Fox is skipping Comic-Con over 'piracy fears,' but don't freak out

LOS ANGELES -- Fox is taking a break from doing a big Hall H presentation at Comic-Con this year, which it and other studios have done many times before. But the way the news was presented Thursday -- that leaky pirates had spooked Fox away -- got a lot of sites declaring it the birth of movies' death at Comic-Con.

And that's just not the case. 

Fox will be back. And it's not a tech thing -- it's a timing thing.

Five years ago it was roughly the same, in fact: Comic-Con 2012 went on without Fox, Paramount and (relevant at the time) Relativity Media, as well as DreamWorks and DreamWorks Animation, with Universal still on the fence with a month to go. 

The reason for this ebb and flow: Their release dates just weren't ideal for a big presentation in July. That's always the reason -- unless you're Disney, which now sidesteps Comic-Con every other year in favor of its own fan convention, D23.

What got skulls and crossbones in the blogerati's eyes this time around was the notion that Fox was pulling out solely over fears that someone would record and leak their footage -- an unfixable problem that will finally scare Hollywood away from San Diego for good. 

Who could blame them? When TheWrap's Matt Donnelly scooped the news Thursday, the headline read: Fox Movie Studio Pulls Out of Comic-Con Main Event Over Piracy Fears.

Which is true -- from a certain point of view.

Fox and Warner Bros., in particular, have recently had Comic-Con assets leak online from Batman v Superman and Deadpool, respectively. And while they were rightfully perturbed -- the Hall H crowd used to be better than that, it's true -- there is a certain tolerance built in for the forced extraction of finished trailers and clips. You can always counter with a quick release of something higher quality.

But for unfinished first-looks? Hall H is great because studios truly do show things there that were never intended as marketing assets -- concept art, VFX tests, whole scenes that have not yet been fully rendered. And studios, whose brass and talent are particular about first impressions, definitely do NOT want that stuff getting out there.

Hall H is perfect for showing off finished product if you've got a core, comic-book-based blockbuster releasing in the coming months -- like Fox did last year with Deadpool. That's a slam-dunk, pack-a-bag, we're goin' to San Diego situation.

For good reason.

This year, Fox had more of a decision to make: Assassin's Creed comes out Dec. 21 -- too far out to drop a full trailer on that one. Everything else in the pipeline -- Wolverine 3, War for the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Covenant -- is in pre-production or just doesn't have anything ready for a close-up. Any assets they could conjure for these films would still be set at Zero Online Tolerance.

So like all studios, when it makes sense to do so, Fox chose to skip Comic-Con.

Which will be back on next year, and the year after, and the year after that. 

With movies. From big studios, like 20th Century Fox! 

Like it or not.

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