Major comic book movie news has been a little lacking this week, but we do have a couple of rumors relating to the next two Avengers films to bring us into the weekend.
According to MTTSH, the characters that make up the team in the upcoming Thunderbolts* movie will have a "huge" role in Avengers: Doomsday.
Possible spoilers from this point on.
This would back up a previous rumor which claimed that this "least anticipated band of misfits" will actually be revealed as the New Avengers (hence the asterisk in the title).
This doesn't necessarily mean that these characters alone will make up the next incarnation of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but it seems the plan is for them to form the basis for a new, most likely government-sponsored (we'll see how long that lasts) team that would officially activate after (or maybe during) the events of Avengers: Secret Wars.
Speaking of Secret Wars, Daniel Richtman is hearing that the movie is scheduled to film in the UK from March 2026 "to give room for the Marvel actors to film other projects in between." The scooper recently revealed that cameras will roll on Doomsday from March to August next year, with Spider-Man 4 reportedly set to commence production in May and film right up to October.
Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on May 1, 2026, followed by Avengers: Secret Wars on May 7, 2027. Both films will be directed by the Russo brothers, who 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.
The filmmakers revealed that Doomsday and Secret Wars will not shoot back-to-back during NYCC last week.
"It'll be similar, but we'll have a larger break in between the two movies than we did," said Joe. "I think it was four weeks maybe? Was it four weeks between Infinity War and Endgame?"
"I think it was a couple of weeks," Anthony added. "But no, these are not as separated as you would normally separate two films of this scale, but they're more substantially separated [than Infinity War and Endgame] by a year or so."
Have another look at some photos Downey Jr. shared to Instagram after the big reveal below.