Marvel and Other Major Studios Passing on Comic-Con 2011!?

In recent years San Diego Comic-Con has been a great place for studios to go show off their upcoming films, giving fans an exclusive glimpse at movies that they are excited about seeing. It's also a place for studios to introduce fanboys and fangirls to new films and concepts that they may have never heard of. I love going to Comic-Con to see this stuff, and according to an article in the New York Times it looks like the major studios are re-thinking Comic-Con and are pulling out this year, which completely sucks ass for us fans.

According to the report Warner Bros., Disney, Dreamworks and The Weinstein Company are bringing nothing to the con this year. If that's true then we will see nothing for The Dark Knight Rises, SupermanJohn Carter of Mars and several other films. They also say that Marvel is on the fence about whether or not they want to have a presence this year, which just seems absolutely ridiculous because it's Marvel! If they don't have a movie panel then I guess that means we won't see anything from The Avengers, which was a huge deal last year, and could be the biggest event this year. 

It would completely suck ass if this all turns out to be true. It would really be kind of sad. So what happened? Why are studios pulling out? According to the report it's the same fanboys and fangirls that brought the studios and movies there in the first place. If they fans don't like what they see they go out and spread negative buzz, which is buzz the studios don't want. The times say's they "can instantly sour on a film if it doesn’t like what it sees, leaving publicity teams with months of damaging Web chatter to clean up." You can't deny this doesn't happen, because it does. At the same time, If the fans don't like what they see at comic-con then they most likely wont like what they see a few month later when a trailer is released and that same negative web-chatter and buzz will still spread. The only way to stop negative buzz chatter is to one, either stop making crappy films, or two, just don't market the movie at all. 

The fact of the matter is fans go to Comic-Con to see this stuff because they are excited and passionate about it. They travel all around the world to see it, and in the years I've attended Comic-Con I've seen more positive buzz than negative hit the internet from the fan boys, so I don't really see this hurting the studios at all. 

Studios that claim they got burned at Comic-Con over the years included Warner Bros. Sucker Punch, which got a lot of great positive buzz during the Con, but when the movie came it it simply sucked. They can't blame the Con for it's failure though, the only pthing they should blame is themselves for allowing Zack Snyder to make the film. Universal Pictures got burned with Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, but in all fairness it was a great movie, and everyone that attended Comic-Con saw the movie, those were the fans that was the films target market, unfortunately it was the general audience that didn't buy into it. Then they say that Disney's Tron: Legacy didn't pay off as well as they hoped. That film had a presence for three years at the Con, but if you think about it, the movie actually did pretty well, and now the studio is working on developing a sequel. 

Who knows maybe some of these studios will have a change of heart by the time Comic-Con rolls around. As of right now Sony Pictures will be bringing some Amazing Spider-Man awesomeness, and Universal Pictures is planning something big for Jon Favreau's Cowboys & Aliens. Paramount will be showing off Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, and Spielberg might even show up. Fox will also have a presence there with Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Other things we can expect to see include Relativity Media's Immortals, The Raven, and Shark Night 3-D. Lionsgate will be there promoting there films, and of course Summit Entertainment will show up with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1.

I'm still excited for Comic-Con, but I was really hoping to see some stuff from Warner Bros., Marvel, and Disney. I'll definitley be disappointed if they don't end up bringing anything for the fans to get excited about. 

What do you all think about these studios passing on on Comic-Con this year?

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