Mark Hamill was ready to quit but his wife had other ideas
Star Wars actor Mark Hamill almost hung up his lightsaber and walked away from the five-decade career that had suddenly left him “unmotivated”, the 73-year-old pop culture icon told thousands of fans at San Diego’s annual Comic-Con.
A world without Luke Skywalker? It was closer than you think, Hamill said, revealing that he found himself struggling to find focus professionally. “I said to my agent, you know what? I’m not motivated any more, I think I’m gonna just sort of retire and just do voice-over.
“I’m not motivated any more,” Star Wars star Mark Hamill reveals. (Insider tip: he’s since rediscovered his mojo.)Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
“The only people that rejected [the plan] were my agent and my wife because, you know, it’s good to have me out of the house,” Skywalker quipped to the audience in Comic-Con’s cathedral of fandom, the 6500-seat Hall H.
Hamill, a fan favourite, was on stage spruiking The Long Walk, adapted from a Stephen King novel, about a dystopian future in which young men compete on a reality show where they walk at an even pace, risking death if they deviate from the route in any way.
The Long Walk is one of a dozen major titles competing for oxygen at San Diego Comic-Con, an annual event that blends an actual comic book convention with a schedule of panels and “activations” designed to generate buzz for coming TV, film and game projects.
The event, which draws more than 200,000 people to San Diego each July, is a mash-up of actual brands, such as Google, Hasbro, LEGO and PopMart, old-school movie studios, including Paramount, Disney, Sony and Warner Bros, and streamers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
It’s all about the hair. Puppet Pike (voiced by Anson Mount) in Strange New World’s fourth season tease at Comic-Con.Credit: Paramount
One of the major new Disney titles, Tron: Ares, treated fans to two extensive preview scenes from the film – due out in October – plus a panel featuring the film’s cast, including director Joachim Rønning and stars Jared Leto, Jeff Bridges, Greta Lee, Cameron Monaghan and Gillian Anderson.
And the Hall H panel for the new Paramount+ series Dexter: Resurrection featured the show’s star Michael C. Hall talking up the new season, in which Hall’s Dexter – a serial killer who specialises in killing other serial killers – comes up against Leon Prater (Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage), a wealthy investor who has a hidden trove of serial killer trophies.
Meanwhile, actor Ryan Gosling brought all of his Kenergy to the Hall H panel for the highly anticipated 2026 science fiction thriller Project Hail Mary.
Gosling appeared with directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, writer Drew Goddard and author Andy Weir, who wrote the book on which the film is based. And they brought their Comic-Con A-game, screening the first five minutes of the film to rapturous applause.
The producers and cast of Star Trek Strange New Worlds at Comic-Con.Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
In the film, Gosling plays an astronaut named Ryland Grace who wakes up on a spaceship “with no memory of himself or his mission [and] slowly deduces he is the sole survivor of a crew sent to the Tau Ceti solar system searching for a solution to a catastrophic event on Earth”.
Not letting that slide by, Paramount threw down a hefty and hilarious sci-fi gauntlet, teasing an episode planned for the fourth season of their flagship Star Trek title Strange New Worlds, in which the cast and guest characters are all played by puppets.
Fans dressed as Silver Surfer and Doctor Doom at San Diego’s Comic-Con.Credit: Andrew Park/Invision/AP
The series will “boldly explore the puppet-verse”, said Paramount. A short teaser clip – featuring a puppet-ised Captain Christopher Pike, voiced by actor Anson Mount, was a crowd pleaser in Hall H. (See below for this and other trailers.) And these puppets will come with real pedigree, created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
An advance screening of a coming episode of Strange New Worlds, titled A Space Adventure Hour, was a part-glitchy debut of the show’s famous “holodeck”, and part homage of 1950s-style B-movie sci-fi.
While the convention itself was missing some of the majors – no Star Wars projects, and no new movies from either Marvel and DC Comics – DC did send Peacemaker star John Cena, who turned up in full costume, and Peacemaker producer (and Superman director) James Gunn.
In the series, Cena plays patriotic mercenary Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker, who first appeared in Gunn’s 2021 film The Suicide Squad. The significance of the character has amplified since, as Gunn has taken over management of the entire DC Comics film and TV franchise. His debut film reboot, Superman, is one of the year’s movie hits.
Comic-Con’s four-day calendar of panels and appearances included Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood, director Rob Reiner, Outlander star Sam Heughan, Captain America Anthony Mackie, NCIS: Tony & Ziva stars Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo, Timothy Olyphant (Alien: Earth), Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon) and Australian actors Sam Reid, promoting Anne Rice’s The Talamasca: The Secret Order, and Ryan Kwanten, promoting Primitive War.
American sports executive Jeanie Buss – the president and controlling owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers – also made an appearance on the WOW: Women of Wrestling panel, revealing that as a kid, she was an obsessive fan of both Wonder Woman and Supergirl. (Gunn’s new Superman movie, in which Supergirl appears, gets a big thumbs up from her.)
Tron: Ares director Joachim Rønning and stars Jared Leto and Jeff Bridges.Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
And Star Wars creator George Lucas is scheduled to close the convention with a Hall H appearance to unveil the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, an 11-acre campus in LA’s Exposition Park, “dedicated to the art of illustrated stories”. The museum, which will focus on painting, photography, sculpture, illustration, comic art, performance and video, will open in 2026.
San Diego Comic-Con was launched in 1970 and is now the world’s biggest fan convention. The four-day event is sold-out, and is expected to sink more than $US150 million ($230 million) into the local economy. The convention wraps on Monday, Sydney time.