Thousands of fans return to Comic-Con

Tens of thousands of cosplaying fans converged on San Diego on Thursday for the first full-scale Comic-Con in three years, where new Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones TV series will be unveiled at the world’s most famous pop culture gathering.After two online-only Comic-Cons due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, attendance is expected to match pre-pandemic levels of around 130,000, with huge lines of fans dressed as superheroes and space monsters wrapped around the convention centre beneath a blazing sun.Some die-hards camped for 24 hours to be the first ones back inside the giant Hall H, where Hollywood studio Paramount kicked off the four-day comic book, fantasy and sci-fi extravaganza by presenting the first look at its star-studded movie Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.Chris Pine, Hugh Grant and Rege-Jean Page appeared on stage at the 6,000-capacity arena to discuss the movie’s nostalgic and light-hearted take on the world’s most popular role-playing game.“It’s like a Spielbergian energy to it – it’s the films that I grew up with in the 80s,” said Pine, while Grant said the film’s jokey script had “a real Monty Python vibe”.Footage from the movie, out in March, showed a gang of wise-cracking thieves raising corpses from the dead, and being forced to race through a maze pursued by monsters in front of an arena crowd.Former Bridgerton heartthrob Page described the rigorous stunt training required for his action sequences.“I got to swing a sword around for a living ... my thighs were killing me and I had the best ass in my life,” he said, to the delight of many in attendance.Later in Paramount’s presentation, former Buffy the Vampire Slayer star and Comic-Con favourite Sarah Michelle Gellar made a surprise appearance to promote new series Wolf Pack, a spin-off from the Teen Wolf series and movie.“It has been three years since we’ve been in this room together. How is everyone doing?” asked Comic-Con programming chief Eddie Ibrahim, to ecstatic cheers from fans wearing mandatory face masks over their hobbit, dragon and princess costumes.The event, which began as a comic book-themed gathering in a San Diego hotel basement more than 50 years ago, today draws A-list stars and top Hollywood studios including Disney and Warner Bros.The Tinseltown giants have this week done nothing to quell frenzied rumours of a first look at Marvel superhero sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and a new Superman movie announcement.However, headlines are likely to be dominated by two huge fantasy series coming to television screens soon: Amazon Prime’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and HBO’s House of the Dragon.The Rings of Power is Amazon’s enormously ambitious saga taking place in the world of JRR Tolkien’s books, and set thousands of years before the events of Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning trilogy of films.The series – playing out across five seasons, the first of which launches September 2 – is reported to have cost Amazon well over $1bn.Over the weekend House of the Dragon – the first spin-off to Game of Thrones set in George RR Martin’s fictional world of Westeros, out August 21 – will be unveiled by HBO.Martin has played down talk of a rivalry between the two mega-franchises, writing in his blog: “I want both shows to find an appreciative audience...  the more fantasy hits we have, the more great fantasy we are likely to get.”However, HBO hopes its prequel can match the wild popularity of the original Thrones, which over eight seasons became must-see television, spawned countless imitations and delivered a record 59 Emmys.Starring Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans and Emma D’Arcy, House of the Dragon tells the story of the murderous, dragon-breeding Targaryen family, hundreds of years before the events of Thrones.The week will also feature a send-off for AMC’s The Walking Dead, as the juggernaut zombie TV series bows out with its final season – and launches a new spin-off, the anthology-style Tales of the Walking Dead.