Marvel Studios is skipping this year's San Diego Comic-Con, meaning we won't get the usual slate updates and splashy announcements. However, Kevin Feige recently sat down with select members of the press to share multiple updates on the state of the MCU.
We've brought you several big talking points from that—you can find those articles under our News tab—but have rounded up the biggest reveals below for you.
Those range from Marvel Studios' Spider-Man plans to why Kang the Conqueror's story so abruptly ended and what this franchise will look like in the wake of Avengers: Secret Wars. We also hear from Feige on the X-Men and Blade.
Learn more about what's to come from the MCU moving forward by clicking the "Next"/"View List" buttons below.
6. New Creative Teams
Feige dropped a few big updates about future MCU movies, including the fact that Eric Pearson is now writing Blade. He's no stranger to this world and has previously worked on or polished multiple Marvel Studios movies, including The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Pearson also wrote the first draft of Thunderbolts*, and the director of that movie, Jake Schreier, is confirmed to helm the upcoming X-Men reboot.
The biggest news, though, is Loki and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness scribe Michael Waldron helping Stephen McFeely on Avengers: Doomsday. He's no stranger to the Multiverse, but for many fans, Waldron being dropped from Secret Wars was good news...
5. A Street-Level Spider-Man And Miles Morales Being Off-Limits
Despite lots of chatter about Spider-Man: Brand New Day being a Multiversal adventure for the web-slinger, it being released before Avengers: Doomsday seemingly means fans are getting the street-level tale they so desperately want.
Feige has said this will mark the first time Tom Holland has played a "proper Spider-Man," and noted that he'll deal with "street-level crime, as opposed to world-ending events." The executive also confirmed plans for Jon Bernthal's Punisher to appear (there was no mention of Hulk).
Alas, for those of you hoping Miles Morales will be thrown into the mix next year, Feige says it won't happen. Not yet, at least. "Sony has their brilliant, genius, incredible Spider-Verse animated franchise going and until that finishes," he said, "we’ve been told to stay away."
4. Quantity Over Quality Issues
At first, the prospect of Marvel Studios producing TV shows as well as movies in the Multiverse Saga was hugely exciting for fans. Things started strong with WandaVision, but with Feige stretched thin, the MCU delivered some pretty big disappointments.
"We produced 50 hours of stories between 2007 and 2019, but in the six years since 'Avengers: Endgame,' we've had well over 100 hours of stories — in half the time. That's too much," Feige acknowledged, admitting that the mandate from Disney to deliver as much content as possible was ultimately a detriment to the brand.
Moving forward, we'll only get one TV series a year, and it won't necessarily connect to the movies. It sounds like Feige learned a lesson from Thunderbolts*, a movie he believes underperformed because audiences felt they'd have to know who all those streaming characters were before watching.
3. Why The Plug Was Pulled On Kang The Conqueror
He Who Remains was introduced in Loki season 1, and we later met his Victor Timely, Kang the Conqueror, Immortus, Scarlet Centurion, and Rama-Tut Variants. Unfortunately, the villain's role in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania was proof to many fans that the time-travelling villain was no Thanos.
Feige agreed with the sentiment—"We had started to realise that Kang wasn't big enough, wasn't Thanos"—and claims that he was already planning to pivot to Doctor Doom (and that he'd discussed the character with Robert Downey Jr.) before the Ant-Man threequel underwhelmed us all. Either way, Jonathan Majors' legal issues meant Kang was out.
If Quantumania's post-credits scene was a sign of things to come, then this was likely for the best. However, Feige didn't share any insights into whether Kang's absence will be addressed or how the MCU plans to move on from a villain teed up as the Multiverse's biggest threat in Loki.
2. Where Things Stand With Blade
This past weekend marked six years since Mahershala Ali was announced as the lead of a new Blade movie. Fans have long wondered why Marvel Studios couldn't get the Daywalker back into theaters, and Feige has shared a pretty convincing explanation.
"We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on [Ali] and have him start killing vampires," Feige said of four failed attempts to relaunch the franchise. "It had to be unique and it fell right into the time when we started pulling back and saying 'only accept insanely great' and it wasn’t insanely great at the time."
He added that none of the scripts were good enough that the movie could be tweaked and improved during production, as is the Marvel Studios way. While Blade seems like a simple nut to crack on the surface, it's hard to fault Feige for wanting to take the time to get it right. Fortunately, it seems the movie is still happening and will now be set in the present day.
1. What The MCU Will Look Like After Avengers: Secret Wars
Confirming that the MCU's take on the X-Men will be comic-accurate, Feige pointed to mutants being a big part of where this franchise goes next. Helping Marvel Studios achieve that will be Avengers: Secret Wars, a movie that will seemingly reboot the Sacred Timeline.
"Reboot is a scary word," he explained. "Reboot can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Reset, singular timeline — we’re thinking along those lines. 'X-Men' is where that will happen next."
Feige later suggested fans "can look at the 'Secret Wars' comics" for clues about how the MCU's Secret Wars "very, very much sets us up for the future." In other words, it's the soft reboot we've been hearing about for at least the past couple of years, with a new MCU featuring the Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four. Some old fan favourites are also likely to be recast.