San Diego Comic-Con 2019: all the trailers and updates from fandom’s biggest party

San Diego Comic-Con wraps up today, and with it came a huge number of trailers for films and shows coming out in the next year. While Marvel undoubtably stole the show with its big Hall H announcements, the event’s trailers belonged almost entirely to the world of television.

There were some notable absences this year: Warner Bros. opted to skip the show, meaning we didn’t get looks at projects like the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984 or Dune, and while Marvel did show off some footage from Black Widow, that didn’t make its way online (We’ll probably see something at its upcoming D23 Expo.) There were some other conspicuous absences: CBS didn’t show off a trailer for the third season of Star Trek: Discovery, for example.

It’s clear from the first trailer for Snowpiercer that TBS wants more people to pay witness to the world Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s created with his acclaimed 2014 film of the same name.

Based on a French graphic novel, Bong’s original film is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which an attempt at changing the Earth’s climate went disastrously wrong, leaving the planet covered in a global ice age, and with the last remnants of humanity living on a massive train. TBS’ Snowpiercer will pick up seven years after the events of the original film. Not much has changed. The titular train driving the remaining members of Earth in a post-apocalyptic world is still operating under some warped socio-economic structures. Ed Harris’ de facto conductor from the original film has been replaced by Jennifer Connelly, who spends her time ensuring that everything aboard Snowpiercer is going to plan. There will be no uprisings from the lower class on her watch — well, at least not right away.

AMC’s NOS4A2, based on the 2013 horror novel by Joe Hill will be returning for a second, 10-episode season, as announced at the show’s San Diego Comic-Con panel.

While AMC didn’t announced a release date (the first season has yet to even finish airing), the second season will continue to adapt the rest of Hill’s novel whenever it does hit screens, presumably sometime next year.

Seth MacFarlane’s homage to Star Trek, The Orville, will make the jump from traditional television to Hulu next year. MacFarlane made the announcement last night at San Diego Comic-Con, and said that the show’s third season wouldn’t arrive until 2020.

The show is set four centuries in the future, and follows Captain Ed Mercer (played by MacFarlane) as he leads the Planetary Union’s USS Orville as they explore new planets and undertake diplomatic missions.

Just over a month ago, Avengers: Endgame fans conceded defeat to James Cameron’s 2009 Avatar, acknowledging it would remain the biggest movie of all time. Last night at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced that’s no longer true.

Endgame, the culmination of a 22-movie arc started by Marvel in 2008, will officially surpass Avatar as the highest grossing movie of all time either today or tomorrow. There is an approximate $500,000 difference between Endgame and Avatar, which analysts predict will close within a day. It’s why Feige could make the announcement he did at Comic-Con.

At San Diego Comic-Con last night, DC Universe made a slew of programming announcements for its slate of original content, including that it was renewing its live-action TV series Doom Patrol in a partnership with WarnerMedia’s forthcoming streaming service HBO Max.

WarnerMedia largely skipped San Diego Comic-Con this year, opting not to bring news or previews for some of its big projects, like Wonder Woman 1984 or Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune. Instead, DC Universe revealed that Doom Patrol’s second season will debut simultaneously on DC Universe and HBO Max sometime next year, and that HBO Max will carry the show’s first season when the platform launches next spring.

Marvel President Kevin Feige just unveiled a packed slate of projects that represent the next phase of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, including sequels, original projects, and television shows, but he also announced that they’ve got plenty more to come beyond 2021, including sequels to Black Panther and Captain Marvel, as well as with other properties, like the X-Men and Fantastic Four.

At the end of Marvel’s Hall H presentation at San Diego Comic-Con, Feige announced that Black Panther 2, Blade, Captain Marvel 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Fantastic Four, and Mutants are all happening — they just don’t have dates confirmed yet.

Marvel Studios’ Phase Four of its Marvel Cinematic Universe will include 10 movies and Disney + series when it launches next year, with 2021 looking especially crowded. President Kevin Feige appeared at San Diego Comic-Con for Marvel’s 90-minute appearance in Hall H, where he gave a pretty lengthy update on Phase 4.

The Phase Four slate that Marvel unveiled includes the following: Black Widow (May 1st, 2020), Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Fall 2020), The Eternals (November 6th, 2020), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (February 12, 2021), WandaVision (Spring 2021), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (May 7th, 2021), Loki (Spring 2021), What If...?(Summer 2021), Hawkeye (Fall 2021), and Thor: Love and Thunder (November 5th, 2021). Feige made a surprise announcement at the end saying that he didn’t have time to address where the Fantastic Four or X-Men would end up in the franchise, but that one additional project will be Blade, which will feature Mahershala Ali.

Amazon has finally revealed when the next season of The Expanse will begin streaming: December 13th, 2019. The company made the announcement today at San Diego Comic-Con, releasing a trailer and a longer clip of the upcoming fourth season.

Based on the science fiction book series by James S.A. Corey, The Expanse is set several centuries in the future, where humanity has colonized the solar system and broken into three major factions: Earth, Mars, and the Belters, an alliance of settlements in the asteroid belt and outer planets. The bulk of the series follows the crew of a spaceship called the Rocinante as they find themselves in the midst of an interplanetary war, and have to contend with the discovery of an alien substance called the Protomolecule that’s been weaponized by a malevolent Earth corporation, and which went on to create an gate to thousands of worlds beyond our home system.

At San Diego Comic-Con today, CBS showed off a full trailer for its upcoming series, Star Trek: Picard, featuring Patrick Stewart’s older version of the character as he’s drawn out of retirement. The series will debut in early 2020 on CBS All Access.

The show will take place more than 20 years after the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation which aired between 1987 and 1994, and its film sequels, Generations (1994), First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998), and Nemesis (2002).

During its big Hall H panel, CBS announced that it was bringing back its series of standalone mini Star Trek episodes, Short Treks, to CBS All Access this fall.

CBS introduced the series last year alongside Star Trek: Discovery, and used them to delve a bit further into the show’s various characters. Three of season’s episodes will be set on the USS Enterprise, and will bring back Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Ethan Peck (Spock), and Rebecca Romijn (Number One) from Star Trek: Discovery. The trailer shows off what looks like Spock’s first days aboard the Enterprise and some troubles with some tribbles.

HBO is looking for its next big series as it bids farewell to Game of Thrones and Big Little Lies, and Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen is shaping up to be that series.

A new trailer for Watchmen from San Diego Comic-Con has premiered, building on moments from the first trailer. Some of Watchmen’s most beloved vigilante heroes, like Rorschach, appear alongside a number of new costumed heroes going about their day. There are references to Dr. Manhattan, and a previous class of vigilante fighters that longtime Watchmen fans will recognize. We even get a glimpse of Rorschach saying his famous, “all the whores and politicians will look up and shout ‘Save us,’ and I’ll look down and whisper ‘No,’” line. Or at least a nod to it.

At San Diego Comic-Con yesterday, Amazon Studios released a pair of trailers for its upcoming fantasy series, Carnival Row. The two videos introduces the show’s two main characters, Vignette and Philo, as well as the fantastical alternate Victorian world that they inhabit.

Amazon ordered the series back in 2017, describing it as a “Neo-Victorian fantasy” in which a number of mythical creatures have fled their homeland and tried to integrate into our world. In the trailers, we meet Vignette Stonemoss (played by Cara Delvigne) and Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate (played by Orlando Bloom), and learn that the Vignette’s fantastical homeworld was peaceful until humanity arrived and brought war and violence with them. She and Philo met and fell in love, something that seems to be a bit of a taboo pairing in this world.

When Disney released Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, its 30-year jump from Return of the Jedi introduced plenty of new characters and mysteries to the franchise. One of those was how Han Solo and Leia Organa’s son Ben turned to the dark side to become Kylo Ren. Later this year, Marvel Comics will explore some of that story with new comic miniseries: The Rise of Kylo Ren.

Lucasfilm announced the four-issue comic series at the Lucasfilm publishing panel yesterday at San Diego Comic-Con. Charles Soule, the writer behind Marvel’s Darth Vader and Poe Dameron comics, will write the series.

You’ll soon be able to dress up as Star Wars’ most infamous bounty hunter — or at least get a start on a costume. On Friday at San Diego Comic-Con, Hasbro revealed that it will release a new entry in its premium Black Series line of costume accessories: Boba Fett’s helmet.

The Black Series line is Hasbro’s higher-end toy line, comprising of detailed action figures, lightsabers, and wearables. Over the last couple of years, it’s released versions of the helmets for characters like Kylo Ren, Stormtroopers, Shadow Troopers, and the X-Wing pilot helmets worn by Poe Dameron and Luke Skywalker.

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.

Galaxy Quest, a 1999 science-fiction comedy in which the cast members of a canceled but still beloved Star Trek-like television series are whisked away by Thermians, a high-minded but credulous alien race. Not realizing their heroes’ adventures are fictional (they can’t grasp the concept of storytelling), the Thermians have modeled their civilization after the series and its lofty values. Oh, and they’re also hoping the actors can help defend them against a murderous, reptilian adversary.

The BBC and HBO unveiled a new trailer for their upcoming TV series, His Dark Materials, showing off a fantastical world where a war is brewing between an authoritarian Church and those who resist it.

Based off the book series by Philip Pullman, the series is set in an alternate world where every person has their own shapeshifting, animal-shaped companion, a manifestation of their soul. These companions are called Daemons. The story follows a young girl named Lyra Belacqua (played by Logan’s Dafne Keen) who grows up as an orphan in Oxford. When children begin vanishing, including her best friend Roger, she sets off into the Arctic to find him, and discovers a conspiracy involving her world’s domineering Church.

The first trailer for Cats — the first film adaption of the long-running, record-breaking Broadway musical — has arrived, and it’s an intensely surreal experience. As promised in a behind-the-scenes video released yesterday, the film consists of live human actors singing and dancing on oversized sets, meant to make them appear about the comparative size of actual housecats. And rather than using Broadway’s elaborate fur costumes, director Tom Hooper (Les Misérables, The King’s Speech) chose to use motion capture and CGI to give the performers sleek, fuzzy pelts. It’s visually startling, especially when you recognize the actors under these very expensive, high-tech versions of Instagram filters.

Much like Hooper’s Les Misérables, his Cats is full of stars that film fans might not immediately associate with big spectacle musicals, including Dame Judy Dench, Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, Ray Winstone, and Rebel Wilson. They’re playing opposite legitimate music stars like Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo, and Jennifer Hudson, plus James Corden, who may not qualify as a music star per se, but certainly does a lot of singing on Carpool Karaoke and The Late Late Show with James Corden.

At San Diego Comic-Con today, Tom Cruise made a surprise appearance during Paramount Pictures’ Terminator: Dark Fate panel in Hall H to debut a trailer for his next action film, Top Gun: Maverick.

The film is a direct sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, the film that helped establish Cruise as an official Hollywood star. It’s set 34 years later, with Cruise reprising his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, now a flight instructor at the Topgun, the Navy’s Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar. There, he’s teaching the son of his late partner, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, who’s following in his father’s footsteps. There are plenty of callbacks to the original film in the trailer as well — Cruise on a motorcycle, playing volleyball, and of course, flying fighter jets.