Avengers 4 title reveal to new characters, Kevin Feige talks future of Marvel Cinematic Universe

As Marvel prepares for the release of their latest superhero film, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the questions on everyone’s minds have less to do with the adventures of Scott Lang and more to do with the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially after the blockbuster success of Avengers: Infinity War. Doing the press rounds, Marvel chief Kevin Feige couldn’t avoid fielding questions about the MCU, and managed to provide enough new details for fans to obsess over.

Marvel and parent company Disney have already made it clear that the franchise will be overhauled following Avengers 4, due out in May 2019. The film will serve as a ‘significant conclusion’ for the current version of the MCU, and open the doors for a new bunch of characters to take over. Speaking to Gamespot, Feige said that the future will include, “Brand new heroes, new types of heroes, continuing what we see in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Black Panther, and Captain Marvel,” and the films will explore “Who a hero can be, and should be, and seeing all different types of heroes.”

Amid all this is the tantalising prospect of characters from the X-Men universe crossing over to the MCU, thanks to the Disney-Fox merger, which has been in the process for a year. At filmmaker Kevin Smith’s popular podcast, Fatman on Batman, Infinity War writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus said that Feige is probably having sleepless nights thinking about what he could do with all the characters.

The MCU’s future is particularly vague, considering how Infinity War ended. Half the universe’s population, and half the Avengers along with it, perished at the end of the film, after the villainous Thanos snapped his fingers. It has been rumoured that Avengers 4 will involve a time travel plot in which the surviving Avengers attempt to rescue their fallen friends. Feige told i09 that fans ‘could do the math’ as to why only the original Avengers survived Thanos.

Feige said that the new roster will be more diverse, eventually arriving at a point when more than half the Avengers will be women. “We want people from any background to be able to look at that screen and see themselves reflected, and just as importantly to have different types of people be inspired by people who don’t look like them, or people who have different backgrounds than them, and let them inspire them going forward,” Feige said. “To me, that’s the most important thing that we can do, and we’ve started it, and we’re going to continue it.”

He told ScreenRant that “it would be amazing to see all of our female characters the way we have seen ... most, never all male, but primarily male. I think we’re getting to the point soon where we have so many great female characters that those are just our heroes as opposed to when are they all female, all male. It’s just the Marvel heroes, more than half of which will be women.”

Marvel is currently filming their first ever solo female-fronted superhero movie, Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson. The character is said to have a major part to play in Avengers 4 and could possibly take over as the leader of the group in future films. A Black Widow solo film starring Scarlett Johansson is also in early stages of development, with Berlin Syndrome director Cate Shortland being considered.

But the biggest question of all has to be the title of Avengers 4. Surprisingly, Feige gave an approximate time that fans could expect an announcement. “That’ll be after the Captain Marvel teaser probably, announcing that title,” Feige told Collider. “It’ll be towards the end of the year with however we launch that film.”

Marvel fans were disappointed when the studio announced that it would not be participating in the annual San Diego Comic Con, but with Ant-Man and the Wasp around the corner, and then Captain Marvel, it’s not too long before Avengers 4 rolls around.

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