Here’s what to keep an eye out for at Com­ic-Con 2019

In two short weeks, the cross-pro­mo­tion­al extrav­a­gan­za of Com­ic-Con will descend once again on San Diego for four glo­ri­ous days of pan­els, sign­ings, and haunt­ing cos­play that can nev­er be unseen. And with every pass­ing year, the hub­bub raised over movie and TV projects eclipses that of the com­ic books on which the event was found­ed a lit­tle bit more.

This year, the con­ven­tion cen­ter halls will be a lit­tle roomi­er, as a hand­ful of big play­ers have opt­ed to sit out the pro­ceed­ings. Warn­er Broth­ers will stay home, which means that such hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed DC Comics prop­er­ties as the Won­der Woman sequel and Todd Phillips‘ Jok­er movie will be miss­ing in action. Same goes for Uni­ver­sal (cur­rent­ly prep­ping the Robert Downey Jr.-star­ring Doc­tor Doolit­tle and Blum­house hor­ror pic­ture The Hunt) and Sony (a Charlie’s Angels remake, new install­ments of the Zom­bieland and Juman­ji franchises).

That still leaves plen­ty for movie-focused fans to look out for, how­ev­er. Dis­ney all but runs the show, now that they’ve con­sol­i­dat­ed Mar­vel, Lucas­film, Fox, and their own con­sid­er­able sta­ble into a sin­gle port­fo­lio. The comics giant will pull back the cur­tain on their planned ​“Phase Four” films, mov­ing onward from the after­math of the lat­est Avengers shake­up and enter­ing a post-Chris Evans, post-Robert Downey Jr. world.

But the mar­quee title of the week­end would have to be Star Wars: The Rise of Sky­walk­er, the con­clu­sion of the third tril­o­gy in the galaxy-hop­ping series. With only one teas­er to obsess over, fans have long been eager for any new scrap of infor­ma­tion, and a prop­er pre­sen­ta­tion would be enough to get mouths a‑frothing.

From the new­ly absorbed 20^th Cen­tu­ry Fox, Dis­ney will also trum­pet the arrival of a spin­off (or sorts) to the Kings­man espi­onage pic­tures, a pre­quel titled The King’s Man and set one hun­dred years pri­or to the events of pro­tag­o­nists Eggsy and Harry’s lives. Usu­al stars Taron Egerton and Col­in Firth will not appear in the film, slat­ed to return for a final go-round in the year after next.

Para­mount has plen­ty to crow about, start­ing with yet anoth­er addi­tion to the Ter­mi­na­tor mythos, this time with Macken­zie Davis don­ning a short-cropped hair­cut to fight the cyborg men­ace along­side return­ing hero Lin­da Hamil­ton. Their oth­er hope­ful tent­pole comes from Ang Lee in the high-fram­er­ate form of Gem­i­ni Man, a time-trav­el­ing Will Smith show­case that sees Lee attempt­ing once again to chart new lim­its of cinematography’s potential.

That still leaves Lion­s­gate and their lat­est expan­sion of the Ram­bo fran­chise, fea­tur­ing a now long-in-the-tooth Sylvester Stal­lone as the bat­tle-scarred vet­er­an. They’ve also got the Guiller­mo Del Toro-pro­duced adap­ta­tion of Scary Sto­ries to Tell in the Dark, and one of the convention’s rare non-fran­chise releas­es in the high-con­cept sci-fi piece Chaos Walk­ing. (Which also fea­tures a cast includ­ing Daisy Rid­ley and Tom Hol­land, now two Com­ic-Con regulars.)

There are also plen­ty of tele­vi­sion series spawned from filmic fore­fa­thers, return­ing favorites (What We Do in the Shad­ows) and new­com­ers (Snow­piercer and The Dark Crys­tal: Age of Resis­tance) alike. Even in a year less jam-packed with buzz, there’s still enough going on to give the legions of self-pro­claimed nerds the vapors.

San Diego Com­ic-Con will take place from 18 to 21 July.