We’re less than twenty four hours removed from when Avengers: Infinity War officially opened in theaters, utterly obliterating the MCU box office record for one day haul, previously held by Age of Ultron ($27.6M) and earning $39 million from Thursday previews. Still, President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, is already fielding questions about the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and thankfully, it doesn’t sound like there’s a conclusion in sight.
While speaking to Uproxx, Feige disclosed that he really doesn’t have an exit strategy for the MCU. The Marvel Studios head honcho also expressed his doubts regarding whether or not the fans will ever truly get to see how it all ends, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to him.
That’s how I feel about Star Wars or Star Trek and the things that I’ve loved as I grew up. And that’s probably the way it should be as it gets passed down to future generations – parents take their kids and kids become parents, right? I’m a big fan of the Disney parks and those have been around for 60 plus years and the experiences keep being passed down the line.
The MCU is firing on all cylinders right now, there’s no doubt about it. Having pocketed nearly $40 million in one night alone, Avengers: Infinity War appears destined to easily outgross Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, which was no slouch at the box office, either, banking $1.3 billion total.
In short, there’s no reason for Marvel and Disney’s $15 billion franchise to slow down, something Feige revealed he has no intention of doing. He doesn’t deny that Phase 3 will conclude a specific story inside of the MCU, but reiterates that it isn’t “coming to a close, by any means.”
I will say, the entire intention of Infinity War and the next Avengers film next year was to have an ending – to bring a conclusion to 10 plus years, 22 movie narrative in a way that hadn’t been done before in this particular type of film. It’s been done before in films where there are a finite number of books, and they finish telling the story for the books, so they come to an ending.
Characters like Spider-Man or Batman or James Bond or Iron Man, who have been around for so long and are always refreshed in comic books or novels or movies, you don’t necessarily get that kind of an endpoint – and we wanted to do that, which is what these next two Avengers films are. It doesn’t mean the MCU is coming to a close, by any means. But it means the narrative that started when we began 10 years ago will have a conclusion.
To put it bluntly, each of the twenty two movies that will be released by Phase 3’s end will serve as a single chapter within a larger story. And with possibly the X-Men and Fantastic Four becoming available when the merger between The Walt Disney Company and 21st Century Fox is finalized, we could see the Marvel Cinematic Universe expand exponentially from that point on. In other words, fans have lots to look forward to post-Avengers: Infinity War.
