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An Overview of Future Marvel Movies

Marvel are on top of the world right now. Avengers: Age of Ultron currently has a foreign gross of $255 million and will have a huge opening weekend in the US, and they have plenty of other movies on the way.

The first is Ant-Man, which has seen a rough development schedule due to the sudden departure of original director Edgar Wright. Scott Lang will no doubt be a major player in future Avengers films so hopefully Wright’s departure will not hurt the quality of the film too much. The other origin stories are Doctor Strange, but aside from the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch and that Sinister’s Scott Derickson will direct we don’t know much about it yet, and Black Panther. Similarly, although we know that Chadwick Boseman will play the character, details on the film are scarce.

The most anticipated MCU film is Captain America: Civil War, not only because it will put superheroes into a context we have seen before on film, in which their very nature is bought into question, but also because it will finally introduce Spider-Man into the MCU.

Spider-Man is to Marvel what Mario is to Nintendo, or what Mickey Mouse is to Disney. Their signature, flagship character. And whilst his popularity has waned somewhat lately (a disappointing $709 million gross for The Amazing Spider-Man 2) his MCU debut will bring him back into the A list.

Meanwhile, Sony Pictures, who originally held the rights to Spider-Man, will produce an animated film about the character, so at least they didn’t come out of the deal with nothing.

After Captain America: Civil War, we have a ton of other MCU films to look forward to, including the two Avengers: Infinity War films, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel and doubtless many more. We are currently at Phase 3, who knows what Phase 4 will entail?

Aside from the MCU, Fox owns the films rights to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. The next X-Men film, X-Men Apocalypse, started shooting several days ago and will be a continuation of the new continuity created at the end of Days of Future Past. So at least now The Last Stand officially never happened.

It is not currently clear whether this year’s Fantastic Four will be set in the same continuity as the X-Men films, but it seems likely that Fox would want to create a shared universe to rival the MCU. And hell, the sequel’s already set for June 9 2017 so they are clearly certain that the film will be a hit.

And then there’s Deadpool, starring Ryan Reynolds but not a continuation of the story of his version of the character introduced in the 2009 Wolverine film. Instead this will be a solo movie, and the first R rated Marvel film since 2008’s Punisher War Zone (not including the unrated cut of The Wolverine or the films based on comics from other Marvel imprints). Hopefully, if the film is a hit, we can expect more violent superhero movies on the horizon. Go and see it people.

Stan Lee also leaked at an Age of Ultron press conference that a sequel to Big Hero 6 is in the works, which is hardly surpassing as the film grossed $652 million worldwide in addition to winning the Animation Feature Oscar. The Disney film was only loosely based on its comic book source material, and Disney seems to want it solely associated with them rather than Marvel, but a sequel is still a welcome addition to Disney’s catalogue. Baymax, despite bearing no resemblance to his comic book counterpart, has also become something of an icon and seems to be bound to become one of Disney’s signature characters.

With such a huge variety of films, it’s easy to see why Marvel are known as ‘the house of ideas’. Fans rejoice as Marvel movies are here to stay.

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About the author

Davidde Gelmini