World-Building Takes Center Stage at Comic-Con

Comic-Con, one of the largest fan conventions for pop culture, officially began on Thursday in San Diego, and for thousands of attendees this year, there’s something especially historic on their minds.

Filmmaker George Lucas will make his Comic-Con debut this year, marking the first time the director known for such films as Star Wars and Indiana Jones will attend a convention he has long been associated with.

It’s a moment many in the convention’s 50-plus-year history are calling a full-circle moment, as close to the same time Star Wars made one of its earliest public appearances at the Comic-Con, back in 1977, the film was also the debut of a booth featuring a now-legendary Star Wars poster by comic book artist Howard Chaykin as a giveaway. (The booth space eventually was made available as a place for attendees to purchase a variety of merchandise.) David Glanzer, Comic-Con’s Chief Communications and Strategy Officer, referred to the Lucas attendance as a “true full-circle moment.”

Lucas will appear on a Sunday panel moderated by Queen Latifah, which will center around the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is set to open in Los Angeles next year. Joining Lucas will be Mexican director Guillermo del Toro as well as Doug Chiang, an Oscar-winning artist whose concept work has helped shape the look and feel of Star Wars over the last three decades. They will discuss the museum, which will house Lucas’s collection and focus on film, comics, and the art of storytelling through illustration.

Comic-Con Comes a Long Way from Humble Beginnings

The original San Diego Comic-Con in 1970 was a small convention for comic book fans, and over the decades, it has grown to become one of the largest celebrations of storytelling, cinema, and fandom. Now, around 130,000 attendees from around the world travel to San Diego each year to take part in events that range from cosplay and collecting to panel discussions and sneak peeks at some of Hollywood’s most anticipated projects. In recent years, Comic-Con has continued to become an event to get rare access to celebrities and major content from the world of movies.

Alien: The Series and Predator: The Feature

One of the most highly anticipated announcements will be the world premiere of Alien: Earth, the upcoming prequel series to Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi film Alien. The series, from showrunner and director Noah Hawley, will expand on the film’s central mythos, but take place only a few years before the events of Scott’s original. Hawley will be on the panel for the world premiere, which is set to take place tomorrow in Hall H—the convention’s most highly sought-after venue for programming. The series will premiere on streaming services in August.

Another set to make a splash is the new Predator film, Predator: Badlands, which reimagines the popular sci-fi franchise, this time with the titular Predator as the hunted. The film is directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who rebooted the Predator franchise with 2022’s Prey. He will be joined by actors Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who plays the titular alien, Dek.

Marvel Studios will be scaling back its presence this year, according to Variety. The studio announced on Wednesday that it would be skipping Hall H, its typical showcase at the event, after a number of factors related to the reshuffling of the upcoming Avengers: Endgame sequel caused “problems” to what was already being filmed in the United Kingdom. Marvel is still expected to hold some events and programming at the convention, just on a smaller scale.

Instead, sci-fi stalwarts have been rallying to take up some of that programming slack, filling up the conference’s coveted Hall H with special programming throughout the weekend.

Ryan Gosling, Peacemaker, and More

In addition to the new Predator series, fans are looking to catch first looks at Project Hail Mary, an adaptation of Andy Weir’s next novel of the same name. The film, which is based on Weir’s The Martian, is due in theaters next year and stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a former schoolteacher who is jolted awake and finds himself alone on a spaceship with no crew and no memory of how he got there. Grace will be forced to use his science smarts to save the Earth after realizing he may be humankind’s last hope at survival. Gosling will appear on Saturday’s panel with the film’s directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who are best known for the Spider-Verse trilogy.

Fans of DC’s universe can also expect a new look into the upcoming second season of Peacemaker, with creator James Gunn, who has also taken over DC’s wider reboot for the big screen with Superman and more. Gunn, who is also upping the ante in the DCEU with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom later this year, will be joined by the series’ cast to discuss some of the behind-the-scenes footage and also a preview of the second season.

Costumes and Cosplay Continue to Rule

The Comic-Con celebration, while perhaps driven by the buzziest announcements and A-listers, is as much a celebration of cosplay and fandom as anything else. Fans in full costume as superheroes and princesses, Star Wars warriors and Avengers, zombies and aliens, and other beloved characters will fill the convention center throughout the weekend.

Comic-Con will continue through Sunday, July 27.