Alec Baldwin is coming to Salt Lake City. The Beetlejuice and Hunt for Red October star will appear at the 2026 FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention, running September 24 through 26 at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center in downtown Salt Lake City.
Baldwin's booking was first reported by ABC4 Utah, which detailed his decades-long career, including his early-1980s start on television soap operas before he broke into film with Forever, Lulu and Beetlejuice. The station notes Baldwin went on to appear in the first on-screen adaptation of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan character and became known for roles in The Shadow alongside his Beetlejuice and Hunt for Red October work. According to that report, his sitcom run on 30 Rock alone earned him two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes and six Screen Actors Guild Awards, part of a career that has brought him 48 wins across 118 nominations at various awards shows.
Baldwin's appearance lands roughly two years after a New Mexico judge dismissed the involuntary manslaughter charge against him stemming from the fatal 2021 shooting on the set of the film Rust. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case with prejudice in July 2024, ruling that prosecutors and police had improperly withheld live-ammunition evidence from the defense, according to Courthouse News. Baldwin had faced up to 18 months in prison before the case's abrupt end mid-trial.
A Return to the Public Eye
Since the case was dismissed, Baldwin has leaned back into television. In February 2025, he and his wife Hilaria launched an eight-episode TLC reality series called The Baldwins, following their domestic life and seven children in the aftermath of the Rust proceedings, according to a project overview on Wikipedia. The show reportedly followed a competitive bidding war among television distributors before landing at TLC.
FanX will place Baldwin alongside a lineup that includes Hayden Christensen, Karl Urban, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, David Wenham and George Newbern, plus the voice cast of the dating simulation game Date Everything!, per the convention's own guest announcements. FanX has said the roster also includes the creatives behind the voices of several Disney princesses, and organizers note the show will host more than 100 industry guests total across film, television, gaming and comics.
Salt Lake's Trademark-Tested Convention
FanX carries its own complicated history in Utah. The event launched in 2013 as Salt Lake Comic Con, but a 2017 federal jury ruling found that its organizers, Dan Farr Productions, had infringed on San Diego Comic-Con's trademarked name, forcing the rebrand to FanX, according to Wikipedia. A judge ordered the promoters to pay nearly $4 million in attorney fees and court costs tied to that dispute. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the $3.9 million fee award in April 2020, concluding the promoters had engaged in unreasonable litigation tactics and rejecting arguments that the term Comic-Con was generic.
Despite that costly legal fight, FanX has grown into the state's most-attended convention. Utah's Governor's Office has recognized the show for consistently drawing more than 100,000 attendees, a mark it first surpassed in April 2014 during its second convention. The Salt Palace Convention Center, which offers 515,000 square feet of continuous exhibit space and 164,000 square feet of meeting space, has hosted the event for years, though planned facility redesigns in 2027 are expected to push future FanX gatherings to smaller venues in Sandy, Utah, per KSL.com.
Charity Gaming After Hours
Beyond the main convention floor, FanX 2026 will feature an after-hours Nerd HQ Nights Magic: The Gathering charity Commander game on September 25, hosted by actor Zachary Levi alongside fantasy author Brandon Sanderson and actors Seth Green, Brandon Routh and Janina Gavankar. The event is meant to raise funds for mental health initiatives, continuing a tradition from Levi's Nerd HQ, which has raised more than $80,000 for mental health causes at past FanX conventions.
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