SDCC 2024 Highlights: Downey Jr. Is Doctor Doom, Avengers 6, ‘The Penguin’ and More

CNET attended San Diego Comic-Con 2024, and it was a fantastic weekend for fantasy and sci-fi fans. We brought you the biggest news from Marvel, Prime Video, Max, Peacock, and other entertainment giants. Deadpool & Wolverine even made an appearance on Thursday, including a drone show featuring Galactus from Fantastic Four. If you couldn’t make it to California, we brought you the latest in TV, movies, and animation to keep you in the know. That means sharing new trailers, panel audio, and the hottest movies in Hall H.

Now that the event is over, you can catch a glimpse of what’s new, including The Penguin, Peacock’s Teacup, Alien: Romulus, Like A Dragon: Yakuza and Rings of Power for Prime Video, as well as Marvel’s showcase, which offered big reveals about Avengers 5. Below, you’ll find a look at the week’s biggest releases on TV and in movies.

read more: Comic-Con 2024: Rings of Power Season 2 Has Sauron vs. Adar, Orc Destruction

Robert Downey Jr. is Doctor Doom

Marvel’s Hall H panel brought some big news regarding Avengers 5. The film has a new title, Avengers: Doomsday. The Russo Brothers are directing the film (and Avengers 6 ), and Robert Downey Jr. will also play Doctor Doom in Doomsday. The film is set for release in May 2026.

Avengers: Secret Wars is underway

Set to release in May 2027 as a sequel to Doomsday, Avengers: Secret Wars is set to debut in 2022. The film was first announced in 2022 as part of the Phase 6 wrap-up, and now the Russos are returning to the saga they helped build. Along with Doctor Doom, Marvel shared that the Fantastic Four will be a part of both new Avengers films.

Fantastic Four: First Steps

It’s been nearly a decade since the last Fantastic Four film, but this time around, Marvel is at the helm. The new film won’t hit theaters until July 2025, but fans have gotten their first look at the all-star cast in action. The new crew includes Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/the Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/the Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the Thing.

Ralph Ineson also joins the cast as the iconic villain Galactus, who Marvel showed off earlier this week with an epic drone show that saw the character’s recognizable face painted across the San Diego sky before morphing into the team’s fourth logo.

Thunderbolts is coming

Before Fantastic Four hits theaters, fans can expect to see the Thunderbolts hit the big screen in May 2025. The cast took to the stage as Marvel screened a clip from the upcoming film — which directly connects to Captain America: Brave New World — that introduces the team of supervillains whose specialty is government-sanctioned black ops. In it, Russian spy Elena visits Alexei and discovers that he’s become lazy while she’s been busy with contract work. As she talks to him, the footage shows her making her way through a secret location where she runs into a few Marvel characters, including Agent John Walker and Ghost. Elena eventually jumps off a skyscraper and the words “Beware who you gather around” appear on the screen. Later in the clip, the group stands together in an elevator and walks into an office belonging to Valentina.

Florence Pugh returns as Yelena with David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, Wyatt Russell as Agent Walker, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, among a host of other characters.

The penguin

The Penguin, the new crime series starring an unrecognizable Colin Farrell, premieres September 19 on HBO and Max. The series is a spinoff of Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batman, which also starred Farrell as the Gotham gangster. Watch the gritty official trailer below.

The Boys is getting a prequel: Vought Rising

Prime Video’s bloody superhero show is getting a spinoff with Jensen Ackles returning as Soldier Boy and Aya Cash reprising her role as Stormfront. The prequel, Vought Rising, will take viewers back to the 1950s, the early days of the corrupt company and Stormfront’s old identity as Clara Vought. Eric Kripke will serve as showrunner and executive producer.

The Rings of Power Season 2 Gets ‘Nuclear’

The new season premieres on Prime Video on August 29, and clips shared in Hall H show a massive battle with orcs and rings being forged. Showrunners say that season 2 of Rings of Power is about “entering the nuclear age and everybody wants the bomb, everybody wants the nuclear codes, but what they don’t know is that it all feeds into this guy [Sauron].” Adar and Sauron will come into conflict, and there will be gigantic creatures aplenty this time around. Check out the latest trailer here.

Like a Dragon: Yakuza

The Like a Dragon: Yakuza TV series, based on Sega’s video game series, is bringing Kamurochō to life on Prime Video. Fans were treated to clips starring Ryoma Takeuchi as Kazuma Kiryu and Kento Kaku as Nishikiyama Akira on Friday. The show is an origin story of sorts, covering 10 years of Kazuma Kiryu’s life and his brotherly bond with Nishiki. The first three episodes will debut on Prime Video on October 24. Check out the teaser trailer, which debuted on Friday, below.

Creature Commandos by James Gunn

In a surprise appearance at a panel hosted by DC Comics Chief Creative Officer Jim Lee, James Gunn appeared to promote Max’s new animated series, Creature Commandos. Like the Suicide Squad, the show follows a group of captured monster misfits who are assigned to carry out world-saving missions. The voice cast includes Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Steve Agee as Economos, Anya Chalotra as Circe, Zoe Chao as Nina Mazursky, Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., Sean Gunn as GI Robot & Weasel, David Harbour as Frankenstein and Alan Tudyk as Dr. Phosphorus. Gunn wrote all seven episodes for the upcoming release, due out in December.

Doctor Who gets new spin-off

Disney has revealed a new Doctor Who addition to the franchise that takes it back to the 1970s and features the Sea Devils, an ancient group of creatures that rise from the sea. The show is being created in partnership with the BBC and stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Russell Tovey, Alexander Devrient and Jemma Redgrave. The show will air on Disney Plus, where fans can currently stream season 14 of Doctor Who starring Ncuti Gatwa.

Peacock’s horror series, Teacup

The streamer is now knee-deep in livestreaming for the Olympics, but one of the upcoming releases is Teacup, a new horror series from James Wan. The show is a Peacock original based on Robert McCammon’s novel Stinger . It mixes suspense, drama, and jump scares. Check out the teaser trailer for the series, which premieres this fall on October 10.

From season 3 onwards there will be a release date

The mystery horror series From is building on last season’s cliffhanger ending with a third installment set to premiere on September 22. Available to stream on MGM Plus, the series is set in a (seemingly) inescapable city threatened by bloodthirsty monsters.

Michael C. Hall Returns to Dexter

The Dexter universe keeps growing. During the Ballroom 20 panel for the upcoming prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin, viewers got their first look at the show’s breakfast-making credits sequence — a nice throwback to the original series’ opening credits. The program stars Patrick Gibson as the titular antihero and Christian Slater as Harry Morgan. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christina Milian and Patrick Dempsey round out the cast.

Michael C. Hall took the stage during the panel to reveal his role in the series. When the show premieres on Paramount Plus in December, we’ll hear him deliver the inner monologue. “It’s pretty intoxicating. It’s so satisfying,” he said. “I’ve spent so much time with this character, and to go back and have all the imaginative holes filled in is going to be amazing.”

As an added bonus, Hall announced that he will be returning to the role that made him famous in a new sequel series titled Dexter: Resurrection. The series will be set in the present day and will premiere in the summer of 2025.

The Legend of Vox Machina season 3 first look

Prime Video’s animated series based on the wildly popular D&D streaming series Critical Role is back for its biggest adventure yet. According to the official synopsis for The Legend of Vox Machina season three — premiering October 3 — “the stakes are high.”
Isn’t that always the case in the world of Critical Role?

Matthew Mercer, Marisha Ray, Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Travis Willingham and Liam O’Brien were in Ballroom 20 on Saturday to talk about the future of the series, the highly anticipated spinoff The Mighty Nein (check out a sneak peek below), and the future of Critical Role.