With all due respect to the masochists in the Tour de France, the 2,200-mile bike race is not the most grueling endurance event July has to offer. That honor falls to Comic-Con International: San Diego, in which 150,000 pop-culture obsessives flock to a beautiful beach town—and then head straight inside for four days of panels, screenings, tabletop gaming, cosplay, and every other flavor of fandom you can imagine.
Admittedly, the world's foremost gathering of the nerds has begun to change in recent years, but while the nightlife may be dwindling, the daytime programming continues to proliferate. By the time you read this, the West Coast contingent of WIRED's culture team is already embroiled in the fray; from new Time Lords to rogue hosts to Wakandan royalty to the return of the Upside Down, here's all the stuff we'll be fighting to see.
We've seen the internet lose its collective mind plenty of times in 2017 alone, be it #covfefe or certain Pepsi commercials. But for that elusive combination of scope, scale, and simultaneity, it's possible that none of those can touch what happened when the first Black Panther trailer hit during the NBA Finals in June (coughWarriorsin5cough). Chadwick Boseman, already familiar to Marvel fans from his emergence in Captain America: Civil War, was joined by the rest of the movie's stacked roster (Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B. Jordan, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker) in what immediately became the cinema's most vivid rendition of Afrofuturism...and quite possibly Twitter's most anticipated movie of all time. Now, with director Ryan Coogler hitting Marvel's Hall H panel on Saturday, more details—and more footage—are sure to come.
Warner Bros. has plenty of heat on deck for its Hall H panel this year—if there's no footage from Ready Player One, I'll eat my VR headset—but the burning question continues to be how Joss Whedon taking the reins changes Justice League. Earlier this year, director Zack Snyder stepped down in the wake of a family tragedy, opening the door for one of Comic Con's demi-deities. Whedon has already left his mark on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but despite famously writing an unproduced Wonder Woman script a decade ago, he has yet to step foot in DC's counterpart. (Then again, the wait might not have been the worst idea.) The writer-director has already proved that he can move from ensemble TV to sprawling multihero action movies; now, can he bring his light touch to a movie that looks to be mired in Snyder's signature dreariness?
More than eight years after Battlestar Galactica went off the air, we're still waiting for small-screen space sci-fi that equals Ronald D. Moore's enthralling Syfy series. Thankfully, after a dry run at the ATX Television Festival in June, a good chunk of the original cast is reuniting for a panel at SDCC this year. According to the official description, they'll "provide insight into this critically acclaimed hit and look back on some of the show's most hotly debated moments—the Pegasus arrival, New Caprica, the finale, and the truth about the Cylons." Will there be any intel on the forthcoming movie feature, being written by Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy? Probably not, but that doesn't stop us from hoping.
After garnering 91 Emmy nominations last week, Netflix could probably coast through Comic Con on the strength of Stranger Things alone. Not so fast. In addition to rightside-upping the Upside Down with a look at Season 2 of ST (including all the kids), the streaming platform is bringing a panel for the Marvel teamup miniseries The Defenders—as well as a Hall H block dedicated to two of its biggest forthcoming movies, the Will Smith-starring fantasy cop film (?!) Bright and a US-set live-action adaptation of the beloved anime Death Note. Hope you didn't jump ship to Hulu too fast.
Westworld may not have been original IP, based as it was on Michael Crichton's 1973 movie, but it became the most-watched first season of a show in HBO's history—and turned Reddit into a howling warren of clue-chasing. Thankfully, attendees of the show's Hall H panel will be able to get some questions answered directly during the Q&A. Odds are long for Season 2 footage, but with just about every significant cast member showing up, from Thandie Newton (Maeve) to Ed Harris (the Man in Black) to Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores), it's likely to be deliver a healthy does of fan service. Still, is it too much to ask for another glimpse of Samurai World?
CBS All Access, the network's streaming service, launched in 2014. It began offering exclusive content in February, with a spinoff of The Good Wife. But the service gets its first real test later this year, when it becomes the exclusive home for the newest series in the Star Trek universe. By now, fans know a bit about Discovery—it takes place before the events of the original 1966 series, and follows the titular ship during a time of tension between the Federation and the nascent Klingon empire—but haven't had many visual clues from which to glean more. That ostensibly changes at Comic Con, when the cast and creators convene to discuss the new show and (we're guessing) show some footage.
Now that Game of Thrones' long two-part final season has finally begun, we're staring down the barrel of what might be the HBO juggernaut's final Hall H panel. (Well, at least the penultimate one.) Traditionally, the GOT panel is less about superstars and spoilers than it is about fan favorites and anecdotes, and this year's is no different: Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) might be the only principal castmember appearing, but with Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy), John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), and Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth) among the panelists, someone's gotta let something slip.
