San Diego Comic-Con 2023 might be a slightly lower-key event this year, in the midst of strikes by both the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), but the event, and its associated announcements, soldier on.
Disney won’t have their usual big presentation, so don’t expect any Marvel or Star Wars movie or television announcements (Marvel Comics will still have a presence), and most of the other major studios likewise won’t be hosting panels this year. But announcements and reveals are expected from Max, Paramount, Amazon, and Peaco*ck, among others.
The event will run from July 20-23, and Polygon will be covering the whole thing. Stay tuned to this page for all the news, announcements, exclusives, and other goings-on from throughout the week.
Below, you can find all of Polygon’s coverage of SDCC 2023, with trailers, announcements, casting reveals, sneak peeks, and plenty more.
Susana Polo
DC’s turning every superhero into an animal
DC Comics revealed the company’s next crossover extravaganza at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend: Beast World — in which millions of people are transformed into rampaging anthropomorphic animals, including, naturally, plenty of heroes and villains.
The whole thing appears to have roots in the Teen Titans’ foremost shapeshifter, Beast Boy, and also some mad science, and also him turning into a giant space starfish in order to combat another giant space starfish and losing his mind in the process, but... I’m kind of cautiously optimistic about it?
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Zosha Millman
The Boys spinoff Gen V is here to gross you out
The world of The Boys has often been sophom*oric — with all the guts, butts, and other gross-out effects — but that will at least be a little more understandable in the new spinoff series Gen V.
On Monday, Prime Video released a trailer giving us the best and goriest look at the series so far. And for those who thought Gen V sounded like The Boys, but with a bit of Euphoria in the mix, well, you thought right.
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Austen Goslin
Cowboy Bebop creator, John Wick director team for anime that looks slick as hell
Shinichirō Watanabe, the man behind anime classics like Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, has lined up his next anime project. The new series is called Lazarus and comes from an all-star creative team that includes John Wick director Chad Stahelski and jazz legend Kamasi Washington.
Lazarus is set in 2052 after the world has been given a wonder drug that cures sickness forever. However, three years later, the inventor of the drug announces that it was secretly a slow-acting poison that will kill anyone that took it. A special five-person task force called Lazarus is then put together to find the doctor and stop his plan in time to save the world.
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Pete Volk
Watch the best San Diego Comic-Con 2023 trailers here
The 2023 San Diego Comic-Con is a considerably pared-down affair for the usually massive fan event. With ongoing strikes for both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, most of the major studios decided to cancel their SDCC participation.
But even without Disney, Universal, Netflix, and Sony, there were still plenty of new trailers debuted for upcoming shows and movies. Here are some highlights, which we’ll be updating throughout the weekend.
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The Dragon Prince season 5 gets a surprise early release
Season 5 of The Dragon Prince: The Mystery of Aaravos is coming early — and by early, we mean that it’s available right now. The news was announced at today’s San Diego Comic-Con panel, which also revealed a brand new trailer.
In the new season of The Dragon Prince, dark mage Claudia rises to free the powerful elf mastermind Aaravos, so that he will save her father (who is temporarily resurrected after falling to his death in the third season). Meanwhile, elf assassin Rayla, mage Callum, knight Soren, and young King Ezran are racing to stop Claudia and Viren from releasing the most powerful and dangerous being the world of Xadia has ever known.
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Susana Polo
Star Trek: Discovery’s final season has more portals, more baddies, and more David Cronenberg
Every new Star Trek show boldly goes, but Star Trek: Discovery had the unenviable position of going first in the Paramount Plus explosion of new Star Trek TV. And if the the first clips from the upcoming fifth and final season — revealed during today’s Star Trek panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2023 — have anything to say, the series is going to boldly go out with a bang.
The clip, an action sequence with little context of what lead up to it, follows Captain Michael Burnham as she is flung from a tense confrontation in the halls of a wrecked spaceship to piggybacking on the hull of a craft as it leaps into warp.
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Joshua Rivera
Invincible season 2 gets a surprise episode out now (plus an actual release date)
Amazon’s hit animated series Invincible cut a bloody path through our streaming queues when it debuted in 2021, a sleepy-seeming series that exploded into a violent, shocking climax by the end of its eight-episode first season. Of course, fans of creator Robert Kirkman’s superhero teen might know what’s in store if they’ve read the comics the series is based on, but everyone else has been in suspense for over two years now.
Invincible is rewarding that patience with a new trailer and a special episode, “Invincible Atom Eve,” an origin story for the the superhero played by Gillian Jacobs.
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Kayti Burt
Rick and Morty season 7 will replace Justin Roiland’s characters with ‘soundalikes’
If you haven’t heard, it’s an awkward year to be at San Diego Comic-Con, but it is perhaps an especially awkward Comic-Con year for Rick and Morty. For most TV shows and films, the WGA and SAG strikes for fair contracts have left studios unable to populate their panels with the writers and actors who usually promote the shows as part of their contract. This, generally, has resulted in a scaled back convention. Many panels were canceled altogether, but for the ones that are not — including Rick and Morty’s 10th Anniversary Panel — there has been a lot of talk (and, perhaps, more often not-talk) about the strikes.
For Rick and Morty, however, it’s not just the strikes they have to contend with, but also the continued fallout from the departure of series co-creator and protagonist voice actor Justin Roiland. Roiland was fired by Adult Swim earlier this year after allegations of domestic violence and sexual misconduct came to light earlier. It was the other elephant in the room in today’s panel, as executive producer Steve Levy, producer Suzanne Belk, supervising director Jacob Hair, and lead character designer Elisa Phillips took the stage to share concept art from one of the show’s Emmy-nominated episodes, tease what they could about an upcoming season, and briefly address the recasting for the voices of Rick and Morty.
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Michael McWhertor
Here’s a first look at Homelander and Peacemaker in Mortal Kombat 1
NetherRealm Studios finally made it official on Friday: Homelander from The Boys, Peacemaker from the DC Universe, and Omni-Man from Invincible will appear as guest characters in Mortal Kombat 1 as part of the game’s first Kombat Pack DLC. Those characters will be joined by Mortal Kombat veterans Quan Chi, Ermac, and Takeda.
The developers of Mortal Kombat 1 revealed a sneak peek at the Kombat Pack lineup at San Diego Comic-Con, where other characters were confirmed for the fighting game: Tanya, Li Mei, Baraka, Darrius, and Khameleon.
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Michael McWhertor
Mortal Kombat 1 goes deep on the ‘3D era’ with new character reveals
Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm Studios showed up in a big way to San Diego Comic-Con on Friday. The studio revealed new details about its next fighting game, including that fighters Tanya and Li Mei, who made their debuts in Mortal Kombat 4 and Deadly Alliance, respectively, are coming to Mortal Kombat 1. Joining those two Umgadi warriors is Baraka, who seems surprisingly sympathetic in a new story-centric trailer for MK1.
Mortal Kombat 1’s latest trailer includes a few more deep cuts, including what appear to be two more confirmed Kameo Fighters: Khameleon (from Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, though she technically debuted as a palette swap in Mortal Kombat Trilogy) and Darrius (from Mortal Kombat: Deception). The 3D era of MK, meaning games released in the early 2000s on PlayStation 2 and Xbox, appears to be well represented in MK1.
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Susana Polo
Marvel Comics’ new Punisher series replaces Frank Castle with... a brand-new character
Here’s a twist: The next Punisher comic series won’t star Frank Castle. Instead, some guy named Joe Garrison is suiting up for the next iteration of the title, Marvel Comics revealed at a San Diego Comic-Con panel today.
Garrison is a new character from writer David Pepose (Savage Avengers), “a retired S.H.I.E.L.D. black ops agent, is brought back into the action after his past rears its violent head,” according to a Marvel Comics news release.
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Pete Volk
India’s biggest-budget movie ever is the slick desert sci-fi Kalki 2898 AD
Participation from American studios is light at this year’s SDCC, with many pulling out of the event amid ongoing strikes for both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. But there’s a whole wide world of movie-making out there beyond the U.S., and the Telugu and Hindi film Kalki 2898 A.D. became the first Indian movie to be presented at the event’s Hall H, with a new trailer, a new title, and a panel.
Kalki 2898 A.D. is an epic-scale sci-fi movie with a star-studded cast, including Telugu Baahubali star Prabhas, Tamil superstar Kamal Hassan (recently seen in Vikram), Hindi star Deepika Padukone (recently seen in Pathaan), and legendary Hindi actor Amitabh Bachchan. The movie comes from director Nag Ashwin, best known for his award-winning biopic Mahanati. Not much is known about the plot as of now, but the trailer showcases massive battle sequences, plenty of intrigue, and a desert environment.
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Petrana Radulovic
Harley Quinn takes on the terrifying ordeal of being a good person in new trailer
Brash, bold, and bombastic Harley Quinn is back for season 4 of her animated show. Though this time around, she’s battling her greatest adversary yet: the inner conflict that she might actually be a better do-gooder than a villain. The first trailer out of San Diego Comic-Con shows us more of this new heroic Harley.
At the end of season 3, Harley realized that she actually might enjoy doing good deeds — and subsequently becomes the newest member of the Bat Family. However, her girlfriend Ivy has the opportunity to lead an all new Legion of Doom with an all-female lineup. In the first trailer, Harley juggles her new wacky double life between good and evil. Can she prove to the Bat Family that she belongs, and also still maintain her relationship with Ivy?
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Petrana Radulovic
Fionna and Cake gear up for their own multiversal Adventure Time romp
Adventure Time is back — with a twist! The first trailer for Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake premiered at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con 2023.
That’s right, Fionna the Human and Cake the Cat now lead their very own series. The characters originally spawned from a comic drawn by Adventure Time character designer, Natasha Allegri. They first appeared in-series in a 2011 episode, though their world was revealed to be fanfiction written by the Ice King. Still, the characters were so popular that they appeared in several other episodes, and many more genderbent versions of Adventure Time characters — like Marshall Lee, Prince Gumball, and Lumpy Space Prince — appeared.
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Cameron Faulkner
Kith made some hypebeast apparel for X-Men’s 60th anniversary
The high-end apparel company Kith has collaborated with Marvel and Asics to make a special collection of jackets, T-shirts, chairs, shoes, and accessories for the 60th anniversary of the X-Men. The drop will be available first to attendees of San Diego Comic-Con, happening from July 19 through July 23. Following that window of availability, all of the gear will be available through Kith’s site on July 28.
If you’re after clothing, you can expect to find tapestry coaches jackets, wool varsity jackets, satin bombers, as well as intarsia knitwear and vintage tees. Kith and Marvel haven’t provided images of every article that’ll be available, just the teaser image above that shows a mix of T-shirts, a jacket, and a Xavier ball cap. Other accessories in this collection include skate decks for skateboards, keychains, and pin sets.
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Petrana RadulovicandAusten Goslin
Who’s actually showing up for San Diego Comic-Con 2023
The 2023 San Diego Comic-Con, set to run July 20-23, suddenly looks sparse on the presentation front.
Likely due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, which has stalled many productions and pulled creators out of promotional cycles, many studios have opted out of attending the typically star-studded fan event. Adding to the potential woes for Comic-Con: the Screen Actors Guild has voted to authorize its own strike if it cannot reach a new TV and film contract deal before June 30. Whether or not SAG strikes a deal in time, both movie and TV studios are opting to buck the annual trend of trekking to San Diego to show off the next few years of productions.
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Austen Goslin
For anyone expecting a Marvel Hall H panel at Comic-Con...
San Diego Comic-Con is known as a pop-culture mecca, thanks in major part to the lineup at “Hall H”: the corner of the convention center that’s often host to panels from the likes of HBO, DC, Star Trek, and Netflix. Over the last decade or so, no company’s Hall H panel has commanded as much attention as Marvel’s — but this year, the MCU stars won’t be there. While Marvel will still have a booth on the convention center floor, circ*mstances beyond even Kevin Feige’s power are in play.
Marvel Studios bowing out of SDCC isn’t an out-of-the-blue decision; there were rumors that the company would be skipping the con as far back as June. And while Marvel’s parent company Disney didn’t give any specific reasons for skipping the show, there are a few relevant ones that aren’t hard to guess.
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Matt Patches
Jurassic Park toilet activation now the number two thing to do at SDCC 2023
Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is a seminal entry in the “eat the rich” canon. A Tyrannosaurus Rex eating a lawyer while he’s on the pot is... a blunt metaphor — and, frankly, that’s why the Michael Crichton adaptation is a classic. Thirty years later, Universal will pay tribute to this vicious loo content at the 2023 San Diego Comic-Con with an on-site experience dubbed “Step Into Jurassic Park,” but that I will playfully refer to as the “Jurassic Park toilet activation” from henceforth.
According to a Universal news release, fans enter the Jurassic Park toilet activation at a recreation of the Jurassic Park gates, not the outhouse in which lawyer Donald Gennaro was brutally consumed by a T. rex. The pop-up will feature multiple dino encounters from the movie, including a recreation of the Dilophosaurus attack scene, and, most importantly, the toilet scene. A faux Visitor’s Center will house 30th-anniversary-inspired toys, collectibles, apparel, and accessories. Polygon has reached out to Universal to clarify if there will be any toilet-related memorabilia in the store.
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