San Diego Comic-Con has been struggling ever since the COVID-19 pandemic forced just about everything to shut down in 2020. Since then, it seems like one thing after another is making it tough for these live events to go on. Many of the big studios we're used to seeing in San Diego every year will be absent for San Diego Comic-Con 2023, Variety reports.

It's a long list: Disney's Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm, HBO, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Netflix are all skipping SDCC this year. Warner Bros. hasn't made an official announcement one way or the other, and NBC is waiting on rumors of an impending actors' strike, Variety notes. Paramount and Amazon, however, do plan to have some presence.

So what's going on? Most apparent is the current ongoing writers' strike and the rumored potential strike by the Screen Actors Guild. While both strikes affect these studios, an actors' strike would be disastrous--it's impossible to get actors on stage to talk about their upcoming projects when they're busy holding a picket line for fair pay. Studios aren't going to want to make plans for a bunch of actor-filled panels if they think the actors might not be there.