Back in October 2014, Marvel Studios announced its entire slate of Phase 3 movies at a special event held in the El Capitan Theater all the way to this year’s Avengers: Infinity War and next year’s as yet untitled Avengers 4. Since then, that original schedule has shifted a bit here and there and adjusted itself to make room for unexpected new arrivals like Spider-Man: Homecoming but it has largely stayed the same. Meanwhile, as Marvel executed their game plan thus far, fans have been itching to learn more about the next set of movies after Avengers 4. So far, all we’ve gotten at that end is a bunch of release dates blocked by Disney for Marvel across 2020 and 2021.
In a recent interview with site Den of Geek, Marvel President Kevin Feige was asked when they’ll announce the next wave of movies in Phase 4 (or whatever it ends up being called). Feige quashed hopes of any imminent announcement by clarifying that they’d prefer to hold on until the successful release of Avengers 4 before putting out any more titles. Feige seems to want to keep the focus on the current movies before announcing anything more. So far, the only confirmed follow-ups seem to be the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming for July 2019 and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 for (May) 2020.
We won’t do anything until after this time next year. After that, I think we’ll announce where we’re going. But we did a very big announcement in 2014 where we announced a lot of movies, and we added a few movies to it after that announcement. But it really felt important that we deliver on that before we do a big showcase of whatever is to come.
As many would recall, the October 2014 release plan took some of the focus and limelight away from Avengers: Age of Ultron as media outlets and blogs immediately took to speculating about Marvel’s bigger game-plan of assembling the Infinity Stones and building up towards Infinity War. One could go as far as saying there was more excitement among some circles to see the post-credit scene of Age of Ultron featuring Thanos than there was about witnessing the destruction caused by Ultron.
However, Feige had more disappointing news to deliver. Against what they’ve traditionally done in the past, Marvel won’t be having a Hall-H presence at San Diego Comic Con this year. Hall-H is where most of the big announcements and reveals are made and 2018 was strongly assumed to be the year Marvel would show off some Avengers 4 footage or at least reveal the title, just as they did with Infinity War last year. Contrary to fan-expectations though, Feige feels they’ve announced everything they needed to, thus not requiring their presence at Comic-Con this year.
That’s one of the main reasons we’re not going to Hall H this year, is because Ant Man and the Wasp will have just been released, Infinity War will be out, Captain Marvel will have just finished filming, Spider-Man will have just started filming, and we’re not gonna be making any other announcements. So we’re gonna wait until Comic-Con next year.
That’s a double blow for fans all over. This probably means no Avengers 4 trailer (leaks) this July, unless of course Marvel changes their mind. And seeing as SDCC 2018 is still 3 months away, there’s still time for that. Are you disappointed at this news? Let us know how you feel in the comments below.
Avengers: Infinity War is in theaters now. It will be followed by Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6, 2018, Captain Marvel on March 8 2019 and Avengers 4 on May 4, 2019.
