Guardians of the Galaxy director says Marvel Studios won’t be at San Diego Comic-Con

By Rick Marshall March 9, 2015

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This story is part of our complete Comic-Con coverage

marvel studios comic con san diego james gunn avengers — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The annual presentation by Marvel Studios at San Diego’s Comic-Con International has become one of the massive event’s most prominent highlights in recent years, with attendees often lining up days in advance in order to get a seat for the studio’s preview of what’s to come for its cinematic universe. This year’s show might prove a little disappointing for fans, though, as Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn recently suggested that Marvel won’t have a presence at the convention.

Over the weekend, Gunn agreed to answer questions from fans on his Facebook page, and among the topics he addressed was his potential presence at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego.

“I’m not sure,” responded Gunn when asked if he’d be at the convention. “Marvel isn’t going so I’m not sure I will either.”

While the notion of a San Diego Comic-Con without Marvel might seem a bit unbelievable at this point, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the studio could opt out of attending SDCC. Just a month after Comic-Con, Marvel’s parent company Disney is hosting its biennial D23 Expo, and the studio is likely to prioritize that event over Comic-Con, much as it did in 2013 when Marvel’s presence at Comic-Con was noticeably smaller than its presence at the Disney event.

It’s also conceivable that, with both Marvel Studios and LucasFilm falling under the Disney banner and having major projects on the horizon, the D23 Expo may end up having some of the biggest news of the summer for superhero and sci-fi movie fans.

Still, Marvel’s presence at Comic-Con International will be missed if the studio does indeed remove itself from the SDCC conversation, as previous installments of Marvel’s Comic-Con presentation gave fans the first look at many of Marvel’s movies, brought the cast of The Avengers together on stage for the first time, and offered up a long list of other memorable moments from the wildly popular convention’s history. We’ll certainly know more as we inch closer to the kickoff of SDCC in July and that of D23 Expo in August.

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