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 huge weekend for fantasy and sci-fi fans. We’ve got all the biggest news from Marvel, Prime Video, Max, Peacock and other entertainment giants. Deadpool & Wolverine even made an appearance on Thursday that included a drone show featuring Fantastic Four’s Galactus. If you couldn’t make it out to California, we’ve got all the latest in TV, movies and animation to keep you in the loop. That means we’re sharing new trailer arrivals, panel soundbites and the hottest from Hall H. 

Now that the event is over, you can catch glimpses 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. A roundup of all the week’s biggest drops in TV and film is below.  

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

Robert Downey Jr. Is Doctor Doom

Marvel’s panel in Hall H brought big news related to Avengers 5. The movie has a new title, Avengers: Doomsday. The Russo Brothers are directing the film (and Avengers 6), and on top of that, Robert Downey Jr. will be playing Doctor Doom in Doomsday. The movie is due out May 2026.

Avengers: Secret Wars is happening

As a a follow-up to Doomsday, Avengers: Secret Wars will be released in May 2027. The film was first announced in 2022 as part of Phase 6’s wrap-up, and now the Russos are returning to the saga that they helped build. Along with Doctor Doom, Marvel shared that the Fantastic Four will be part of both new Avengers movies.

Fantastic Four: First Steps

It’s been almost a decade since the last Fantastic Four movie, but this time Marvel is at the wheel. The new movie isn’t set to hit theaters until July 2025, but fans got their first look at the star-studded 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 is also joining the cast as the iconic villain Galactus, which Marvel teased earlier this week with an epic drone show that painted the character’s recognizable face across the San Diego sky before morphing into the team’s 4 logo. 

Thunderbolts is coming 

Before Fantastic Four hits theaters, fans can watch the Thunderbolts hit the big screen in May 2025. The cast hit the stage where Marvel showed a clip of the upcoming film — which is directly connected to Captain America: Brave New World — that introduces the team of super-baddies whose specialty is government-sanctioned black operations. In it, Russian spy Yelena visits Alexei and finds he’s gotten lazy while she’s been busy with contract jobs. While she’s speaking with him, the footage shows her fighting her way through some covert location where she encounters a few Marvel characters like Agent John Walker and Ghost. Yelena winds up jumping off a high-rise and the words “Careful who you assemble” appear on screen. Later in the clip, the group is 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 drama series starring an unrecognizable Colin Farrell, will premiere on HBO and Max on Sept. 19. The show is a spinoff of Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batman, in which Farrell also played the Gotham gangster. Take a look at the dark official trailer below.

The Boys gets a prequel: Vought Rising 

Prime Video’s bloody superhero show is getting a spinoff featuring 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 to the early days of the corrupt corporation and Stormfront’s old identity as Clara Vought. Eric Kripke will serve as showrunner and an executive producer.

The Rings of Power, season 2 gets ‘nuclear’

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

Like a Dragon: Yakuza

Adapted from Sega’s video game series, the Like a Dragon: Yakuza TV show brings Kamurochō to life on Prime Video. Fans were treated to clips on Friday that feature Ryoma Takeuchi as Kazuma Kiryu and Kento Kaku as Nishikiyama Akira. The show is sort of an origin story and will cover 10 years of Kazuma Kiryu’s life and his brotherly bond with Nishiki. The first three episodes will drop on Prime Video on Oct. 24. Check out the teaser trailer below, which dropped on Friday.

Creature Commandos from James Gunn

In a surprise appearance at a panel hosted by DC Comics’ Chief Creative Officer Jim Lee, James Gunn showed up to promote the new animated Max series, Creature Commandos. Much like the Suicide Squad, this show follows a crew of incarcerated monster misfits charged with going on 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, which will drop in December

Doctor Who gets new spinoff

Disney revealed a new Doctor Who addition to the franchise that will jump back to the 1970s with the Sea Devils, an ancient group of beings who arise from the sea. Made in partnership with the BBC, the show will feature 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 knee-deep in live streaming for the Olympic Games right now, but one of its upcoming releases is Teacup, a new horror series from James Wan. A Peacock original, the show is based on Robert McCammon’s novel Stinger, and blends suspense together with drama and scares. Take a look at the teaser trailer for the series, which premieres this fall on Oct. 10. 

From season 3 gets a release date

Mystery-horror series From is following up on its cliff-hanger ending last season with a third installment premiering Sept. 22. Streaming on MGM Plus, the show is set in a (seemingly) inescapable town threatened by bloodthirsty monsters.

Michael C. Hall returns to Dexter

The Dexter universe is continuing to grow. During the Ballroom 20 panel for the upcoming prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin, audiences were given a first look at the show’s breakfast-making credit sequence — a fun callback 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 program premieres on Paramount Plus in December, we’ll hear him provide the inner monologue. “It’s pretty heady. It’s so gratifying,” he said. “I’ve spent so much time with this character, and to go back and have all the imaginative blanks filled in is going to be great.”

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

The Legend of Vox Machina season 3 first-look

Prime Video’s animated series, which is based on the wildly popular actual play D&D streaming series Critical Role, is back for its biggest adventure yet. According to the official synopsis for the third season of The Legend of Vox Machina — which premieres on Oct. 3 — “everything is at stake.”
In the world of Critical Role, isn’t it always?

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