From 'Day of the Dead' to 'Chucky': The biggest trailers & news from Comic-Con@Home 2021

Another summer, another virtual edition of San Diego Comic-Con. And due to budget constraints directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Comic-Con@Home 2021 was only a three-day event instead of the usual four. With all of that said, however, there was still plenty of merriment to be had (sans the involvement of Marvel Studios and DC Films, who stepped back from this year's con and are most likely planning their own virtual conventions for the coming months).

The truncated con still managed to pack in tons of reveals for our favorite movies, TV shows, comic books, and more. From major news announcements, to trailers, to sneak peeks, to exclusive art prints, head below for all of the Comic-Con goodies you could ever ask for!

Click here for SYFY WIRE's full coverage of Comic-Con@Home 2021.

Arriving on SYFY this October, Day of the Dead is a splatterfest homage to the late George A. Romero, godfather of the modern undead genre. The new series, which follows a group of people banding together to stay alive during the first 24 hours of a zombie apocalypse, dropped its first (and guts-and-gory) teaser trailer at the con.

"Every time zombies come up, we talk about Romero," co-showrunner Scott Thomas said at the panel. "He established what we know as the modern zombie now in Night of the Living Dead and then in Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead — and everything else. He did it in a way that also added social commentary; it spoke to the times [in which] these movies were made ... Every single zombie movie or TV show or graphic novel owes Romero for his legacy."

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Hi, I'm Chucky... SYFY and USA grabbed the kitchen knife and sliced open the official trailer for the Chucky TV series premiering this October.  Click here to watch an extended featurette detailing the production.

According to franchise creator Don Mancini, Chucky's look on the show was inspired by the character's design in Child's Play 2. “It’s the creepiest version but also weirdly the cutest,” Mancini said.

(Credit: Amazon Prime Video)

Amazon's TV adaptation of the epic series of fantasy novels by Robert Jordan finally dropped a teaser poster and revealed a November premiere date. Showrunner Rafe Judkins already has a plan for eight seasons based upon all 14 books. 

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Netflix has officially unlocked the Army of the Dead vault, and there's no going back. The streamer dropped the first teaser trailer for the prequel film, which follows German safe-cracker Ludwig Dieter (played by Matthias Schweighöfer). Schweighöfer also directed the movie, which was produced by Zack Snyder and Deborah Snyder. 

"[We] really liked the idea ... that it was set at a time when the zombies existed in the world but it wasn't a zombie film," Deborah said during the Thieves panel.

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

The fiery pits of Hell opened up Saturday with the first trailer for the sixth and final season of Lucifer on Netflix (six is such a fitting number for a series about Satan, wouldn't you say?). The streamer also confirmed a September premiere date.

“There’s still a lot to explore once you become who you think you should be, but then you realize who you need to be," showrunner/executive producer Joe Henderson said in reference to the main character's emotional growth.

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

The end is nigh, people. The Walking Dead's 11th and final season will start dropping episodes next month, but it'll only be the first of three, eight-episode chunks until the series finale arrives sometime next year.

AMC debuted the official Season 11 trailer (see above) during the show's panel. The footage showed off a glimpse of Michael James Shaw as Mercer, the military leader of the Commonwealth.

“It’s a big story and it takes a lot of turns,” said producer Scott M. Gimple. “We reinvent every eight episodes, and this is three sets of eight…. we’re gonna give [fans] an epic, extended goodbye that will do it right, that will end more than 10 years — right.”

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Fear the Walking Dead shambled across the con to offer up two clips from the upcoming seventh season (see above and then click here for the second clip). The new batch of episodes premiere on AMC this October and will change everything for the human survivors who now have to contend with radioactive fallout.

"We were looking for a way to reinvent the show," said showrunner/executive producer, Andrew Chambliss. "We're gonna reset everyone in terms of apocalypse survival. Everyone's kind of back to zero, having to learn how to do it all over again ... We are adding so many new elements. In many ways — from what we've shot so far — it feels like a new show."

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond premiered a first look at its sophomore batch of episodes, which arrive on AMC in early October.

"This season especially tells the in-between stories that are part of bigger mythology,” said creator/executive producer Scott M. Gimple. “It fills in story gaps, or knowledge, that the audiences doesn’t know. And there are moments where there are specific joinings of the worlds.”

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

The cast of DC's Legends of Tomorrow teased out the rest of Season 6, whose next episode — "Final Frame" — premieres Sunday, Aug. 8.

“That was a weird script, let’s just say that out loud,” Jes Macallan, who got to direct the episode, said during the show's Comic-Con panel. “I was allowed to do shots that aren’t traditionally wanted, and they stayed in!”

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall, Thirteenth Doctor Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill, new Doctor Who cast member John Bishop, and a slew of unexpected guests dropped by Comic-Con in the TARDIS to drop the first trailer for Season 13. The footage was accompanied by the announcement that Game of Thrones vet Jacob Anderson would be joining the new season.

"I get to play one of my favorite people I've ever played," Anderson said in a video message sent in to the panel. "This is a real-life childhood dream."

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Hailing from Nickelodeon and CBS, this family-friendly animated series aims to introduce a brand-new generation of viewers to the optimistic future of Star Trek.  The show, which is expected to hit Paramount+ later this year, premiered its very first bit of vibrant teaser footage during the con.

"We knew that people were gonna look at our show and go, 'Oh, this is the little brother or little sister of the Star Trek universe,'" explained co-creator Dan Hageman. "We wanted to be that little brother or little sister that smacks the bigger sibling and says, 'Don't underestimate us.'"

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

The more adult-oriented cartoon returns for a second season of side-splitting hijinks aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos. Season 2 features guest appearances from Trek mainstays like Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris) and Jeffrey Combs (voicing an evil computer). Lower Decks, which returns on Paramount+ Aug. 12, showed off a new trailer full of madcap footage during its Comic-Con panel.

"I think that we kind of crescendoed at the end of Season 1 in a really cool way," said creator/executive producer Mike McMahan. "We left a lot of really cool bills to pay with characters and with what was going on in the world. We just keep adding. There is a really great mix of serious Trek and silly Trek ... You'll see some familiar faces, you'll some new stuff ... I'm so excited for August because we've been living with this for so long and I just can't wait to share it with everybody. If you love Star Trek, you're gonna have 10 new Star Trek episodes that you don't see coming, no matter how hard you try to extrapolate what we did."

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Credit: Fox

Season 33 of The Simpsons doesn't arrive until late September, but fans got a sneak peek at what's in store for the next batch of episodes during the show's Comic-Con panel. For example, writer/producer Matt Selman revealed the new season opens with an all-out Broadway homage with guest star Kristen Bell.

"[It's] the most musical episode we've ever done. Almost wall-to-wall music," he said. It's like a Broadway musical of an episode with all original songs. We've got Kristen Bell playing the role of Marge's singing voice."

Viewers can get also pumped for a "Treehouse of Horror" anthology that features a historical five segments, as well as a two-part special that pays tribute to prestige crime dramas.

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Netflix's Fear Street trilogy is full of what its title implies: fear. But the production looks anything but fearful in a newly-released blooper reel for all three films (see above). Part 1: 1994, Part 2: 1978, and Part 3: 1666 are all available to stream.

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Hitting Adult Swim sometime this fall, Black Lotus thrusts Blade Runner fans back into the rain and neon-soaked future imagined up by Ridley Scott back in 1982. "I was blown away by what they did because it doesn’t feel animated. It almost feels like live-action, but it’s not. It’s a weird sort of hybrid of the two," Josh Duhamel (the voice of a Replicant hunter named Marlowe) told SYFY WIRE.

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Credit: Marvel Comics

More "Reign of X" stories are coming our way this fall, including The Trial of Magneto and Inferno. According to Marvel, these arcs will answer some of the biggest questions left over from Jonathan Hickman's acclaimed mutant run.

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Credit: DC Comics

Batman: Fear State will be the latest intersecting narrative event to launch at DC Comics next month. Spanning the Batman, Nightwing, Catwoman, and Harley Quinn titles, Fear State will result in a fresh status quo for 2022. With "Fear" in the title, you just know that Jonathan Crane, aka Scarecrow, has something to do with it.

"One of my favorite things about the larger Fear State story is that he wants to take Batman off the page, but this isn't an attack on Batman," said current Caped Crusader scribe James Tynion IV. "This is an attack on Gotham City, because Scarecrow believes that through fear Gotham City can evolve into something more than it is. He is trying to sideline Batman, but there's a part of him that wants Batman to agree with his core mission. Scarecrow has intuited that there is a part of Batman that faced a great fear, and he evolved because of it. And so he's saying, basically 'I'm going to do to Gotham City what Gotham City did to you, so why are you standing in my way? Isn't this what you want?'"

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Robert Kirkman is one busy bee. Appearing at a panel dedicated to his body of work, the creator dished on what he's got coming down the pipeline. In addition to the ever-expanding Walking Dead franchise at AMC, he's also got at least two more seasons of the animated Invincible series for Amazon.

"I'm hoping that we'll have some new storylines here and there that we're able to weave in that are completely original to the show," he said.

He's also writing a movie about Dracula's reluctant assistant, Renfield, in a new film project. "The whole plot is that Renfield is Dracula's servant and decides that he doesn't want to be his servant anymore, and it's that conflict that kind of drives the story. So yeah, Dracula's actually a big part of the movie."

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Credit: Getty Images

Oscar Isaac took fans by surprise when he unexpectedly showed up during the Legendary Comics panel to discuss his graphic novel, Head Wounds: Sparrow. The actor couldn't participate in the full panel since he was on set filming Marvel Studios' Moon Knight series, which is a pretty good excuse.

"We're deep into it over here, it's been going great," he said of the Disney+ show. "It's gonna be a wild, wild show, and I'll be very excited to talk about it in the future."

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

Credit: Lucasfilm/Disney

The third wave of Lucasfilm's ambitious publishing initiative set within the halcyon days of a pre-Empire Republic kicks off in January 2022 with such titles as The Fallen Star (Claudia Gray), Eye of the Storm (Charles Soule), Mission to Disaster (Justina Ireland), and Midnight Horizon (Daniel José Older).

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

 Credit: Chiabella James / © 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

The "Duneiverse" is expanding in anticipation of Denis Villeneuve's ambitious Frank Herbert adaptation — landing on Arrakis, aka the big screen, this October. One of the new projects currently in the works at TOR Books is a novella collection tentatively titled Sands of Dune and on course to be released next year.

Dune: The Lady of Caladan, the second book in Brian Herbert (Frank's son) and Kevin J. Anderson's Caladan Trilogy goes on sale Sep. 20. The third novel — Dune: Heir of Caladan — is slated to hit stores next October.

Learn more from our coverage of the Comic-Con@Home panel here.

SYFY WIRE exclusively debuted the first look at this Alex Ross fine art lithograph in honor of Kingdom Come's 25th anniversary.

"I got to put in a lot of additional time in this piece, rendering these future versions of DC characters with their changed looks," Ross explains in a special video on the print's conception. "To show what happens when they are 20 years older and many of them have been replaced with surrogates, who are the younger people coming up."

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