Every year, the tradeoff is real: What panel are you willing to sacrifice in order to see another? Even in a year when HBO and Marvel are staying away, the days at Comic-Con International are so stacked with events that hard choices need to be made. We feel that pain, and are here to help. Below are all the panels and events that we think will be the biggest deals at this year’s con. It’s not a comprehensive list—there are always gems hidden away for any pop-culture interest you can imagine—but if you’re looking for the blockbusters, these are a good place to start.
The Rebirth of the Predator Franchise
Writer-director Shane Black starred in 1987’s Predator, the story of a brutal alien who sees the world through a heat-activated, Hypercolor-shirt-like lens. That film inspired a handful of sequels and spin-offs (including the magnificently hyper-violentPredator 2), but none with the pulpy pedigree of Black, who wrote the original Lethal Weapon, and directed the high-flying Iron Man 3. His revival of the Predator series stars Wonder-kind Jacob Tremblay as a pre-teen who accidentally beckons one of the space-hunters to our planet, where it wreaks havoc with rangers and government officials before going to battle with an even bigger bad guy: a super-creature rumored to be named the Mega-Predator. Hopefully the members of Black’s delightfully disparate cast—including Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key, Sterling K. Brown, and Jake Busey (Jake Busey!)—will be appearing at Comic-Con, and can tell us once and for all just how much The Predator’s plot cribs from the Ice Cube album of the same name. All in all, we expect it to be a good day.