Marvel Studios has started to deliver on the promise made by Kevin Feige in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in recent days: delays are coming! The first victim of that on the film side is Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, which was announced on Friday to be moving from late July to November 10. To make the news more digestible for fans, Marvel used the occasion to reveal the first teaser poster for the film, featuring the three lead characters:
As seen in the poster, The Marvels stars Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, reprising the role from WandaVision, Brie Larson as Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, from the first film and Avengers: Endgame, as well as Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan from Ms. Marvel. It was recently hinted that Monica Rambeau’s superhero codename in the film would be Photon, and in his interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kevin Feige confirmed what we were all thinking — Kamala Khan is going to steal the show in the film.
The story of The Marvels was already set in motion in the mid-credits scene of Ms. Marvel, which director Nia DaCosta shot while on the set of The Marvels, and that involved Kamalan Khan and Carol Danvers swapping places. Apparently, this will happen every time one of the three Marvels uses their powers.
Why The Marvels‘ delay is actually good news
This is not the first nor the second time Marvel Studios has delayed The Marvels. It was originally aiming at a November 2022 date, being later pushed into February of 2023 before it changed places with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and was bumped into the summer. Now, it will open a year later than it was originally intended. Principal photography began back in the early summer of 2021, so it’s been in post-production for a while.
The reason to bump The Marvels into the summer last year from its February 2023 date was probably because of post-production delays in terms of visual effects. Quantumania might have been a bit further down the line, and the studio probably thought it was best to give more time to The Marvels. Feige advertised in his interview with EW that they would be spacing out their projects a bit more, and this is exactly what is happening now.
There are a couple of reasons behind it. On the one hand, from the day Quantumania opened, we had a six-month window with three Marvel Studios films debuting in theaters — Ant-Man on Feb. 17, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 on May 5, and then The Marvels on July 28. But then, we were going to have nine full months without any movie, until Captain America: New World Order opened on May 4, 2024. Originally, Blade was supposed to fill that gap with its November 2023 date, but it’s since been pushed back to September 2024.
But perhaps most important to The Marvels, this gives Marvel Studios even more time to marinate on it. The studio has run into well-documented problems with visual effects companies over the past few years, and whether or not the CGI on the film still needs more time, we don’t know. But it’s been a common criticism of recent films that they were rushed and chopped down in the editing room (the script for Quantumania is rumored to have been much stronger than what the final edit of the film showed), and a few Disney Plus series also suffered from similar concerns.
After all, in 2022, Marvel Studios had to finish post-production on so many films and Disney+ series at once, it was almost impossible for them to pay proper attention to each one of them. By spacing them out, and following reports of only two shows (Secret Invasion and Loki season 2) guaranteed to hit the platform this year, Marvel is now putting their sole focus on getting four live-action projects across the finish line by the year’s end, plus one or two animated shows as well.
This is a bit more than what they used to do in Phase 3, but it’s probably nothing they can’t handle. For that reason, and despite the reception to Quantumania, there is reason to believe that they have seen the warning signs from fans, and will start course-correcting. Of course, this also means that the 2024 and 2025 schedules are going to be blown into pieces within the next few months. Good news probably awaits fans during San Diego Comic-Con this year, when Kevin Feige will likely introduce Marvel’s First Family to the world, but also the bad news is to be expected.
Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is definitely not hitting theaters in 2025, and we’ll be lucky if we get it in 2026. The next logical move for the studio will be to pump Blade into November 2024, Deadpool III into February 2025, and give Fantastic Four the May 2025 release, consolidating its position inside the Marvel schedule as the main release of 2025, and giving more breathing room for every project around it. 2025 will also probably include Armor Wars sometime in the summer or fall, as the Don Cheadle-led event film is supposed to start filming within the next few months.
Marvel is also rumored to be working on a third Doctor Strange film that would tie into The Kang Dynasty; which could potentially drop in November 2025 or early 2026.
We’re getting way ahead of ourselves here, but it is important to remark that more delays are coming, and it’s not at all bad news — it’s actually the solution to the problem and probably a sign that Marvel is looking into getting back in shape. As a fun exercise, you can also try to figure out the schedule of the upcoming Disney Plus series.
The platform will probably push for a third series to premiere in the fall, despite what The Hollywood Reporter might say — Ironheart and Echo have been in post for a long time by now, and if they fix whatever problems the studio may have with them over the next few months, at least one could potentially be in shape to premiere in the fall.
Ready for The Marvels? What do you make of all of the scheduling changes? Are you still excited about what Marvel has coming up, or are you simply exhausted from all of what we’ve been getting over the past year and a half? Let us know on our social media, and stay tuned for more on Marvel Studios!
Source: The Marvel’s Twitter
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