Meaningless Marvel Movie Speculation
Just because it is meaningless doesn’t mean I won’t indulge myself in speculating anyway.
The website IGN today posted an article in which it interviews head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, about the future plans for upcoming Marvel movies. The interview tries to clarify some of the vagueness in the release Marvel put out three days ago about release dates for upcoming movies through 2019 — most of which have no titles. Of course Feige doesn’t spill the beans on any of the movies about which we no nothing beyond release dates. But IGN thinks it has a little extra kernel of information.
Feige says in the interview that Marvel currently likes its model of “one sequel, one new character” movies and it will continue — but only for certain for a couple of years. Feige says “what we’re doing this year and what we’re doing next year is: existing franchise, new franchise, existing franchise, new franchise.”
The problem is that this year is 2014, next year is 2015 and those movies have already been announced, and we have Captain America 3 on May 6, 2016. The first unknown property is set for release on July 8. 2016. At that point, by Feige’s own admission, the “existing franchise, new franchise” could be right out the window, so we really learned nothing from his statement.
Marvel’s release plans are as below:
- Guardians of the Galaxy: August 1, 2014
- Avengers: Age Of Ultron: May 1, 2015
- Ant-Man: July 17, 2015
- Captain America 3: May 6, 2016
- Untitled Film: July 8, 2016
- Untitled Film: May 5, 2017
- Untitled Film: July 28, 2017
- Untitled Film: November 3, 2017
- Untitled Film: July 6, 2018
- Untitled Film: November 2, 2018
- Untitled Film: May 3, 2019
There has already been plenty of speculation online about what those “Untitled” movies will be. The website MoviePilot almost mirrors my own speculation, with a list that looks like:
- Guardians of the Galaxy: August 1, 2014
- Avengers: Age Of Ultron: May 1, 2015
- Ant-Man: July 17, 2015
- Captain America 3: May 6, 2016
- Doctor Strange: July 8, 2016
- Thor 3: Ragnarok: May 5, 2017
- Black Panther: July 28, 2017
- Guardians 2 OR Hulk 2: November 3, 2017
- Ms. Marvel: July 6, 2018
- Inhumans: November 2, 2018
- Avengers 3: May 3, 2019
I would flip the placement of the Ms. Marvel movie (and change the title to the correct one, Captain Marvel) and the Black Panther movie. It makes more sense to have Captain Marvel in the MCU before the next Guardians movie, but both of the characters have to be in the MCU before the third Avengers movie. I completely agree, however, that Avengers 3 will be the last of the current roster, as it makes way for a new Avengers line-up — Bucky as Cap, The Falcon, Ant-Man, Vision, Doctor Strange (I disagree with the speculation that The Defenders will be a movie, not a Netflix series as is currently the plan), Hulk and Captain Marvel.
I am also not sold on an Inhumans movie yet, but I believe it is in the current MCU plan. If I were a betting man, I would bet that Disney is counting on its lawyers and finance people to come up with an offer Fox can’t refuse for getting the mutant franchise back before then. But if not, the plan to replace the mutants as a never-ending source of new characters via the mutagenetics of the Inhumans will continue apace.
So my seat-of-the-pants speculation on the MCU lineup through 2019 is:
- Guardians of the Galaxy: August 1, 2014
- Avengers: Age Of Ultron: May 1, 2015
- Ant-Man: July 17, 2015
- Captain America 3: May 6, 2016
- Doctor Strange: July 8, 2016
- Thor 3: Ragnarok: May 5, 2017
- Captain Marvel: July 28, 2017
- Guardians 2 OR Hulk 2: November 3, 2017
- Black Panther: July 6, 2018
- Inhumans OR Hulk 2: November 2, 2018
- Avengers 3: May 3, 2019
