Since Avengers: Endgame’s dramatic conclusion in 2019, which ended the Infinity Saga and almost $2.8 billion in global box office revenue, Marvel Studios has concentrated on introducing new heroes and moving forward with sequels featuring some of its most popular characters.
But as Kevin Feige said at Marvel’s presentation on Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con, the Avengers are coming together once more, with back-to-back films scheduled for 2025.
Additionally, the studio is already making creative progress with at least one of the superteam tentpoles, despite the fact that many other films will come out before that.
The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively say that Destin Daniel Cretton, who directed the Marvel hit Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings last year, has signed on to direct Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
Cretton has been a part of the Marvel family for a long time. In addition to directing Shang-Chi, which made $432 million around the world, he also has an overall deal with Marvel, which he signed after the success of Shang-Chi. As part of that, he is working on a live-action series about Wonder Man with Andrew Guest, who has written and produced comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Community. He will be an executive producer and may even direct one or more episodes. He is also making a follow-up to Shang-Chi.
It is not clear who is writing the Kang Dynasty Avengers movie or which heroes would be on the team for a story that will help close out Phase 6. Feige made a plan that says The Kang Dynasty will come out on May 2, 2025, and Avengers: Secret Wars will come out on November 7, 2025.
Jonathan Majors plays Kang, who was first seen in the Disney+ show Loki. Kang will come back in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is set to come out on February 17, 2023. Phase 5 will start with the movie Quantumania. He Who Remains was Kang’s name in Loki, but Majors said at Comic-Con that there are more than one Kang and that the one from Ant-Man is different from the one in Loki.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which comes out in November, will be the last movie in Phase 4. Marvel has been slowly hiring directors for its next set of movies, which will be in Phases 5 and 6.
Marvel has confirmed to THR that Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) is directing Blade, which is set to come out on November 3, 2023. Julius Onah (Luce) is directing Captain America: New World Order, which will star Anthony Mackie as Captain America and come out on May 3, 2024. Jake Schreier (Paper Towns) is directing Thunderbolts, which will end Phase 5 and come out on July 26, 2024.
One of the most important jobs in Hollywood is to direct an Avengers movie. The first two Avengers movies, The Avengers (2012) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), were both directed by Joss Whedon. And Joe and Anthony Russo made the epic two-part movies Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
The Russos have said for a long time that they want to direct a Secret Wars movie. Most people assumed that they meant adapting the key comic miniseries from the mid-1980s. Marvel rarely just takes one of its stories and turns it into a movie. Instead, it usually takes parts of a few different stories and combines them into one. There is also a second Secret Wars, a 2015 storyline by writer Jonathan Hickman that involves the multiverse. This makes things even more confusing. In any case, Feige told Deadline after the panel that the Russos had nothing to do with Secret Wars.
