In February 2023, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania writer Jeff Loveness described his next Marvel Studios project, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, as “the biggest movie in the world.” However, whatever “big, sweeping” ideas Loveness had for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty are likely lost to time as he was replaced as the film’s writer by Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron in November 2023. By July 2024, original director Destin Daniel Cretton had also left the project and was replaced by Anthony and Joe Russo, who brought along old pal Stephen McFeely to work on the script for what became Avengers: Doomsday. Two writers and a pair of experienced Marvel Studios directors later, it’s hard to imagine there’s much meat left on the bones of Loveness‘ original ideas.
I have this opportunity to write a vast, American epic–I’ll use American in a general term–but a big, American movie. I don’t take it lightly and I want to make it this big, sweeping and exciting, funny movie and I think we have the best actor in the world as the most complicated villain in comic books. So I can’t say too much, but we’re really swinging for the fences and I can’t wait for you to see what Jonathan does.
-Jeff Loveness
Loveness became a bit of a fall guy for the unfortunate bomb that Quantumania became and even if his entire story for The Kang Dynasty was scrapped, it doesn’t mean there may not have been some fun ideas in store. One early rumor about the film indicated that it would include multiple teams of heroes and now some leaked concept art for the film may have revealed the makeup of one such team.
One particular piece of concept art from Marvel Studios Senior Concept/Visual Development Mushk Rizvi’s now removed Art Station folder provides a look at designs for a bar scene that feature an incredibly diverse cast of characters.
The concept art, which is dated March 20, 2024, shows Benedict Wong‘s Wong and Chris Pratt‘s Star-Lord hanging out with Iman Vellani‘s Kamala Khan, Hailee Steinfeld‘s Kate Bishop, Kathryn Newton‘s Cassie Lang, Joe Locke‘s Wiccan and an unknown actor as Speed. It looks as though the plan was–and may still be–to introduce the MCU’s Champions/Young Avengers in Avengers 5, now known as Avengers: Doomsday.
As exciting as concept art is, it’s important to remember it’s not always indicative of what will be seen in the final cut of a film. Even if the scene made its way into the final draft of the script and was filmed, there’s no guarantee it wouldn’t end up on the cutting room floor. Furthermore, in this particular instance, this concept art was from nearly a year ago and there’s no telling whose script it was from but it’s definitely not from McFeely’s draft, so counting on it still being part of the plan for the new film is probably a bad move. Nonetheless, the conceptualized scene, which also features Doop, has fans excited online and is creating more positive buzz than most Marvel projects.
Avengers: Doomsday is currently slated to hit theaters on May 1, 2026.
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