Why Fox Is Done With Comic-Con

Fox recently announced that they won’t show any trailers at Comic-Con this year. Apparently, the leaks of convention-only trailers are no longer worth the hassle. However, there might be more to all this than just leaks. Grace Randolph, from Beyond the Trailer, vlogged about it soon after the news broke.

Could this be the beginning of the end of Comic-Con’s reign as the premiere fan convention? Maybe. If Fox does’t think this will affect their bottom line, what’s to stop Warner Bros from doing the same? Rumors are already circulating that Disney is thinking the same thing.

But who can blame them? Comic book fans aren’t like the fans of old. They’ve always been hyper-involved. For example, fans of Girls or NCIS don’t know and don’t care who the show runners are. On the other hand, fans of Daredevil and Supergirl know exactly who’s behind those shows. Hollywood still isn’t used to this sort of “civilian” awareness. And they generally don’t like it.

This dates back to the traditional comic book press. There was no “casual” comic book news. Comic book magazines, like Wizard, were comparable to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Not TV Guide. Even Randolph’s channel skews toward fans, but has the sort of details you’d expect from an industry outlet.

Friction between Hollywood and the internet heated up when vloggers raged against Warner Bros over Dawn of Justice. This isn’t new for comic book fans either. In the 90s, fans launched a massive campaign to undo an infamously unpopular Green Lantern story, which they won. Now, history might be repeating itself. A lot of vloggers were involved in the curb-stomping of Dawn of Justice, but Bob Chipman’s NSFW review is probably the most representative of the bunch.

In the end, Fox just doesn’t want the world to see X-Men: Apocalypse and Assassin’s Creed in anything less than the best light. The internet is unforgiving if comic book and video game movies aren’t absolutely perfect. Studios, film makers and Hollywood in general are becoming both terrified of and angered by fandom. While this might be a fluke, it’s just as likely that we’ll see more steps to keep films under wraps up until the last possible moment. If that happens, Comic-Con will have outlived its usefulness to Hollywood.