ORLANDO, Fla. — In just a few weeks, thousands of fans of comic books, anime, sci-fi and horror will descend on the Orange County Convention Center for MegaCon Orlando.

The four-day event, returning May 19, offers a little something for everyone: cosplay contests, gaming tournaments, panels, workshops and shopping.

MegaCon will also bring the star power, with dozens of celebrity guests from popular TV shows and movies scheduled to attend. And fans will have a chance to meet celebrity guests and get an autograph or picture.

In the past, the roster has included Jason Momoa, William Shatner and the cast of “Boy Meets World.” This year’s lineup includes Brendan Fraser, Ralph Macchio, Ashley Eckstein and more.

Ahead of the big event, FanExpo vice president Andrew Moyes spoke with Spectrum News Attractions Insider about the upcoming event and what fans can expect this year:

FanExpo HQ has been running MegaCon Orlando for the last several years. What have you and the company been doing to make it bigger and better every year?

I think a big thing for us is just that experience. We work really hard to make sure people get in and out comfortably and celebrate safely. The other thing we do is we really look to speak to every fandom. We don’t favor one fandom whether you love comic books, sci-fi, anime, gaming, horror, fantasy. We really look to touch on all of those fandoms, and, of course, cosplayers have become a really huge fandom as well. So we’re delighted to have new activations like our Cosplay Red Carpet where everyone can participate and show off all the great work they’ve been doing on their costumes.

In 2020, a lot of live events were impacted by the pandemic, MegaCon was one of those events. Now that you’ve had MegaCon in 2021 and you’re coming back in 2022, did you learn anything from that experience having to reshuffle, reorganize everything? And did you bring any of that into this event?

As event planners, we’re constantly charged with being flexible and adaptable, and that definitely took us to our limits. I think for everyone, it was a real shared experience regardless of the industry. And I think that’s what was really interesting about the entire pandemic that it was such a shared experience. I think we’ve all emerged from it with a greater sense of responsibility and that’s really no exception at MegaCon. We still look to be mindful. If we’re going to be able to gather again, we have to wash our hands. We have to be mindful of distance where we can. And I think also, if we’re not feeling well, unfortunately we have to say, “MegaCon’s maybe not for me this year.” But I think again, if we all approach it with that shared sense of responsibility, that I think everyone is now, I think we’ll be in great shape to celebrate really safely again this year.

One of the big draws for MegaCon is the celebrity guests. Can you talk about some of the guests you have coming and what goes into trying to seek out those guests to come to the event?

One of the challenges we love to rail against is delivering these heroes to their fans. We’re dealing with working actors who are currently in shoot mode, who have really busy schedules. It’s always a real coup when we can make them actually walk through the door and be able to present them to their fans. And what a list this year. Just a couple of highlights, Brendan Fraser is going through such a renaissance right now, such a fantastic guest. We’re excited to have him. Nathan Fillion, of course, he hasn’t been on the circuit for a little while, so all those “Firefly” fans will be super excited to see Nathan Fillion. We have the team from “Cobra Kai” with us, which has been super successful. And then, one of our banner events over the weekend is having all four hobbits with us in the building. We’re super excited to have Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan and, of course, Elijah Wood reuniting on stage for the “unexpected” reunion.

We bring talent in from all sorts of verticals. It’s not just screen celebrities. We have some incredible voice actors both in the animation, anime and gaming veins. Of course, this all started with coming, so we’re super excited to have an incredible comic lineup. The iconic Frank Miller is going to be with us screening his documentary “Frank Miller American Genius.”

MegaCon offers so many different things to so many different fandoms. What are some of the other ways fans can have fun at MegaCon?

There’s just hours and hours of programming. Every celebrity that comes, they take the opportunity to meet with their fans in their Q&A period as well. It’s not just the opportunity to have photographs and autographs with these celebrities, you can also hear them speak and hear those awesome behind-the-scenes stories. Hear how they created their characters. We have lots of different rooms. There are anime-themed rooms, there are gaming themed rooms, of course, comic-themed rooms where we have a lot of comic programming. People love our sketch duel. So we get two well-known comic creators up on stage and duel it out, drawing against each other. It’s quite incredible what they can create in that small 15 minutes. And then we actually raffle off the works of art in the room.

And shopping is huge. We have hundreds of thousands of square feet of shopping. Not only our retailers that will be bringing in lots of pop culture collectible merchandise but artists as well. Artists Alley is a fantastic destination where you can find those one of a kind crafty finds and over 300 artists that are going to be there in our Artist Alley.