCC promotion didn’t hurt.
Marvel’s exodus was foreshadowed by last year’s rather lackluster presentation. The studio saved its announcement of its Phase III slate for an October presentation at the Disney-owned El Capitan theater in Los Angeles, leaving the Hall H presentation to promote its 2015 slate. Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn let the cat out of the bag in March of this year that Marvel would not be at SDCC, but fans refused to believe him.
Variety seems to think that instead of making the costly trip to San Diego, that Disney will promote its Marvel fare–in addition to its forthcoming Pirates of the Carribean and Finding Nemo sequels–at its company run D23 Expo in Anaheim in August. Disney will be promoting Star Wars at SDCC and its Marvel TV arm as well.
Marvel Studios’ absence is a gain for Warner Brothers, which will be promoting its DC Comics film slate at the con, and Fox, which will be hyping its Fantastic Four reboot and its X-Men franchise there as well. Both studios have less competition for server space at the movie news sites with Marvel not being there.
