This week, Marvel Studios announced some disappointing (though not entirely unexpected) news: Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars have both been hit with significant delays, with Doomsday now set to arrive in theaters on December 18, 2026, and Secret Wars positioned for December 17, 2027.
Though Doomsday is now filming in the UK, multiple sources have reported that production commenced without a completed script, and insiders believe these delays will "simply allow more time to execute on a gargantuan vision."
Nobody wants Marvel to rush these massive MCU event films, but pushing their release dates back by over six months will likely have wider repercussions, and we wouldn't be surprised if some big changes were made to the projects that were originally supposed to set up and follow the events of these Avengers movies.
For one, Spider-Man: Brand New Day will now release before Doomsday (we had heard that it was originally going to serve as a bridge between both Avengers movies), and if Secret Wars in indeed supposed to lay the groundwork for the long-awaited X-Men reboot, we probably won't see the mutant heroes assemble on the big screen until 2028 at the earliest.
Can we expect more shake-ups? Here's what Jeff Sneider had to say in his latest newsletter.
"Disney only gets 25 percent of the next Spider-Man movie, and I’m told that Disney’s Bob Iger will be very disappointed if he only gets one movie (or 1.25 movies) out of Marvel next year — at the very end of the year, no less — even if it is an Avengers movie with the irresistible hook of Robert Downey Jr. trading in his Iron Man armor to play Doctor Doom."
We'll just have to wait and see what announcements come our way between now and SDCC. How do you feel about these delays? Are you glad Marvel is taking more time to makes these movies the best they can be? Let us know in the comments section.
Both Doomsday and Secret Wars will be directed by the Russo brothers, who also make their MCU return after helming Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
"Being able to create stories and explore characters within the Marvel Universe fulfilled a life-long dream of ours, and we discovered a powerful connection with audiences in each film that we made. We’re thrilled to collaborate once again with Kevin, Lou and the entire Marvel team to bring this epic adventure in storytelling to new and surprising places for both the fans and ourselves”, said The Russos in a statement after the SDCC panel.
You can check out the full (for now) Doomsday cast list below.
• Paul Rudd as Ant-Man
• Simu Liu as Shang-Chi
• Tom Hiddleston as Loki
• Lewis Pullman as Sentry
• Florence Pugh as Yelena
• Danny Ramirez as Falcon
• Ian McKellen as Magneto
• Sebastian Stan as Bucky
• Winston Duke as M’Baku
• Chris Hemsworth as Thor
• Kelsey Grammer as Beast
• James Marsden as Cyclops
• Channing Tatum as Gambit
• Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent
• Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm
• Rebecca Romijn as Mystique
• Patrick Stewart as Professor X
• Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler
• Letitia Wright as Black Panther
• Tenoch Huerta Mejia as Namor
• Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards
• Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost
• Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm
• David Harbour as Red Guardian
• Robert Downey Jr as Doctor Doom
• Ebon Moss-Bachrach as The Thing
• Anthony Mackie as Captain America