Festivals Extra: WonderCon To Los Angeles In 2016

On the tail end of this weekend's successful-sounding WonderCon Anaheim show run by Comic-Con International, they announced next year's version will be in Los Angeles at the end of March, the 25th through the 27th. Two things important about that. One is that the show continues its wandering ways after the inability of San Francisco convention space controllers sent them to Anaheim over the last few versions of the long-running show. Los Angeles hasn't been cracked as a market by one of the big shows (some of the LA regional shows would likely disagree), and it should allow them the experience of working closely with the film industry partners. That's something that WonderCon, despite its place on the calendar, never quite cracked in either the San Francisco or Anaheim versions.

The second thing is that by moving off of that traditional early April date to late March, they effectively switch positions on the calendar with Emerald City Comicon. ECCC is an increasingly popular show with a big chunk of the comics world. Seeing those two going head to head would have been something else.

I imagine there will be a tiny bit of pushback against the Los Angeles move from people that watch the convention business and wonder why a big show like that keeps lacking for long-term suitors. Me, I think it's a smart move and I always a really positive outcome for them now that they've shed APE is to do a three shows a year in the Southern California cities with which they're now most closely associated. This may give them a test run for that. It also becomes a really cheap show for a lot of people to do, including myself, as most people in the arts have friends and/or relatives in Los Angeles and tend not to in Anaheim. As New York has shown us, and as many of the smaller shows on a more limited level have put into practice, there are huge advantages to running a show in a place where pros are sleeping in their beds at night, or in a familiar and not pressure-building expensive place.

Formal announcement received in the time between my writing this and between my being able to post this: WonderCon_Moves_to_LA_for_2016_Convention-2.pdf
 
posted 12:15 am PST | Permalink
 

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