Comic-Con Will Stream Hall H Presentations

CBR

By Stephen Gerding

Published Apr 13, 2016

Fans unable to attend the show will still have the opportunity to experience SDCC's biggest presentations.

UPDATE: CBR News has learned that while Comic-Con HQ will stream as many Hall H programs as possible, studio agreements may mean some panels will be exempted from the channel's programming. The following article has been updated to reflect this information.

Though Comic-Con International has plans to stream as many of this summer's Hall H presentations as possible (pending studio approval) via its new Comic-Con HQ video-on-demand channel, don't expect to watch them live, or, in some cases, uncut.

"We're going to be working with every single studio, every single panel host to be able to take the content and put it on our platform," Comic-Con HQ Executive VP and General Manager Seth Laderman tells /Film. "We're not going to be live streaming anything because we really don't want to take away that experience of people who are the first to see and be there for it, but we can put things up shortly after."

The decision to share -- or not share -- video footage via the streaming service will be determined by the studios on a case-by-case basis. "[A] lot of these studios have their marketing plans and how they want to control their assets," Laderman explains. "We're really just here as a conduit to be able to help promote everyone, similar to what Comic-Con is, so whatever's best for them will be good for us. NBC gave us an exclusive clip for 'Emerald City' that's on our alpha version of our platform right now that nobody's ever seen before. So there will be studios that are going to want to engage our audience and spread everything out through that but other ones that are going to want to keep it closer in their own platforms, and I think that's perfectly fair."

Comic-Con HQ also plans to share the SDCC experience from its hundreds of non-Hall H panels. "I still want to get cameras in the smallest rooms because they may not have the broadest audience out there," Laderman says, "but it's still an important part of what Comic-Con is and I want to be able to allow everybody to see everything." The channel will also feature original programming, as well as hours and hours of archived footage from the last 30-40 years of shows.

Comic-Con HQ is slated to launch wide on Free Comic Book Day (May 7) on web browsers and mobile devices. Support for Apple TV, Roku and other streaming devices is planned for the future.