Comic-Con, which is real and personal for the first time in three years, doesn’t really take off until Thursday, but the battle lines have already been drawn on the streets of San Diego and beyond with billboards, train liveries and banners.
Amazon Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, AMC’s The Walking Dead, Marvel/Disney+’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Paramount+’s ever-expanding Star Trek universe have come together well positioned to attract the attention of the estimated 120,000+ attendees this year. Check out our gallery above of the best marketing and interactive efforts for SDCC 2022.
Comic-Con, which requires attendees to show a “health pass” and wear masks at all times; Security staff will “support compliance with policy”
Off the beaten path through the Gaslamp Quarter and elsewhere, however, the big winner for hearts and eyeballs is clearly HBO’s House of the Dragon. Coming August 21, the Game of Thrones prequel snatches a key spot that The Walking Dead has held for a number of years and sits on the hotel keycards that thousands of SDCC attendees will be clutching during the confab.
Created by George RR Martin, Ryan Condal, and Miguel Sapochnik, the series, set 200 years before GoT’s looming winter, slips into the golden shoes that GoT strutted through past Comic-Cons during its eight-year run, and has a Hall H- Panel as his coming out party late in the morning of July 23rd. Sure to cheer for the thousands in the SDCC crowd, the House of the Dragon panel’s PR peddler panel is clearly using the confab as a launchpad for a near-relentless campaign leading up to next month’s much-anticipated premiere.
House of the Dragon Comic-Con Trailer: Latest look at HBO’s Game Of Thrones prequel series
Still, to up the ante in a matchup between Martin and Tolkien on small screens, Prime Video’s mega-budget Rings of Power, developed by JD Payne and Patrick McKay, will take center stage for every crowd entering the convention center. Banners for the fantasy TV series were wrapped in rows around the security detectors at each door and gate of the SDCC.
In fact, it appears Prime Video has SDCC branded all of its trains that carry people in and out of downtown San Diego. In that sense, the closest comparison is the dominance that Marvel and its Tatiana Maslany-Mark Ruffalo She-Hulk series, launching August 17, have on the official SDCC banners that line the streets leading to the convention center.
Perhaps a nod to the raging streaming wars, AppleTV+ has a menacing presence for its shows, with large ads for the Emmy-nominated Severance all over the front of the hip Hard Rock Hotel. That’s very different from Netflix’s SDCC street presence, which seems to be mostly limited to The Gray Man by the Russo Brothers. The action film, starring Ryan Gosling and SDCC alumnus Chris Evans, is currently available in limited theatrical release and will hit streams on July 22nd.
There are other spinoffs in the landscape, with ABC’s Niecy Nash-led The Rookie: Feds prominently on the Petco Park side, just across from the train tracks of the sprawling San Diego Convention Center. Staying in the world of broadcast television as well, NBC’s Raymond Lee starring in the Quantum Leap reboot has an interactive ad in front of the convention center as part of an overall effort by NBCUniversal. Time-travel drama La Brea, which returns for a second season on Comcast-owned network this fall, has planted its own banner on the lawn next to the convention center, which always looked to us like a crashed spaceship.
Plus, Fox Animation, which has traditionally cast a large shadow over the SDCC with its well-placed hotels, brings a touch of ancient Greece to modern-day San Diego. Dan Harmon-created Krapopolis, which occupies some prime real estate on the front of the hotel right next to the convention center, is settling into the Children’s Museum Park within javelin’s throw of the confab with an interactive display for the toon show.
Comic-Con 2022 Film & TV Panel Schedule Serves MCU, Black Adam, Shazam! Fury Of The Gods, House Of The Dragon, and more
Whether you’re already arriving at SDCC or following the action from afar for the rest of this week, check out our gallery of marketing efforts. Comic-Con 2022 will take place Thursday through Sunday, July 21-24, and the Deadline team will be reporting en masse over the next few days.
Due to the fact that the Covid pandemic is far from over and growing again in Southern California, anyone attending SDCC 2022 must provide proof of vaccination or a recent negative test result. Also, “all groups of attendees, including but not limited to exhibitors, guests, staff, press, professionals, volunteers and cosplayers” will be required to wear masks during their time at the convention center.