You don’t create the biggest franchise in the business and the single most lucrative series of movies in the history of cinema without having every angle covered, so it isn’t surprising to hear that Kevin Feige has the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s broad strokes laid out years in advance.
The company’s Chief Creative Officer has more on his plate than ever before now that the MCU is about to expand onto the small screen, with a huge roster of Disney Plus exclusives set to start rolling out from Friday when WandaVision premieres. There are currently twelve feature films, ten TV shows, two animated spinoffs and a holiday special on course to arrive before the end of 2023, and in a recent interview, Feige admitted that he knows where the interconnected superhero mythology is headed for a good couple of years after that.
“To varying degrees of specificity, it’s always about five to six years out versus what we’ve announced. So whatever that takes us to.”
In terms of locked in release dates, nothing is confirmed after Captain Marvel 2 hits theaters in November 2022. However, we already know that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Fantastic Four, Deadpool 3 and Blade are all in active development, and based on Marvel’s recent strategy of upping the pace to at least three movies a year, that would only take us to the end of 2024 in theory, so there are still plenty of surprises in store.
On the Disney Plus front, we’ve got six projects debuting before the end of 2021, so we could realistically be seeing twice as much content on the small screen as we do from the theatrical side of things. Based on the fact that there are 25 titles coming by the time 2023 is over, then, it’s almost impossible to even theorize about what the MCU has bubbling away on the back burner for a further three years after that.