Avengers: Doomsday Exclusive Hall H Material Was Reportedly Planned for SDCC Attendees Only

At the time I wrote this, it was being reported that Marvel Studios would show exclusive Avengers: Doomsday material in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con. The catch was that it was not expected to be shown to the public, at least as far as we could tell. Whether it would be a single scene or a different trailer was unknown, but it was rumored to be something major and exclusive to the SDCC event.

That report landed just a day after Marvel dropped the first Avengers: Doomsday trailer.

The Avengers: Doomsday trailer dropped early because Hall H reportedly had something else waiting

Marvel Studios smartly decided to release the trailer to coincide with the start of ticket sales. All reports had Marvel holding it as an exclusive for that Saturday's Hall H presentation in San Diego. Apparently, as it turned out, the trailer went out because Marvel had something else in store as exclusive material for everyone in attendance.

None of this came as a shock to me. This is what Marvel Studios does at these kinds of presentations, and I expected them to want all the fireworks going for this one. It was the lead into Avengers: Doomsday, and there was a real possibility they might skip the following year based on their pattern of attending every other year. Historically, before Avengers: Endgame, they did not attend San Diego Comic-Con at all. They let the anticipation build and gave away no spoilers. So exclusive material for Doomsday made a lot of sense to me.

Why Hall H exclusives did not bother me this time

I know a lot of fans who follow this news closely get a little frustrated when exclusives like this are shown behind closed doors, and I am one of them. In the past at San Diego Comic-Con, though, Marvel has really policed that sort of thing, so the public sees the presentation itself but not any of the trailers screened in the room.

Honestly, I prefer it that way. I would much rather that than have my first look at a new trailer be a bad camera angle on someone's cell phone, with poor contrast and half of the image cut off. "That's not the way to do it." Yes, there would be leaked descriptions, and those of us covering Marvel would be breaking down secondhand accounts from people who were in the room. But the exclusive did not bother me, because at least we got the trailer. And before long it was going to be all Avengers: Doomsday, with nothing else for Marvel or Sony to promote in their lanes.

The Avengers Endgame Encore material was unlikely to be what Hall H saw

It is also worth remembering that Avengers Endgame Encore was due in less than two months from when I wrote this, and it was set to have some new Doomsday material basically attached to it. I had already seen some conjecture around the SDCC report suggesting that this could be what Marvel showed in Hall H.

I did not buy that. If it was anything, it would not be that material, because that was meant to sell tickets to Avengers Endgame Encore. Marvel would not want to undercut it by having attendees tell everybody what it was. More likely than not, I expected a scene or some sort of quick clip, maybe a minute or so, and I highly doubted it would be action intensive.

I could be wrong, of course. There could have been another trailer sitting in wait, which would have made it the second trailer. Either way, the one that had just dropped was the one expected to be attached to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which was just two weeks away at that point. So trailer or not, exclusive clip or not, my advice was not to hope Marvel would give us anything else.

Marvel Studios' recent track record of giving too much away was at least worth a conversation

There was one conversation I thought was worth having. Other than VisionQuest, which was set for October after Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it was going to be all Avengers: Doomsday. And Marvel Studios' track record on this particular point has not been great lately. As release gets closer, the studio seems to feel pressure to give away details that, in the old days of the Infinity Saga, it never would have.

There are plenty of movies where we can recount this. With The Marvels, they gave away that the X-Men were involved in a trailer days before it dropped. For Multiverse of Madness, after essentially three identical trailers, we started getting TV spots for all the members of the Illuminati in the very last week.

At the time, Marvel Studios still had six months before Avengers: Doomsday arrived. There was the first trailer, the Hall H exclusive, then D23 right after that, where Doomsday was bound to be the main point of conversation, and at least CCXP in Brazil before release. With no other Marvel movie standing in its way, I was simply hoping they would time the marketing right.

Some casual fans had not even caught up with Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom

Earlier in the year, when all this news really started, I had argued that I did not think Marvel Studios could fumble this marketing no matter what it did. The Avengers franchise is a juggernaut. It is a media asset the studio has invested billions of dollars into, and regardless of what happened during the Multiverse Saga, it still stands out way beyond that.

Those of us who follow this kind of coverage are in a different category of superfan altogether. There are plenty of people who have seen one or no Marvel movies during the Multiverse Saga who will say, "Oh, there's a new Avengers movie coming out. Let's get tickets and go. It's in December." I know this because some of those people are my friends and some are in my family. They have not read the industry insider editorials or seen the leaks, and they may have caught a couple of clips on social media.

Some of them had not even caught up with Robert Downey Jr. playing Doctor Doom instead of Iron Man. They were not up to speed on what was going on with Loki, Steve Rogers, a separate timeline and the Fantastic Four. There was a lot Marvel could still hold back until the movie came out, and that was why I thought it should play this one close to the vest.

The hype was already there, and I believed Sentry would even out the power gap

I was also keen to see the final verdict on box office tracking once the numbers from the first day of ticket sales came in. In the meantime, I felt Marvel Studios should keep things tight. Not that it could make many mistakes anyway, but I thought whatever hype it was going for had been galvanized with that trailer, and that was very apparent from a lot of the comments I saw. People were as excited as I was. We had another Avengers movie coming.

There were plenty of memes about Thor looking at the power levels of the heroes around him and asking, "Where's Doctor Strange? Where's Captain Marvel?" I was not worried, because I believed Marvel would even this out. Sentry was not really in the trailer, but he was sitting off to the side in the shot showing the new Avengers, Sam's Avengers and the Fantastic Four. Sentry may be one of the more powerful allies the Avengers have ever had. Actually, I said, he almost certainly is.

I was so hyped about Avengers: Doomsday. Do you think Marvel Studios managed to hold back enough in its marketing, or did it give too much away before December?