Marvel CCO and Marvel Studios Head Kevin Feige made the press rounds this week while promoting Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and he had A LOT to say on everything ranging from Kang the Conqueror to The X-Men! San Diego Comic Con 2025 is taking place this weekend and with Marvel Studios deciding against a Hall H appearance in 2025, it was a pleasant surprise to get so much intel on the recent past and exciting future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This post will take a look at some of the biggest reveals with quotes from the man himself, as given to Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, and more!
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TRANSITIONING FROM KANG TO DOOM
Following the release of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (a major critical disappointment and a mild financial disappointment) and the arrest of Kang the Conqueror actor Jonathan Majors, the Marvel Studios team distanced themselves from the Kang character (the intended Big Bad of The Multiverse Saga) in favor of Doctor Doom, changing the title of the fifth Avengers film from Avengers: The Kang Dynasty to Avengers: Doomsday. Following up on previous reports that suggested the same, Kevin Feige revealed this week that moving on from Kang had less to do with the Majors drama and more to do with the potential for Doctor Doom as the Big Bad:
“We had started even before what happened to the actor happened, we had started to realize that Kang wasn’t big enough, wasn’t Thanos, and there was only one character that could be that, because he was that in the comics for decades and decades. Because of the FOX acquisition, we finally had it and it was Doctor Doom. So, we had started talking about Doctor Doom even before we officially pivoted from Kang. And in fact, I had started talking with Robert [Downey Jr] about this audacious idea before Ant-Man [and The Wasp: Quantumania] even came out. It was a long plan that we had to take one of our greatest characters and utilize one of our greatest actors.”
Is Kevin Feige telling the truth here? I assume that he is, especially given the way that Quantumania ended, as this quote might add more context to it. A lot of the complaints coming out of the film revolved around Kang coming off as underwhelming, as after supposedly killing more Avengers than he could keep count of, he was unable to defeat Scott Lang / Ant-Man. “Kang lost to ants” was what a lot of people took away from the movie, and there were reports that in early drafts, Kang was to have emerged victorious. Perhaps Kang’s loss was a sign that the Marvel Studios team had already pivoted? I don’t know … it really does feel like saving face on the surface, especially when the marketing for that film is reflected upon, but either way, what happened, happened, and the next two Avengers films are set to be very different than what we as fans initially expected.
Kevin Feige furthermore revealed that Michael Waldron is actively working on Avengers: Doomsday with writer Stephen McFeely. This comes as somewhat of a surprise, as last Summer, it was widely reported that Waldron had been altogether removed from the production. This is encouraging news, considering Waldron’s earlier influence over The Multiverse Saga, in penning Loki: Season One and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness for Marvel Studios. Waldron was initially brought aboard the fifth Avengers film to replace Jeff Loveness, who wrote Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. This will hopefully allow for what would be some much-appreciated narrative answers to how the MCU Multiverse does and doesn’t work, considering Waldron had such an influence over its inception!
In the end, all of this information shows just how altogether disappointing Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania really was for Marvel Studios.
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QUANTITY OVER QUALITY
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania was not the only disappointment for Marvel Studios in recent years. 2021’s Eternals was critically panned, as was this year’s Captain America: Brave New World. After 25 consecutive films being certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.com from 2008’s Iron Man through 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, there have now been 3 “rotten” films: Eternals, Quantumania, and Brave New World. While that’s still a great average, no doubt, it is also a reflection of Marvel Studios’ struggles post-Endgame, which furthermore includes a “rotten” score for the Disney+ series Secret Invasion and The Marvels emerging as the lowest grossing Marvel Studios MCU film of all-time, eclipsing 2008’s The Incredible Hulk; Marvel Studios’ second MCU move. Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger has repeatedly come out since his return to the company and blamed Marvel Studios’ struggles on being the simple result of too many ongoing productions, and Kevin Feige publicly agreed with Iger this week:
“We produced 50 hours of stories between 2007 and 2019. But in the six years since Avengers: Endgame concluded The Infinity Saga, we’ve had well over 100 hours of stories – in half the time. That’s too much. For the first time ever, quantity trumped quality. We spent 12 years working on The Infinity Saga saying that’s never going to happen to us. We always had more characters than we could possibly make because we weren’t going to make a movie a month. Suddenly, there’s a mandate to make more. And we go, ‘Well, we do have more.’”
Evidently, Kevin Feige is frustrated, if not outright angry over how the developmental process evolved under the Disney umbrella following Bob Chapek replacing Iger as Disney CEO. While there was a lot of hype and excitement over the prospects of Disney+ and the way it could expand the MCU initially, it sounds like Feige felt taken advantage of and spread too thin during Chapek’s tenure.
Feige went on to announce that budgets for MCU productions are being significantly reduced moving forward (by up to 1/3), and that going forward, we will only see 1-3 theatrical releases and as little as 1 television show per year.
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THUNDERBOLTS* AND DISNEY+ / MARVEL TELEVISION AND THE PUNISHER
Quality over Quantity is not the only blame for Marvel Studios’ struggles in the eyes of Kevin Feige, as he also seems to blame Disney+ and Marvel Television in general for dragging the MCU down. This was reflected in the poor box office performance of this year’s Thunderbolts* as he sees it:
“Thunderbolts* was a very good movie, but nobody knew that title, and many of those characters were from shows. There was that residual effect of [audiences going], ‘I guess I have to have seen these other shows to understand who this is?'”
Moving forward, it appears we are going back to very much how things were under the previous Marvel Television regime in terms of how the MCU works. Though all of the television shows this time around will exist as official canon, there will be very little crossover between the movie actors and the television actors, and the events seen in the shows will rarely (if ever) influence the events of the movies and vice versa. Kevin Feige clarified for instance, that the occurrences seen in this year’s Thunderbolts* will not be referenced in next year’s Daredevil: Born Again – Season Two, which will disappoint a lot of fans. This also dampens the hopes of seeing a Daredevil / Spider-Man team-up or a Kingpin vs. Spider-Man rivalry that fans have been clamoring for from happening any time soon.
Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle / Punisher WILL mingle with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man however, in Spider-Man: Brand New Day! Prior to that, Bernthal’s Punisher will appear in a Punisher: Special Presentation on Disney+.
That special is expected next year and like Daredevil: Born Again – Season One before it, will be rated TV-MA. From there, Feige stated that while The Punisher that we see in the Special Presentation in in fact the same Punisher we saw in Daredevil and the same Punisher we see in Brand New Day, in the Spider-Man film, the character will boast “A different tonality.” Feige also confirmed that the next Spider-Man film will be a street-level story:
“I think there’s a promise at the end of No Way Home, that for as sad as it is that Peter Parker is forgotten by everyone in his life, we are seeing for the first time in the Tom Holland Spider-Man stories, him being a proper Spider-Man. Him being by himself, dedicated to saving the city, and dealing with, for lack of better terms, street-level crime, as opposed to world-ending events. So when you do that, you say, okay, who are the other street-level characters that we’ve never seen him interact with? And of course, I love that The Punisher started in a Spider-Man comic. That great cover … I don’t want to say too much, but Destin [Daniel Cretton] … I will say too much; Destin is doing an amazing job right now on that movie, which starts shooting very soon. And he’s got eight or nine comic covers up on his wall in his art department that he is bringing to life in this movie, which is super cool.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day was recently pushed back from July 24, 2026, to July 31, 2026, and will now be released prior to Avengers: Doomsday at the end of next year.
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SUPERHERO FATIGUE AND GOING WOKE (?)
Kevin Feige adamantly denied that either of these terms are influencing the overall reception of MCU projects.
“Look at [James Gunn’s] Superman [which has grossed $426 million worldwide in just over two weeks and has been widely praised as I write this]. It’s clearly not superhero fatigue.” As for the assertion that Marvel is “woke”, Feige defended the brand: “Marvel represents the world outside your window. I’ve always said [that] before DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and Woke became a thing and after DEI and Woke became a thing – are we? … I don’t think so.” Feige expanded upon this by defending the person / character that invoked the most wrath out of haters: Iman Vellani / Kamala Khan; the star of Ms. Marvel; a 2022 Disney+ series that revolved around a young Muslim superhero: “One of the greatest bits of casting we’ve ever done. I can’t wait to see her [again].” Staying with Kamala, Feige refused to shed light on if / when Marvel Studios will produce the Young Avengers project that was teased at the end of The Marvels. Gotta say on a personal note though, I’m all-in with the Marvel CCO on this. While everything certainly has not been a homerun, Iman as Kamala Khan was / is, and other female / diverse characters that have landed with me (a white guy) in particular post-Endgame include Carl Lumbly (Isaiah Bradley), Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova), Simu Liu (Shang-Chi), Don Lee (Gilgamesh), Alaqua Cox (Maya Lopez), Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight), May Calamawy (Scarlet Scarab), Xochitl Gomez (America Chavez), Tenoch Huerta (Namor), and Chukwudi Iwuji (The High Evolutionary). I also enjoyed LGBTQ+ characters such as Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Sylvie (Sophie Di Martino), Phastos (Bryan Tyree Henry), Korg (Taika Waititi), America Chavez (again), Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke), Agatha Harkness and Rio / Death (Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza), and of course, the Pansexual Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds). Seriously, I don’t care what race / sex / religion / gender you are. I’m just not one of those people. Just do a good job / tell good stories. That’s all that matters!
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VISON, MEPHISTO, AND BLADE
Filming has wrapped on Marvel Television’s Vision project, which is rumored for a 2026 release and is set to (finally) follow up on The VISION’s story coming out of 2021’s WandaVision. The show will reportedly follow the synthezoid’s existential journey to uncover his identity and purpose, exploring the divide between his programming and the deeply human experiences that he now recalls. James Spader (ULTRON), T’Nia Miller (JACOSTA), and Emily Hampshire (E.D.I.T.H.) are among those cast for the series in human versions of previous A.I. characters, and the show is also rumored to introduce the 616-Universe’s Tommy Maximoff and continue select story elements of Agatha All Along.
As for Mephisto (recently introduced at long last in Ironheart), Feige had the following to say: “He was never part of WandaVision. We’ve talked about that. Matt [Shakman]’s talked about that. Jac Schaeffer’s talked about that. [Mephisto] was never part of WandaVision. But the enthusiasm with which he was theorized on that was certainly cool and fun to watch. And he’s another character that, pre-MCU, would have been hard to do. He’s a devil. How do you do that character? But he’s a formative character. He was a big part of Thanos’ storyline in the comics. So again, now that he’s here, the potential is clear.” When pressed to confirm whether or not Mephisto will return, Feige simply gave a definitive “Yes.”
Moving on to the long-delayed Marvel Studios Blade film that was first announced way back in 2019, Feige said the following: “We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on [Mahershala Ali] and have him start killing vampires. 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. There were three of four [scripts], two that were period [pieces], two that are not. We’ve landed on modern day and that’s what we’re focusing on.” Feige confirmed that Mahershala Ali is still attached to star as Blade and that Eric Pearson (who wrote Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps), is penning Blade for Marvel Studios.
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AVENGERS: SECRET WARS WILL RESET THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE
There is a lot riding on the next two Avengers films, which will have a lasting impact on the MCU, as Kevin Feige confirmed: “We’re utilizing [Avengers: Secret Wars] not just to round out the stories we’ve been telling post-Endgame, [but] just as importantly – and you can look at the Secret Wars comics for where that takes you – it very, very much sets … up … the future. Endgame, literally, was about endings. Secret Wars is about beginnings.” From there, Feige stressed the specific word “reset” over reboot: “Reboot is a scary word. 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.” The fact that he uses the words “singular timeline” also stands out to me, as this confirms that the MCU Multiverse will be a thing of the past coming out of The Multiverse Saga and a new “Sacred Timeline” (or whatever they want to call it) will be established. Upon this new singular timeline, all of the Marvel characters that Marvel Studios has access to will share the same Cinematic Universe, and according to Feige this will mean some re-castings, including the likes of MCU icons such as Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, with Feige comparing that process to famous Cinematic re-castings such as James Bond and Superman. He also stated that re-castings such as this will begin with 2028’s X-Men film.
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MARVEL STUDIOS’ X-MEN
There have been occasional references to mutants post-Endgame such as Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel and The Marvels) and Namor the Submariner (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), and of course, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and last Summer’s Deadpool and Wolverine, but in 2028 (it is assumed), Marvel Studios will release their inaugural MCU X-Men film, and Kevin Feige had A LOT to say about that project:
“There [have] been more X-Men movies than there were Spidey movies or Fantastic Four movies, so a lot has been done. But again, because it’s almost a comic legacy unto itself, there’s so much more to tap into and there’s so many sagas within sagas for X-Men … That’s part of what we’re talking about now is which saga to grow and build to while doing the most important thing, which is introducing all of these characters and giving them their due in our first film. I’m not going to speak to the makeup of the characters that will be in the first movie, but look at Galactus, look at Gambit in Deadpool and Wolverine, look at Wolverine in Deadpool and Wolverine. We want to embrace that which was not embraced 25 years ago when I was around on those early X-Men movies, which is those comic-accurate looks.”
Feige elaborated: “It’s official, [Thunderbolts* Director] Jake Schreier is doing X-Men for us, and we’re very, very lucky … to have him and very excited to have him. It’s all starting now. The script’s underway. Jake’s an incredibly smart guy, and he’s an incredibly talented filmmaker. We had a great experience with him on Thunderbolts*. And if you saw that movie, what he did with those character interactions, he also has his pulse on, shall we say, a younger demographic. He’s younger than me for sure, but he’s tapped into that in a way that I think was important for Thunderbolts*, much more important for X-Men. Because X-Men, as it was in the comics, will be a very youth-oriented, focused and cast movie.” Looking beyond X-Men, Feige revealed that the next Saga is … “A seven year plan. I think it goes to 2032. It’s on magnets, it can move around. [X-Men projects] have been a place to tell stories about young people who feel different … and who feel like they don’t belong. That’s the universal story of mutants, and that is where we are going.”
Does this mean, that contrary to popular belief, Kevin Feige is sticking around as the Head of Marvel Studios after Secret Wars? “Do I want to be making big movies for big audiences in 10 or 15 years from now? Yes, that’s all I want to do. Marvel is a great way to do that.” So, there you have it! He’s nowhere near feeling “finished” or “complete” or “satisfied” or whatever. Truth is, he’s longed to have access to The X-Men and The Fantastic Four, and now he has that, and he’s very, very excited for the future!
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THIS AND THAT
“That is nowhere”, was Kevin Feige’s response after he was asked about how far along in the developmental process that the Marvel Studios team are on bringing the Miles Morales character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Sony has their brilliant, genius, incredible Spider-Verse animated franchise going and until that finishes, we’ve been told to stay away.” (I don’t really cover animated projects here, but Feige’s quote here doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that those Sony Spider-Verse films will ultimately tie-in to the MCU in some profound way).
On the poor reception to Captain America: Brave New World, Kevin Feige insisted this was because it was “The first [Captain America movie] without Chris Evans.” Surely, in his view, the film spinning off the Falcon and Winter Soldier Disney+ series didn’t help either.
Amidst all of the re-casting that is to commence following Avengers: Secret Wars, Kevin Feige did imply that there will be some select characters from the previous era sticking around, name-dropping Chris Hemsworth as Thor and the fact that he will still be in his physical prime for another 10-years, and also suggesting “I think there is more fun to be had with [Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool].” Here’s hoping on all three counts!
Last but not least, Feige teased seeing MCU Earth-616 characters inhabiting MCU Earth-828 characters in Avengers: Doomsday: “Only speaking to the one we’re working on now, shooting now, for people who know the comics and know the word ‘Incursions’, those are Universes coming together. [In Avengers: Doomsday], we will see this world that we’ve introduced [in The Fantastic Four: First Steps]. We’re shooting on all the same sets that we built for Fantastic Four, and it’s very fun.”
In my view, there is a lot to be excited about in terms of the future of the MCU. I am beside myself in excitement for The Fantastic Four: First Steps and seeing Marvel Studios’ take on Marvel’s First Family and the more I hear and see about Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, the more hyped I get for both of those projects! It’s been hit and miss for a bit, but the future looks bright for fans of the MCU, and I’m here for all of it!
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