We are now exactly 500 days away from the release of Avengers: Doomsday, and Daniel Richtman has shared an intriguing update to a rumor he previously posted back in May.
As you may recall, the scooper reported that Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) would actually be part of Sam Wilson's (Anthony Mackie) team in Doomsday. This led to speculation that the Thunderbolts New Avengers may disband, or possibly even get taken off the board early by Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) or some other powerful enemy.
Now, Richtman has clarified that Belova won't be an official member of Captain America's Avengers, and will simply "accompany them when they travel to another universe."
We expected a bit of Multiverse-hopping in this movie (Fox's X-Men are going to be in the mix, after all), but it is interesting that Yelena is the one to join Wilson's faction of Earth's Mightiest Heroes for their alternate reality mission.
We have heard that Pugh and Mackie were originally going to feature in more scenes together, but plans involving their characters ended up being changed fairly late in the game. If accurate, it's possible that Richtman's info comes from an earlier version of the script - which, as far as we know, still hasn't been completed.
“[I’m] not quite sure,” Mystique actress Rebecca Romijn said when asked if she has completed her scenes in a recent interview. “The script hasn’t — they haven’t finished writing it. It’s been very, very fun, and we don’t know yet. They keep everything very close to the vest themselves in an effort to keep everything under wraps.”
Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars were recently hit with significant delays, with Doomsday now set to arrive in theaters on December 18, 2026, and Secret Wars positioned for December 17, 2027.
Both movies 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