Cast your mind back to the start of March, when the entire industry was still going nuts over Ryan Coogler’s standalone Black Panther movie, and you’ll no doubt remember Marvel’s carefully calculated, and totally surprising decision to move the worldwide release date of Avengers: Infinity War forward into April – a full seven days earlier than initially expected.
It was a clever move on the studio’s part, as it helped mitigate the outbreak of spoilers by ensuring that fans across the world – save for Russia and China – were able to lay eyes on Infinity War during the same weekend. It’s also led many to wonder if they’ll do the same thing with next year’s Avengers 4, which is currently set to drop on May 3rd, with those in Europe and the UK receiving it the week before.
As far as we know, that still seems to be the plan, but a new release slate put out by IMAX has it listed for April 2019, which has, as you can imagine, started some interesting speculation online.
Before we get too carried away, though, there’s a very good chance that this is nothing more than an innocuous typo, as Infinity War‘s surprise shift to April has likely thrown some people off. Or, it could just be listed as April as that’s technically when it premieres – just not in all regions.
Besides, as things stand, Captain Marvel is locked in for March 8th, 2019, and we imagine Kevin Feige and Co. will want to open up some breathing space between the two 2019 blockbusters, lest they risk overwhelming the audience. Or, worse, prompting fears of franchise fatigue.
Then again, if Avengers 4 really is set to be this epic, groundbreaking conclusion to the first decade of the MCU, Marvel might just do what they did with Infinity War and push it up a bit to combat spoilers and ensure that everyone can see it at the same time. Fingers crossed, eh?