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According to an impromptu Q&A that "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn hosted on his Facebook page yesterday (March 8), it's unlikely that he'll be attending San Diego Comic-Con this year -- because Marvel isn't going to be there either, he claimed. Whoah there. Marvel? The same company that been basically running Hall H for years? Trust us, it's more likely than you might think.

Nothing has been confirmed yet, of course, and we figure that either way the Marvel brand won't completely disappear from the convention -- they've still got comic books to sell, after all! But if someone else gets the coveted Hall H slot usually reserved for Marvel Entertainment, you can bet that it will most likely be due to one or all of these factors:

They probably wouldn't have much to promote that weekend. Marvel This year San Diego Comic Con starts on July 9th, long after "Avengers: Age of Ultron comes out on May 1st and too close to the release of "Ant-Man" on July 17th to really do anything spectacular with it. They generally don't combine their TV and the movie announcements at Hall H, either: last year "Agent Carter," "Agents of SHIELD," and the Netflix shows were featured in a separate, smaller panel. So unless they wanted to show us some very, very early "Doctor Strange" test footage, there probably won't be much point in bringing in actors from the MCU to talk about themselves like they did in 2014. Speaking of which... They didn't have much to show us last year, either. Sure, there was a trailer and some awesome footage from "Avengers: Age of Ultron" of everyone taking turns at lifting Mjolnir, as well as a first look at "Ant-Man", but other than that some people regarded Marvel's 2014 panel as a bit of a letdown. After all, rumors pegged the studio for announcing something HUGE, like a "Black Panther" movie or the lead actor for "Doctor Strange." Instead the only new information we got from that weekend was that "Guardians of the Galaxy" would be getting a sequel, which everybody knew was going to happen the moment they saw Chris Pratt awesomely kicking alien butts on the big screen. All of the recent big Marvel announcements have come straight from Marvel itself. Marvel There's really no point in waiting for a big event like San Diego Comic-Con when Marvel's able to make headlines on its own. Remember when the entire Internet went nuts over the news of Marvel's Phase 3 line-up, including "Black Panther," "Captain Marvel," "Inhumans," "Avengers: Infinity War," and more? That wasn't announced at a convention, but at a Marvel-sponsored streaming event, kind of like the ones that Apple does every time they release a new product. Heck, even boring press releases from Marvel reverberate across Nerd World -- they published their recent Spider-Man news at 11 p.m. at night on the East Coast, and it was still all anyone could talk about for days. They could be making room for another movie studio. Sony Both Marvel and Star Wars are owned by the same parent company now, so it's possible that Disney thinks "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is worth promoting over, say, "Captain America: Civil War;" which won't be out until 2016. Or maybe now that Sony and Marvel are combining their efforts on the "Spider-Man" franchise, Marvel is willing to give up their spot for Sony, who might also have content from the all-female "Ghostbusters" movie to show off as well. Friendship! Maybe they're thinking about starting their own convention. Getty Images Now that Marvel is such a giant powerhouse, what's to stop them from putting together their own event? Video game company Blizzard Entertainment did the same thing with Blizzcon back in 2005, and now they welcome tens of thousands of attendees every year in Anaheim, California.

But don't worry, Comic-Con goers: regardless of whether or not Marvel officially decides to show up, you can bet that there will still be plenty of stuff for fans of the franchise to do and see at San Diego this July. Heck, maybe there'll be fewer lines everywhere! (Okay, probably not, but we can dream.)

(h/t to MCU Exchange)