This morning, word hit the web that 20th Century Fox has canceled its planned presentation next week at ComicCon. As you can imagine, this seems like kind of a big deal–at the very least, it’s a curious move for a studio that has sunk quite a bit of time and money into a certain animated film that opens the same weekend, which they’ve announced that they’re essentially keeping from critics. So what does it all mean? Here are three different theories from around the web:

“Fox pulling out of Comic Con seems like another indication of a guarded, bordering-on-frosty attitude by Fox towards online journos and the film-geek community…A major distributor with almost nothing but supermall popcorn geek movies to promote … yanks a personal-appearance panel out of the biggest movie-geek convention on the planet seven days before it opens? This is business as usual? Do the math.” — Jeff Wells

“Fox has become a major player when it comes to fighting movie piracy (they’re one of the studios who wanted to ban advanced screenings in Canada), and so perhaps it’s not a question of whether their footage is ready — but, instead, has to do with them being afraid that same footage will be on YouTube within the hour.” — Erik Davis, Cinematical

“What I’ve been told is that after last year’s Borat presentation, which had that scene of Borat and friend fighting in the nude, relations between San Diego Comic Con and Fox were strained…they said the cost of a couple hundred grand just wasn’t worth it when they could just release all the stuff on the internet.” — Devin Feraci, CHUD

Even though CHUD claims to be getting their info from a “Fox insider”, I personally think their explanation makes the least sense. The studio’s going to have to produce clean trailers at some point; it’s unfathomable to me that they’d scrap a long-planned presentation at the last minute because they can’t get them together in time. Meanwhile, Wells is pissed that he’s having trouble with a Fox publicist; it’s probable that the studio has it out for bloggers and online critics, but they’ve got to be smart enough to know that probably 75% of the typical ComicCon panel aud is under 18, and therefore both extremely valuable demographically and not at all threatening in terms of bad press. And piracy/video sharing is definitely a concern…but of all the studios set to present at the Con, why would Fox be the only one concerned enough to bail?

I think the truth probably lies somewhere near the CHUD tipster’s final point: for whatever reason, Fox has probably decided that a ComicCon presentation is just not a cost effective way to promote their content. And if that’s the case, and any of the films they were set to promote next weekend end up hitting big without the ComicCon push, you have to wonder if the studio would bother going back. Could this be the beginning of the end of ComicCon as a major shill-case for studio product?