At yesterday’s D23 panel, Marvel Studios revealed that Kit Harington of Game of Thrones fame will take on the role of Black Knight in Chloé Zhao’s The Eternals. And while the news was well received by much of the MCU fandom, some filmgoers were disappointed to learn that the Jon Snow actor hadn’t been cast as a more famous comic book character.
Specifically, there was much speculation beforehand that Harington might be taking over from Hugh Jackman as the next Wolverine or playing a member of the Fantastic Four. If you ask Variety reporter Justin Kroll, however, it’ll likely be a long wait still before Marvel announces the next set of X-Men or recasts any of their newly acquired Fox characters.
Taking to Twitter, Kroll pointed out that Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has already set his slate through 2022, and is unlikely to get too far ahead of himself when it comes to developing future projects. What’s more, Kroll speculated that we probably won’t hear any concrete news about the Fox properties until some time next year.
This may not be the forecast that fans want to hear, but we have to admit that Kroll’s predictions fall very much in line with Feige’s own comments. In an interview earlier this year with io9, for instance, the producer remarked that it would be “a very long time” before we see any X-Men in the MCU, since Marvel Studios already had a five-year plan in place before the Disney/Fox deal was final.
But despite the lack of X-Men and Fantastic Four on the schedule, the MCU still has a busy few years ahead of it, starting with the release of Black Widow on May 1st, 2020.
