Two powerful forces are set to make one big cosmic boom: The media loudspeaker epicenter that is San Diego Comic-Con, which kicks off Thursday and runs through Sunday, is coinciding with the opening of Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine on Thursday, a movie that’s expected to notch the biggest box office opening year-to-date with a possible $200 million opening. It’s among the very times that the mega global comics confab and an MCU movie opening have fallen on the same weekend.
In the further splitting of atoms, Marvel Studios will be in full force with two Hall H panels — one celebrating the opening night of Deadpool & Wolverine on Thursday night and the other Saturday night’s big Marvel Cinematic Universe preview — reminding the fanboy faithful that the brand hasn’t tarnished from deep-universe attempts and box office misfires such as The Marvels and The Eternals . An appetizer before the MCU’s big event on Saturday is HBO and DC Studios’ first look at Matt Reeves’ The Batman spinoff series The Penguin . The Warner Bros comic book studio run by James Gunn and Peter Safran also is buzzed to possibly pull a couple of Wonder Twins-like surprises during the confab.
“It’s important for Marvel to win back their core,” observed one rival studio publicity exec about its return to Hall H with its feature presentation and the superhero fatigue that has crippled the box office of late with such movies as Sony/Marvel’s Madame Web and DC’s weak streak of The Flash, Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom and Blue Beetle.
However, don’t shame Marvel for being shrewd during these erratic moviegoing times with a double big splash at SDCC. Audiences are even more fickle about when they head to cinemas, and Marvel, unlike some studios, knows that a loudspeaker at SDCC goes a long way. Meanwhile, with all this talk that superhero movies are going the way of CinemaScope musicals, Hollywood hasn’t bailed on its $80M- to-$200M-per-pic investments in pumping out the genre.
More interesting than who’s attending Comic-Con this year is who’s skipping, and there are several titles that have opted to leave a massive promotional opportunity on the table to speak directly to a social media-charged 200,000 who can send gongs around the world.
Per Deadline sources, it doesn’t cost much for a studio to be here — anywhere from a cost in the hundreds of thousands to possibly the low-millions. What racks up costs is the last-minute rush to create footage with perfect sound, VFX and music. Syncing ensemble casts’ travel schedules, well, that’s just child’s play.
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’
Among those big upcoming films sans panels, casts and footage are Warner Bros’ massive Tim Burton-directed sequel Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (release date: September 6) and DC’s Todd Phillips-directed Joker: Folie à Deux (October 4), both of which are opting for Venice Film Festival global premieres . While the Joker sequel clearly is looking to recapture the Oscar glory of the original 2019 movie, which also had a Venice launch, sources say it’s all about Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice positioning itself toward a broader audience. Still, why deny fans Jenna Ortega, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Burton? They’re here! San Diego Comic-Con attendees are the ones who can champion these films over the hump.
Also sitting out are Sony/Marvel’s Venom: The Last Dance (October 25), R-rated Kraven the Hunter (December 13), Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (undated), Universal’s Wicked and Paramount’s Gladiator II (both locking horns on the same weekend of November 22), and New Line’s animated Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim. Some may argue that Wicked and Gladiator II won’t lend themselves to Comic-Con crowds. If moviegoers will dress up like the characters on opening weekend at theaters, well, then the movies are ripe for Comic-Con. (Paramount is here with its big September animated film Transformers One and castmembers Chris Hemsworth and Bryan Tyree Henry, while Universal has DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot.
Even if a studio doesn’t have a panel, staging a fan experience in the Gaslamp Quarter is arguably equally effective in raising an upcoming title’s profile. While the Comic-Con Wednesday eve is typically a time when attendees mosey in, Lionsgate was out in full force with a bloody hockey-masked Borderlands street team this afternoon, shouting away about the pic’s August 9 opening and handing out EW ‘s Comic-Con issue with the Eli Roth pic’s cast on the cover.
It’s a first this week in many pushes for the video-game-based movie starring Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Haley Bennett and Jack Black; Lionsgate for its part is opening a Moxxi’s Bar, the game’s infamous bar, in the Gaslamp from Thursday-Saturday. Aside from having a drink menu inspired by the film, stars of the film will be making pit stops.
Studios’ reasons for avoiding SDCC vary, from Marvel sucking all the oxygen out of the confab (despite the fact that its technically the big closing act of the final night) to studio executives’ belief that Comic-Con has lost its cultural relevance and only caters to a niche audience. For those anti Comic-Con studio execs, the broader reach for hip is at SXSW, where such movies as A Quiet Place, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Ready Player One blasted off. The added pressure with SDCC for studios is that they have to have a prime trailer ready to drop to the public; despite being perfect, history has shown that in a YouTube age, you can’t keep footage a secret in Hall H.
Despite the flood of movies about men and women in tights that have faltered of late, Disney and Sony’s Marvel labels and Warner Bros’ DC are making fewer films, yet of a higher caliber, and ones which won’t lose John Q consumer in a Byzantine multiverse. They’re also aiming to space superhero movies out on the release schedule to avoid spandex fatigue.
Wesley Snipes in ‘Blade’ (1998).
In a good way, the bombs have set studio execs back on their heels. They know they can’t inundate the marketplace and recycle formulaic films. One movie taking its time to gestate is Marvel’s anticipated reboot of 1998’s Blade , first announced at SDCC 2019: A new director has yet to be announced for the Mahershala Ali-Mia Goth project after losing two (Yann Demange and Bassam Tariq), and it’s not expected we’ll learn of one during this Comic-Con. As Goth told Deadline ‘s Natalie Sitek at the premiere of MaXXXine, the MCU m.o. for the movie is “They want to make a great movie. That’s the sense that I get from them and that feels good.”
Gone is the conveyor-belt approach to TV and movies implemented during the Bob Chapek-run Disney era, which was about feeding the beast with the birth of Disney+. Largely slowed down or dormant is the MCU’s interconnected plan to bridge Disney+ series with big-screen fare. In such cases, the plot strings didn’t make sense (i.e., WandaVision ‘s bridge to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ) or wasn’t widely watched (the Ms. Marvel series connecting to the MCU dud The Marvels , which grossed just $206.1M). “Don’t make it a homework assignment,” cries one major entertainment company marketing boss.
Deadpool & Wolverine is the only MCU title this year, but 2025 boasts Captain America: Brave New World (February 14), Thunderbolts (May 2) and Fantastic Four (July 25).
Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’
In regards to the rest of 2024, DC Studios only has the R-rated Joker: Folie a Deux (Octpber 4) and so far one next year in James Gunn’s Superman (July 11), which will usher in the new “Gods & Monsters” DC Universe being built by the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise director and Safran.
“Humanity has been telling stories about heroes for 5,000 years, and Hollywood isn’t going to stop telling those stories,” exclaimed one studio executive about the future of superhero movies.
Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man
It’s not as easy as it sounds, but character is king, and when paired with the right star it’s what makes any superhero movie transcend, no matter how unknown the IP is in the universe. While Marvel kicked off the MCU with the first Iron Man in 2008 with $586M worldwide, it was via a character that wasn’t one of the comic book company’s stock A characters. Leave it to Robert Downey Jr’s comedic timing to turn Tony Stark into an affable, cocky jerk who doubles as a big brother/mentor. Ditto for Ryan Reynolds and his foul-mouthed Deadpool. The offbeat superhero turned Reynolds into an even bigger leading man, while the actor turned the Merc With a Mouth into a marquee name. The trick is when you go deep, make ’em cheap, which was the case with the first Deadpool , made for $60M before P&A a nd yielded a $322M-plus profit after all ancillaries.
Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige told Deadline recently, “I’ve never been a big believer in superhero being a genre in and of itself. We made films that are based in graphic narrative format originally, but we make different types of movies.”
However, fatigue really isn’t a superhero problem.
“The answer to that question [of fatigue] is the same answer to movies in general: making engaging, entertaining films that have to be experienced in a theater with a crowd and is worth people getting into their cars and making the trip. Of the many forms of entertainment that people can get scrolling on their screen in their pocket, we as a Hollywood industry need to make product that stands above all of that and that represents a destination entertainment that you can’t get anywhere else.”
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