MARVEL Assembles More Dates; Still Playing Chicken with DC
During this week’s Television Critics Association event, Disney and Marvel made the announcement that the Phase 3 roster of films would be even larger than initially planned. No details on anything past the dates, but given that we know the full cast of Avengers: Age of Ultron will be in attendance during the Hall H panel, it’s likely that more information will spill out of that event.
The dates where we have titles:
- May 1, 2015 – The Avengers: Age of Ultron
- July 17, 2015 – Ant-Man
- May 6, 2016 – Captain America 3
- July 8, 2016 – Doctor Strange
Note that Captain America 3 is still going head-to-head with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice at this point. In the wake of this announcement, will Warner Brothers move off May 6th to an earlier date? Or will that be viewed as “flinching” in the eyes of the marketplace?
The other dates on the Disney/Marvel calendar:
- May 5, 2017
- July 28, 2017
- November 3, 2017
- July 6, 2018
- November 2, 2018
- May 3, 2019
The addition of three more dates will no doubt fuel speculation that Marvel will expand Phase 3 to include Black Panther and Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers), and we know an adaptation of The Inhumans is in the works as well.
Not to mention Sony and Fox will have their own franchise films out during that time, too. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 hits in May 2016 with the fourth installment on screens in May 2018 (Marvel and Sony traditionally trade years), with X-Men: Age of Apocalypse out May 2016.
The news comes after Marvel has held sway over the media attention this week with announcements of a female to wield Thor’s hammer, Sam Wilson (Falcon) taking over as Captain America, and a new exoskeleton for the “Superior Iron Man”. John Holloway will have analysis on this and other news in a separate post.
In addition to the new characters announced for the printed titles, Marvel also launched a new cosplay feature this week. Marvel Method: Cosplay follows Watcher host Lorraine Cink as she gets help assembling a Scarlet Witch costume for San Diego Comic-Con.
