Everyone assumed that Marvel would save all of their huge announcements for D23, the Disney-centric festival put on the Mouse each year, which will take place in just a month or two in Anaheim. But even the best assumptions can be dead fucking wrong, and Kevin Feige took the stage at Hall H on Saturday to give fans a long-term view of the MCU’s future, like a CEO confronting his shareholders at a quarterly meeting (and that’s essentially what these panels are now, lol). There was a ton of news, so strap in.
First up is the teaser trailer for Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which has been shrouded in secrecy for the last few months — even the poster is just the movie’s title and its release date. You can watch it below, and it features some heavy shit — emotionally and otherwise.. Y’all should get ready for some Namor. The Sub-Mariner is here, and he’s pissed.
Wakanda Forever hits theaters on November 11. Three things: this looks pretty good, honestly. Second, it’s funny they’re blowing up cop cars on the Mass Ave bridge here. Third, please refrain from reviving a dead actor’s Twitter account to promote a movie, even if it’s in his honor. It’s just not too great of an idea.
That film will close out Phase 4 (which is… short?), and Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will kick off Phase 5. You can read a summary over at IGN, but in short: Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror is the villain, alongside MODOK, who will be played by… Bill Murray. Pretty great casting, if you ask us. That arrives in theaters on February 17, 2023.
Also on hand was the cast and crew of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3, which also showed off footage that it didn’t release to the public. Again, read the summary at IGN, but here’s the important info: Maria Balakova’s playing Cosmo, the Russian astro-dog. The High Evolutionary, the film’s villain who will be played by Chukwudi Iwuji, showed up in-costume to the panel and caused chaos. Old school Comic-Con fun, that. Vol. 3 drops on May 5, 2023.
But the big reveal of Phase 5 and Phase 6 slates are perhaps the most newsworthy out of everything Marvel dropped. Here goes a release date speed-run: Blade releases on November 3, 2023. The fourth Captain America movie, now entitled Captain America and the New World Order, will release on May 3, 2024, and presumably feature Cap facing off against Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Hulk Hogan. Phase 5 will close out with Thunderbolts on July 26, 2024, about the team of supervillains-for-hire.
Phase 6 will jumpstart with Fantastic Four on November 8, 2024, and finally, we’ll get two Avengers movies in 2025. The first, subtitled The Kang Dynasty, will hit on May 2 that year, and the second, the long-awaited Secret Wars, will drop on November 7. Jesus Christ. Also, the Russo Brothers aren’t directing either of those, which will be a relief to anybody who had the misfortune to sit through either Cherry or The Gray Man in the last few years. The whole of Phase 4 through 6 will be entitled The Multiverse Saga, and they’re really rushing this motherfucker to its conclusion, huh? It’s gonna take them half the time it took for them to finally finish the Infinity Saga for all of this to come out, and that doesn’t even include all the streaming stuff.
Also, there are a number of untitled Marvel projects on the Disney theatrical slate, so don’t be surprised if we find out what those are in a month or so. Either way, Marvel’s gonna smother you to death with all this content.
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On the Disney+ side of things, Marvel dropped two trailers for two soon-to-be-released projects. First up is I Am Groot, which is a series of shorts featuring the lil’ Vin Diesel-voiced fellow that will drop on August 10. Cute!
Next is She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, which Marvel’s billing as its “first half-hour comedy.” It stars Tatiana Maslany as, you guessed it, She-Hulk, and the trailer features a number of cameos (including a yellow-suited Daredevil) and some “better” effects work than the last time they dropped a trailer for the series. It arrives on August 17.
But that’s not all. A trailer was shown for Secret Invasion, which will hit the streaming service in the Spring of 2023, and you can read a lengthy description of it here at Deadline (given that it hasn’t been released to the public yet). Other announcements were made: Echo, about the character introduced in Hawkeye, will arrive in Summer 2023 alongside Loki Season 2. Ironheart, about Wakanda Forever character Riri Williams, and Agatha: Coven of Chaos will hit in Fall and Winter 2023, respectively. Yet the final announcement was perhaps the best: Daredevil: Born Again, which will feature the return of Charlie Cox (fresh off of a cameo in No Way Home) and Vincent D’Onofrio to roles that kickstarted Marvel’s streaming era. That’s getting a solid 18-episode order and will hit in Spring 2024.
Phew.