Marvel today announced four more movies will be apart of the Phase Three lineup, which in itself is kind of insane. A while back when the studio mapped-out release dates early which they eventually announced was going to be Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Infinity War 1-2, and Inhumans. We had hopped this would be the new additions but the studio has held-back before on certain characters, so, we didn’t think they’d overload us with these unique characters.
Here’s a snippet from the official announcement. If you’re counting that’ll be a total of fifteen movies in this next phase, which will be the largest rollout in studio history, this coming-off their three picture per year pledge.
Additionally, Ant-Man’s second adventure will lead to a couple of other films shifting their dates, with Marvel’s “Black Panther” moving up to February 16, 2018 and Marvel’s “Captain Marvel” landing on March 8, 2019.
Finally, three untitled Marvel Studios films will premiere on May 1, 2020, July 10, 2020, and November 6, 2020.
It’s likely at least one of these films will be a sequel, but it’s hard to imagine they’ll have more than two franchise films in one phase, this could mean Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 3, Captain America 4, Doctor Strange 2, Black Panther 2, might be out of the running for these slots, if these 2020 dates are indeed apart of Phase Three, which the press release alludes to in it’s headline.
So, what are they cooking-up?
There are many options Marvel could take, and we might see plenty of spin-offs in the future. They’ve been trying to put together a Vision movie for ages, there have also been hints towards in past to give Nick Fury, Black Widow, and War Machine their own solo adventures, but it seems unlikely that’ll happen. It’s more likely we could see a Vision film, along with characters such as Scarlet Witch or even Guardians of The Galaxy‘s Adam Warlock and Howard The Duck getting solo flicks.
It could be a giant-f-you to the competition if they did end up making a new Howard The Duck movie, and it was super successful.
Could Marvel have finally made deals with other studios like Universal and 20th Century Fox, like they did with Sony for Spider-Man?
Universal are the ones behind the solo movies for Hulk and Namor: The Sub-Mariner, who need to get on board for anything like Planet Hulk, World War Hulk, or a Namor film to happen, I believe She-Hulk might also be tied-up there as well. I’ve been shocked that Universal hasn’t figured something out with Marvel to put the green guy back into a solo feature, not to mention the studio trying for years to make a Namor movie happen. Considering the heat from the Marvel franchises, it’s a bit shocking they wouldn’t attempt making a deal with Marvel to co-produce these movies.
It’s not like Marvel isn’t already hinting to the two characters via Netflix, as they along with Doctor Strange were apart of the original lineup of the Defenders.The group is being re-worked for the television series, which isn’t such a terrible idea, but it just reminds us that Namor is still missing from the films.
Recent comments from Kevin Feige suggest they have back-up plans for characters they don’t own, just incase they are allowed to include certain characters into the cinematic universe.
Our assumption at the time felt like they could include Wolverine, Silver Surfer, The X-Men, and Fantastic Four into the cinematic universe, if Fox actually played-ball and made a deal for that to happen. The talk of rebooting/recasting Wolverine make him the more prime candidate to have his first non-Hugh Jackman outing as a co-production with Marvel Studios. We’ve also heard zero peep concerning Silver Surfer, after Fox’s plans for a solo flick fizzled out years ago.
Another possibility from the Sony deal could be Spidey spin-offs which could include Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman, Black Cat, or Spider-Gwen getting their own films. We know they were developing a female-driven project, which could always get picked-up by Marvel at any point. Although, Spider-Woman isn’t technically apart of the Spider-Man universe, the name had be in-control by Sony for ages.
Could this be the reasoning behind these 2020 dates, and why they would be apart of Phase Three and not Phase Four? Anything is possible these days.
What other kind of left-field projects could they be developing over at Marvel, outside of studio team-ups?
They have a lot, and I’ve been tracking this stuff since Iron Man, they’re are a lot of them, but here are some projects I believe are the most likely to be on the table, follow current cinematic trends and could be eyed for those 2020 release dates.
A Ka-Zar movie has been in development for as long as I can remember, and was apart of that in-house writing program. He’s a jungle character set in the Savage Land, a place that is frozen in time and the home of all sorts of creatures, including dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
This would also be the best film to include characters like Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy/Moon Girl into the cinematic universe.
Kevin Feige seemingly confirmed the character was indeed in their stable at Marvel, and after it had been reported by CHUD that Marvel had been open to pitches and script submissions for the character, back in 2010.
After the massive box office of Jurassic World and Planet of The Apes, along with the hype behind the new Jungle Book and Tarzan movies, Marvel might take another look at him and the Savage Land.
We’ve also been hearing for ages that a new Blade film could be on the horizon, a script outline/treatment had been reportedly submitted around the same time as Captain Marvel, according to The Hollywood Reporter. There’s also been chatter from Wesley Snipes that meetings with the studio about reprising the character have been productive, this is on the heels of a rumor from Bleeding Cool that the potential movie would focus on his daughter Fallon Grey taking the mantle.
We’ve got to say that having a badass black female lead opening the doors to the horror side of the Marvel universe would be a smart move on their part, as it would allow for them to explore a vast side yet to be used in the MCU. I’ve already made my case and you can read that right here.
Another project I could see them making, but is a bit less likely is Killraven: Warrior of The Worlds. It was one of the many in-house development projects Marvel had been putting together for years.
It focuses on the titular hero, who is a revolutionary soldier that fights to overthrow the occupation and enslavement of the human population by the genocidal Martians, who have conquered this bleak post-Apocalyptic timeline. It was based on H.G. Wells’ War of The Worlds story, and could be Marvel’s Mad Max or Terminator franchise depending on how they approached it.
It’s also likely that one of these three films could be an Avengers installment, seeing how ambitious they’ve become with having the Russo Bros. direct the two Infinity War films and releasing them a year apart of each other. Having another Avengers installment released in 2020, wouldn’t be impossible just unlikely the Russos would be directing it. This could be that sequel we expect every year from Marvel.
They could easily try to make a cinematic version of World War Hulk or Secret Wars. I wouldn’t even keep Avengers vs. X-Men out of the running, as Fox might be a bit more willing to a crossover after the Fantastic Four reboot flopped as hard as it did. We’ve noticed that the studio has been capitalizing from the bigger known comic titles for their movie titles, and Secret Wars is currently being revamped for a new generation of readers.
Marvel could also shake things up and give us something we’ll never see coming, but at the moment these seem like the best bets at the moment.
What do you think Marvel will announce for those 2020 release spots?