San Diego Comic-Con 2026 highlights: Marvel, Avengers Doomsday, Black Panther, Blade Runner, Carrie, Lanterns

When it comes to pop culture fandom, San Diego Comic-Con is the biggest gathering of the most enthusiastic geeks. We say geeks as positive because, haven’t you heard, geeks are still cool.

Nerd culture has come to dominate the mainstream as genre stories became legitimised with the likes of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and Marvel. It’s all about going big.

And the biggest cacophony at SDCC comes out of Hall H, which holds 6500 screaming fans, as select studios roll out their upcoming slate for an audience primed to receive even the smallest morsel of news about their favourite movies and TV shows.

It’s a win-win for all the cosplayers and for the entertainment companies who use SDCC as a marketing platform where almost everyone who has self-selected to attend will make a lot of noise, especially when you roll out A-listers such as Ryan Gosling and Robert Downey Jr.

The fans were not disappointed as the big guns obliged, including massive reveals from Marvel and DC, as well new clips and trailers from anticipated upcoming projects such as Blade Runner 2099, the Carrie remake, Spaceballs, Matchbox, Interview with the Vampire and Necromancer.

The nerds shall inherit the Earth.

AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY

The next Avengers movie going to be a very big deal – or at least Marvel Studios is hoping it will be – and to reflect that ambition, the movie, due for release in December, brought out a bevy of superheroes for the tease.

You have Robert Downey Jr, who first revealed his return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe two years ago at SDCC when he dramatically flicked off that Doctor Doom mask. This time, he wasn’t in costume, per se, but was decked out in a black suit threaded with mysterious green (Doom’s colour them) symbols.

He teased the assembled audience, “Decisions will have to be made. This time you’re either on the side of the good guys or perhaps you’d consider the alternative of joining the family of Doom”. Downey Jr even morphed his voice into Doctor Doom’s inflected accent midway through that line.

He was joined on stage by some of his co-stars from Doomsday – Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Paul Rudd, Hayley Atwell, James Marsden, Kelsey Grammar, Rebecca Romijn, Letitia Wright, David Harbour, Simu Liu, Winston Duke, Hannah John-Kamen, Danny Ramirez, Anthony Mackie, Lewis Pullman and Tenoch Huerta Mejia.

Yes, we said “some”, and despite that long roll-call, that was only some of the large ensemble cast. Also present were directors Joe and Anthony Russo, and Marvel boss Kevin Feige.

But that wasn’t all. There was also a cameo from Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, who “crashed” the party and did a bit about discovering that he had been cut from the roster.

The footage that was screened in the room, and not yet made available online, addressed a shared history between the Fantastic Four characters and Doctor Doom. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm is seen describing the villain as, “He was always the smartest guy in the room, he used to be kind, he used to be caring, and then everything he loved was taken from him, and he was lost”.

BLACK PANTHER 3

Marvel also revealed that Industry star David Jonsson will take over the mantle of Black Panther, playing Prince T’Challa, the son of King T’Challa, who was played by the late Chadwick Boseman who had died from colon cancer in 2020.

The character of Prince T’Challa had been revealed at the end of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, as the son of T’Challa and Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), who she had been raising away from Wakanda. He was only a small child in that 2022 movie, so it’s not clear how they’ll explain the age jump.

Jonsson’s name was announced by filmmaker Ryan Coogler, who will return to direct the third Black Panther movie, coming hot off the heels of his success with Sinners, which won him an Oscar for screenwriting. Coogler is also in charge of his upcoming The X-Files reboot, so he’s a busy man.

Jonsson is a British actor best known for his work on the first two seasons of HBO drama Industry but also had prominent roles in Alien: Romulus, The Long Walk and Agatha Christie miniseries Murder is Easy.

Letitia Wright’s character, Shuri, sister to the late King T’Challa, had worn the Black Panther suit and powers in the second film, and will feature in Avengers: Doomsday.

Wright told EW of Shuri’s onscreen journey, “(It’s been) beautiful to see the arc of this character. In 2018, starting out as this beautiful scientist in the lab just trying to help her big brother out, to just elevating and growing and now being a source of wisdom for her young nephew”.

In real life, Wright is only four days older than Jonsson.

GHOST RIDER

Ryan Gosling used to be a frequent collaborator of indie filmmaker darlings Derek Cianfrance and Nicolas Winding Refn but he is well and truly in his blockbuster era now.

You don’t get much more blockbuster than following up a Star Wars movie with leading a Marvel one, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen, and with the same director, Shawn Levy, no less.

Presumably the footage for Gosling and Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter (can we please talk about the repetition in the title, it makes one shudder) must be encouraging for Disney, which owns Marvel and Lucasfilm, to OK a re-team of the duo. The pair will also reunite with Starfighter writer Jonathan Tropper for Ghost Rider.

Taking to the stage in a red denim jacket, Gosling said Ghost Rider is a character he has wanted to play “for a very long time”.

Ghost Rider is the anti-hero avatar of Johnny Blaze, a motorcycle stuntman who becomes fused with the “Spirit of Vengeance Zarathos” after making a deal with Mephisto, who is Marvel’s version of the devil.

Ghost Rider has previously been adapted on the big screen with Nicolas Cage in the role across two movies in 2007 and 2012. He also appeared as another incarnation of the character, Robbie Reyes, in the Marvel TV series Agents of SHIELD, on which he was portrayed by Gabriel Luna.

The film is due for release in 2028.

BLADE RUNNER 2099

Is it kind of comforting to know that in our fictional dystopian futures, the world still has life left in her?

Ridley Scott’s original sci-fi masterpiece, Blade Runner, was set in 2019, and then we had Denis Villeneuve’s incredible follow-up, Blade Runner 2049, which was set in, duh, 2049. Now, there Blade Runner 2099.

So, at least we know that humanity ekes out at least another half-century, although barely. In this next chapter, humanity appears to be on the brink (again, still?), and one of the last remaining actual people (or is she…) is Cora, a young fugitive.

She’s spent her whole life on the run, taking on different identities for survival after a war in which humans were the losers, and in her latest quest, she becomes a Blade Runner, and partnered with a Replicant (a non-human) who is due to die within days.

The series premiered a trailer at SDCC and also featured a panel with series stars Hunter Schafer and Michelle Yeoh, as well as showrunner Silka Luisa.

The video teases the futuristic aesthetic of its cinematic predecessors, and suggest an action-forward, somewhat violent, thrill-ride.

During the panel, Yeoh praised her young co-star, “I’ve never seen a more fearless action hero. She really goes in, I was trying to hold her back.”

Schafer said that Yeoh bought her a “baby helmet” at which point, Yeoh explained that Schafer got a concussion doing her stunts, so she bought the helmet for her for protection.

Blade Runner is due to drop in November.

LANTERNS

Not content for Marvel to have all the fun, rival DC Studios brought along its next release, the streaming series Lanterns, which has been described as if the comic book house took on True Detective.

The show, which is out on HBO Max next month, stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre as two members of the Green Lanterns, these intergalactic peacekeepers, or as one character puts it: a space cop. Chandler’s Hal Jordan is the veteran to newer recruit John Stewart (Pierre).

Together, they’re trying to solve a baffling murder in a small town in Nebraska, a crime that has an air of extra-terrestrial contact.

There were six clips played in Hall H, but everyone on the internet gets to join in the fun with the release of a new trailer. The video has a visual style that is reminiscent of True Detective, except the gritty neo-western aesthetic is punctured by flashes of alien green and laser beams.

The panel gave some hints about what to expect, which is always a little challenging in these situations because the cast and filmmakers are never allowed to reveal much of anything.

The cast also includes Kelly MacDonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Jason Ritter, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Nathan Fillion and Laura Linney – the latter’s involvement was only announced in the room.

CARRIE

There are so many reasons to not bully someone. Firstly, it’s a terrible thing to do. But also, what if the victim of your bullying turns out to be someone with fearsome telekinetic powers who might rain down hell? That’s a risk you just don’t want to take.

There’s a new version of Carrie coming in October and the production brought the first trailer to SDCC.

The beats are familiar to Stephen King’s novel and to Brian De Palma’s 1976 film starring Sissy Spacek. There’s no glimpse of the bucket of pig’s blood yet, but we do see Carrie (Summer H. Howell) in the dress onstage, likely moments before the drenching. Eeep.

Mike Flanagan, who has built up an extensive archive of horror projects including The Haunting of Hill House and The Fall of the House of Usher, explained that he didn’t want follow in De Palma’s footsteps, because there’s nothing you can do to improve on that, but that this iteration will reflect the changes in the world in the 50 years since.

Flanagan said the production invited actual high school kids into the writers room to share their contemporary experiences, which included micro-aggressions and forms of bullying that aren’t always obvious as targeted harassment.

“(We look at) the cruelty in today’s world and how the internet has encouraged cruelty, rewards and celebrates and amplifies it. This is awful for adults to deal with, and for teenagers even more so.”