James Gunn Says New Technology Will Prevent Bootleg Recordings Of Trailers At This Year's San Diego Comic Con

Each year, the San Diego Comic Con finds major Hollywood studios trying desperately on one hand to offer exclusive, exciting content to the thousands of attendees who line up for hours to get the goods in Hall H, while simultaneously preventing some of those very same fans from recording the trailers or footage to leak online. And over the past few years especially, it has become a losing battle. Warner Bros. has suffered blows the past couple of the years with leaks of “Godzilla” and “Suicide Squad,” while last year, trailers for both “Warcraft” and “X-Men: Apocalypse” managed to get out. In a couple of weeks, San Diego Comic Con will arrive once again, but it seems organizers are taking an extra step to try and prevent exclusive content from winding up on the web.

Over the weekend, James Gunn posted a fun image for fans on Facebook reading, “300 Days Until GotG Vol 2,” which of course led to a flurry of comments. One of them was a question, asking when trailer from “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2” would be arriving, and the director teased that something might be coming… but you’ll have to be in San Diego to see it.

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“Well, you might see something if you’re in Hall H on July 23 with me and the Marvel panel. Or if someone secretly films that — which is less likely to happen because of new technology, but I still know sometimes happens — then you’ll see it right after. If not then, it will be a short while,” he shared.

What is this new, secret technology? No one is saying just yet, but it does suggest that the folks at SDCC are ramping up efforts to stop rogue recordings from going online. Some would argue that studios should make their marketing available to everyone, but that misses the point. The whole reason studios go to SDCC is because they know that on some level, they are preaching to the choir, and if the whole goal is start positive buzz, it’s easier to do that by containing exclusive trailers and footage to a select, captive audience rather than letting their footage and trailers come under the scrutiny of the public at large. There will be plenty of time for that later anyway. And for SDCC, their entire business model is built around making it worthwhile for fans to travel and spend thousands of dollars to make them feel like they’re getting something unique, and it’s in their interest as well to make sure that experience remains special.

But whether or not this new effort works to plug the gaps that spring up each year, we’ll just have to wait and see. San Diego Comic Con kicks off on July 21st. [Comic Book]