Marvel Studios is coming back to Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con after skipping the room entirely last year, and the studio’s timing makes DC’s silence look worse by the day. Marvel confirmed a Saturday, July 25 presentation built around Avengers: Doomsday, five months ahead of the film’s December release, with Kevin Feige promising “special guests from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe” and a fresh look at what comes next.
DC has also released its full Comic-Con lineup. Nowhere on it is a Hall H panel for Clayface or Man of Tomorrow, the two projects James Gunn’s DC Studios currently has in active production. DCComicBooks.com flagged the gap directly: DC Studios “won’t be bringing the DCU to the event, despite highly anticipated titles like Clayface and Man of Tomorrow being on the way.” The SDCC Unofficial Blog’s own panel tracker confirms it. DC’s only Hall H slot goes to Lanterns, an HBO Max television series, not a Gunn-produced film.
Clayface hits theaters October 23. Man of Tomorrow starts production this month. Both would ordinarily be textbook Hall H material: a horror-adjacent Batman spinoff with a built-in genre audience, and a Superman sequel that could use the room to reset momentum after Supergirl. Neither got a slot.
DC Comics still has plenty planned for the con floor. The publisher’s booth leans on Silver Age nostalgia, with a free MAD Magazine #1 facsimile, a Jim Lee panel, and Absolute Universe foil exclusives. Comics can fill a booth. A film division that’s supposedly ramping up a shared universe needs Hall H, and DC Studios chose not to show up.
This isn’t the first time Gunn has kept his distance from a promotional stage this year. He skipped Warner Bros.’ CinemaCon 2026 panel in person, sending a video message instead while Milly Alcock and Jason Momoa worked the room for Supergirl. Gunn’s stated reason was that Man of Tomorrow was days from rolling cameras. Film pundit John Rocha noted at the time that Gunn didn’t thank anyone for Superman’s box office run in that video, nor did he tease anything about the DCU’s future, two things that would have come naturally if he planned to stick around.
The absence lands during a stretch that hasn’t been kind to DC Studios. Supergirl opened to $62.6 million worldwide against a $170 million budget and collapsed 74% in its second weekend, a run some trade reporters have already called the worst box office result of 2026. Peacemaker Season 2 has reportedly slid from HBO Max’s biggest show to a ratings disappointment, and Christopher Cantwell’s attachment to a potential Season 3 is contingent on how Season 1 of Lanterns performs this fall. Gunn’s contract runs through 2027, the same window in which Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to close.
Marvel spent a year rebuilding goodwill after its own post-Endgame stumble, and it chose Hall H to make that case in person. DC Studios had two films on the calendar and the biggest stage in fandom sitting empty. If the DCU is ramping up the way Gunn and Peter Safran keep insisting, why did they let Marvel take the room without a fight?
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