Marvel blew all expectations out of the water at its San Diego Comic-Con panel on Saturday. The studio not only confirmed that MCU Phase 5 is starting next year but also revealed every movie and series coming in Phase 5. We also got a preview of Phase 6, which will feature two Avengers movies releasing in the same year.
Of course, after Phase 3, the Avengers are now synonymous with directors Joe and Anthony Russo. Marvel picked the brothers to helm Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame after they successfully brought so many heroes together in Civil War. Unsurprisingly, fans held out hope that the Russos might return for future Avengers movies. They still might, but according to Kevin Feige, it won’t be for The Kang Dynasty or Secret Wars.
Phase 6 Avengers movies will have new directors
Speaking with Deadline this past weekend, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige announced that the Russos aren’t coming back to the MCU to direct the fifth and sixth Avengers movies. That said, he hopes to work with them again on other projects.
“They’re not connected to it,” Feige confirmed. “They’ve been very direct about that. We love them, they love us. We want to find something to do together, it’s not this.”
In case you weren’t keeping up over the last weekend, Marvel announced two new Avengers movies on Saturday. Avengers: The Kang Dynasty will hit theaters on May 2nd, 2025. Then, six months later, Phase 6 will conclude with Avengers: Secret Wars on November 7th, 2025. The Russo brothers won’t direct either movie, as we now know.
What would a Russo brothers’ Secret Wars look like?
We might never get the Russo Secret Wars, but they have talked about just how huge of an undertaking the project will be. Here’s what they told Deadline at the premiere of The Gray Man (which is the most expensive Netflix movie of all time):
The one series that we adored growing up was Secret Wars. It’s incredibly ambitious. It would be bigger than Infinity War and Endgame. But it’s a massive undertaking. Those two movies were very hard to make. So trying to imagine making another two movies even bigger than those two? We’re going to have to sleep on that.
The Secret Wars that the Russos are referring to was a 12-issue limited series that ran from 1984 to 1985. It was Marvel’s first-ever company-wide crossover event. Virtually every major Marvel Comics character played a part in the event.
Over 30 years later, writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Esad Ribić reused the Secret Wars title for an even more expansive and catastrophic crossover event which involved the destruction of the multiverse. Considering the latest MCU saga is called the Multiverse Saga, we have a sneaking suspicion that this is the one Marvel Studios will adapt.
