Marvel Goes Back to the Drawing Board: ‘Thunderbolts’ and ‘Fantastic Four’ Get New Polishes, ‘Avengers’ Movies Retooled
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 23: Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, participates in the Marvel Studios’ Live-Action presentation at San Diego Comic-Con on July 23, 2022. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
Marvel Studios is going into a creative overhaul, according to a new story by The Hollywood Reporter this week. The Kevin Feige-run studio has suffered from major blowbacks over the past 12 months, from significant box office and critical undeperformances to major PR blunders, mostly centered around Jonathan Majors—all of it in the middle of the long-feared “superhero fatigue” that is settling in.
However, Feige intends to come back stronger than ever and is taken methodical approaches based on what went wrong over this past year. The studio has several projects in the pipeline, but only three are coming out this year (besides the already-released Echo). First, X-Men ’97 will bow on March 20 on Disney Plus. The internal buzz is strong, following a trailer drop that delivered significant viewing numbers and response from the fans. Also riding the “popular trailer” wave is Wolverine & Deadpool, which comes out on July 26 and whose Super Bowl trailer gathered 365M over the first 24 hours (though Marvel is lumping in the 123M people who supposedly watched the 30-second spot that ran during the commercial breaks).
Finally, in the fall, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries comes out. The Kathryn Hahn-led Disney Plus series had scheduled five days of reshoots that were to take place in January. Apparently, they were able to complete the work in a single day. THR also notes that the studio is pretty bullish on what they have.
The 2025 landscape is a lot different. Right now, they have scheduled four theatrical releases and at least two Disney Plus series. Wonder Man is currently filming, and we assume it will be ready in time to be released then. Ironheart has been in post-production for a year and is yet to get a release window. Though they didn’t mention it in the report, it’s likely they will be undergoing reshoots at some point.
Also pending a long reshoot process is Captain America: Brave New World, which is returning to set between May and August; the Julius Onah-directed pic comes out in February 2025. Next up on the calendar is Thunderbolts, Marvel’s long-in-development response to Suicide Squad in which a team of villains and antiheroes will team up for a mission. Filming is set to begin in March. Lee Sung Jin picked up the baton from previous scribe Eric Pearson a year ago, but he’s not been the only writer since. The Bear‘s Joanna Calo gave a polish to the script recently. Apparently, previous versions of the story had the whole team dying by the end of the story — it’s unknown if this is still the case, but probably not.
Marvel’s 2025 gem, however, is going to be Fantastic Four. The Matt Shakman-directed reboot just announced its main cast, which had been rumored for months: Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm. Filming is set to begin this summer in Pinewood. Josh Friedman was hired last year to rewrite the script, and according to THR, Eric Pearson, who worked on Thor: Ragnarok, Black Widow, and, as mentioned, the first iteration of Thunderbolts, is the latest scribe to give it a writing polish.
Looking ahead, Marvel is already planning its next two Avengers movies, which Michael Waldron is writing and which are in search of a director. Apparently, the studio made the decision last year to move on from Kang the Conqueror after the box office underperformance of Quantumania, even before Jonathan Majors was found guilty in December. The character’s role in Avengers 5 and 6 will be minimized, if not stripped completely — at least The Kang Dynasty will be renamed. Loki season 2 introduced a perfect exit for Majors’ iteration of the character, and Dr. Doom is rumored to be introduced via the post-credits sequence of Fantastic Four. Will he be the big bad going forward? We don’t know yet, but it’s an interesting possibility. The part will likely not be cast until production on the film is underway.
And finally, there’s Blade. Mahershala Ali is reportedly happier with where things are at the moment with the script. However, four Marvel theatrical releases in a calendar year seems a bit much, especially after they will only have one in 2024. There’s also Bob Iger’s slow-down mandate to take into account, so Blade could be pushed into early 2026.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
