Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: D23

  • What to Expect from Marvel Studios at D23 Expo 2022

    What to Expect from Marvel Studios at D23 Expo 2022

    True to his word, Kevin Feige over-delivered at SDCC ’22. Fans were given a glimpse at the overarching structure of the multi-phase Multiverse Saga, including titles and dates for the next two Avengers films, The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars. Throw in the announcement of the 18-episode Disney Plus streaming series Daredevil: Born Again, the date for the Fantastic Four reboot and a few other projects, and there was certainly something for everyone. With so much news coming out of SDCC, it’s hard to imagine anything could top it; however, that’s what I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that Marvel Studios plans to do at this year’s D23 Expo. What would it take to top SDCC’s extravaganza? Let’s take a look at what we MIGHT expect when Marvel Studios takes the stage as part of Disney’s Studio Showcase at 10:00 AMPT/1:00 PM ET on Saturday, September 10th.

    Fantastic Reveals

    Perhaps the biggest move left for the studio to make would be to announce the director and cast for Fantastic Four and bring them out on stage. With a tentative release date of November 8th, 2024 having been set at SDCC ’22, the studio also indirectly set up a production timeline. Traditionally, Marvel Studios prefers to give their director roughly a year to work with the studios before production, so having one on board by early September works nicely. Disney has been targeting D23 for this reveal for quite some time now, so here’s to hoping they have found their fits for the Fantastic Four!

    DDC at D23

    avengers kang dynasty director

    While Avengers: The Kang Dynasty was announced at SDCC ’22, the news that Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton had signed on to helm the project was revealed via a trade report just a few days later. Cretton was already on board to write and direct a Shang-Chi sequel and serve as an executive producer on the Disney + streaming series Wonder Man, so by taking on an Avengers film, he’s become one of the most important creatives of the Multiverse Saga. Having him at D23 would allow them to officially confirm his work on The Kang Dynasty, announce a date and title for the Shang-Chi sequel, which should arrive in 2025 ahead of The Kang Dynasty and officially announce Wonder Man and give it a target release window.

    Holiday Road

    Unbeliveably, Marvel Studios has two holiday specials due to hit Disney + over the last 4 months of 2022 and has yet to officially date either of them. James Gunn has publicly talked about The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and Michael Giacchino has confirmed he’s working on the still-to-be-officially-named-but-called-Werewolf-By-Night special, but D23 should mark the first time fans really get an idea of what to expect. It would be shocking if fans didnt’ get to see some footage of both specials and if they weren’t both given release dates. It’s also reasonable to assume that the cast of these specials could be on hand, especially since in the case of the Guardians Holiday Special, they’ll be able to double dip and hype…

    Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

    Marvel Studios doesn’t really have “small films” anymore, but Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is going to see a massive publicity push from the studio and will almost certainly be one Marvel’s most emotional and talked about films since Infinity War and Endgame. If the cast is already on site for the Holiday Special, they’ll take some time to let the crowd salute them and likely show the same footage that was shown at SDCC. It’s a LITTLE early for this footage to become public, so expect this to be kept in the expo.

    A New Look at Wakanda Forever

    wakanda forever trailer views

    The first look at Black Panther: Wakanda Forever came at SDCC ’22. By the time D23 rolls around, that trailer will be 7 weeks old and there will only be 9 weeks left until the film hits theaters. That means it’s almost certainly time for a second trailer for the film and one that gives fans a bit more of an idea of what’s going on. Should the cast and creatives be on hand, it would also provide Ryan Coogler and Dominique Thorne an opportunity to discuss upcoming projects such as the Wakanda-centric streaming series, Ironheart and any other potential properties they might be attached to.

    D+ Series Updates

    Secret Invasion has completed additional photography and Marvel Studios has three Disney + series at different points in production in Echo, Loki Season 2 and Ironheart. Between Disney Plus Day on September 8th and the Studio Showcase on September 10th, it’s fair to expect major updates on these series and more. Marvel Studios could chose to finally address the casts of these projects, show some footage and give an idea of what might be going on in them. With Secret Invasion set to be the first D+ project in 2023, it’s very likely the footage from SDCC will be shown again and, POSSIBLY, even made public. However, any footage from the other series isn’t likely to hit the web.

    Since this is Disney’ own convention, expect them to go big on not only the D+ stuff already in production, but to continue to emphasize how integral the streaming service is to Marvel Studios’ plans by addressing the next wave of projects as well. Details and casting information could drop for Agatha: Coven of Chaos and Daredevil: Born Again and Feige could fill out the empty slot in Phase 6 that currently looks to be made up of 8 streaming series spread out from late-2024 through Summer 2025. This means projects like Wonder Man, the Wakanda-centric project we like to refer to as Midnight Angels and a half-dozen more could be officially titled/announced. This could include second seasons of Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight as well as a handful of projects that have yet to be revealed and that long-awaited update on Armor Wars. Again, expect there to be a heavy D+ push between Disney Plus Day and the Showcase.

    Major(s)-mania

    Jonathan Majors will be the face(s) of the franchise over the next 3 years. His appearance at SDCC had the crowd on its feet and it’s likely he’ll be in attendance at D23 and get a similar reaction. It’s also likely he will be there with the teaser for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and it is POSSIBLE that with that film only 5 months away from D23, the studio could let the hype train start rolling by making sharing it on social and YouTube. If Majors in on site, expect some MAJOR teasing about his upcoming roles outside of Quantumania. Majors is a generational talent and Marvel Studios knows it. He’ll be a busy man over the next 3 years.

    The Marvels

    the marvels ms marvel

    With a release date just shy of 10 months away from D23, fans shouldn’t expect a teaser to drop publicly, but there should be enough finished footage to give fans in attendance at the Expo something to think about. Maybe it’s part of a larger sizzle reel or maybe it gets its own part of the panel, but it’s hard to imagine Marvel Studios not giving this project a presence at D23, especially since it was largely absent from SDCC.

    Blade

    With production finally set to get underway in October of 2022, it’s time for Marvel Studios to give an official update on Blade. Other than finally getting a release date, the studios hasn’t provided any information on the film since it was announced at SDCC ’19. If Mahershala Ali were to pop out on stage and join Feige in announcing the cast of the film, it would really renew hype in the project.

    Full Phase 5 and Phase 6 Slates

    By the end of the panel, it is very reasonable to expect that all of Marvel Studios Phase 5 and 6 projects have been revealed. Much of that work will be done via the D+ announcements, but there are still 3 films (February 2024, February 2025 and July 2025) that haven’t been revealed. Expectations are that Deadpool 3, Shang-Chi 2 and Nova will fill those slots, but there could be another film that slides into one of those spots. However, there’s never been a more fluid time in production schedules than now, so fans almost have to expect dates to shift at this point. It’s also possible that since Feige basically has as much time as he wants (while the Showcase is scheduled to run 2 hours, the stage is open for another 3.5 hours afterwards), he could tease projects such as Captain America: New World Order and Thunderbolts by giving fans a little more info on what they might be about and who might show up.

    The Surprise

    Nothing contained in this article would come as a surprise to fans who follow Marvel Studios closely, thus the title and the premise that these things can be “expected.” What Feige has excelled at during these types of events, however, is dropping a bomb before heading off stage. At SDCC ’19, it was Blade. At SDCC ’22, it was the Phase 6 slate and the reveal of the Avengers double-feature to end it. What will he bring to D23? It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if anyone could tell fans ahead of time, but given the fact that by the time D23 hits fans will be aware that Bruce Banner/Smart Hulk has left Earth for Sakaar and the rumor that Disney would be able to distribute a Hulk film starting in 2023, it would be fantastic time for Feige to confirm that the rumors of a World War Hulk film are true! Early rumors had the film going into production late in 2022. Even if that slid into early 2023, it would still be possible for the film to meet the February 2024 release date. If not then, a pre-Secret Wars release date would be eminently possible.

  • Disney & Marvel Video Game Showcase Set for D23

    Disney & Marvel Video Game Showcase Set for D23

    All eyes are on D23’s potential film and television announcements, but the Expo unveiled today that fans should look out for more video game news as well. In a press release, the House of Mouse revealed that it will stage a showcase for its upcoming Marvel and Disney games at 1:00 PM – Pacific Time – on Friday, September 9th. 

    The digital presentation will be hosted by Kinda Funny’s Blessing Adeoye Jr., and will feature exclusive first looks at new content from Disney & Pixar Games, Marvel Games, Lucasfilm Games, and 20th Century Games. For those hoping to watch the showcase in real time, it will be streamed live on YouTube, D23Expo.com, and the social media pages for D23, Disney, and Marvel Entertainment. Anyone attending the convention will be able to watch live on the Premiere Stage, with an added presentation following the live stream featuring developer interviews, special guests, and exclusive giveaways.

    Titles fans can expect to see discussed during the showcase include LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which has been released but likely has more downloadable content on the way, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns, a tactical role-playing game that is set to become available in stores sometime next year. Disney Dreamlight Valley, a life-sim game releasing on September 6th, has also been listed as part of the virtual display.

    Curiously, the press release for the event also names the upcoming Marvel ensemble game from Skydance New Media as a topic of conversation. That game was announced last year as a narrative-driven blockbuster with an original story, but nothing has been made public since. Hopefully, D23 can provide some more exciting answers when the time comes.

    Source: BusinessWire, Twitter

  • Marvel Studios To Reveal Unannounced Projects In D23

    Marvel Studios To Reveal Unannounced Projects In D23

    Even as Marvel Studios continues to work its ass off to spoil fans with overflowing content, there is still so much about the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s future we don’t know. Thankfully, we don’t have much to wait as this September’s D23 will be the hub for many of Marvel Studios’ upcoming announcements. According to the D23 website:

    Filmmakers, celebrity talent, and surprise guests will join representatives from Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm, among others, onstage in Hall D23 at 10 a.m. to showcase theatrical and Disney+ titles. Going behind the scenes of these studios’ highly anticipated films, specials, and series, attendees will see exclusive footage and be among the first to learn what else is in the works.

    With this major event on the horizon, projects like Nova and Daredevil can be officially shared with the world. Maybe we can finally hear about the next big team-up everyone’s been wondering about. Maybe an official Young Avengers or Thunderbolts announcement now that those teams’ ranks are being filled. Maybe the first Secret Invasion sizzle reel. There’s so much in the MCU’s future that’s so exciting so make sure to tune in this September 10.

    Source: D23

  • The Future of Fandom Conventions and Studio Promotion

    The Future of Fandom Conventions and Studio Promotion

    Much like how the pandemic has put the “neutral ground” of movie theaters in jeopardy in favor of streaming services closely tied to different studios, it’s accelerated a similar situation in how these studios announce and promote their upcoming projects. We all know the pandemic dramatically altered the 2020 pop culture con season. Most smaller cons this year were cancelled and for the biggies, the convention landscape will likely never look quite the same. That’s not to say events like SDCC, New York Comic Con, and CCXP will never be held in person again, but this year we saw a trend that was slowly rising in the convention world finally come to the forefront of the media that may take away some of the relevance and buzz of the traditional headliner events going forward.

     

    When it became clear that the behemoth conventions wouldn’t be able to move forward as usual, they shifted online. This could have provided a great opportunity to allow fans who wouldn’t be able to travel to these events in-person to get the experience of being part of a big moment in pop culture fandom, and it did…but that opportunity didn’t come from any of the big-name cons. Instead, Warner Bros. decided to forgo their planned Hall H mega-panel for the DC movies at SDCC and host their own fully-virtual event in the form of DC Fandome.

     

    DC Fandome was certainly not a perfectly run event; there were plenty of schedule changes – namely, the last-minute announcement of a switch from a one-day thing to a two-day one (with the second day taking place two weeks after the first) – and not every major panel was a slam-dunk (remember when most of the Shazam! Fury of the Gods panel consisted of a Sinbad casting joke which was so oddly executed that many people, myself included, believed it was a legitimate announcement even days later?). But despite a relatively short amount of time for the event to be put together, it managed to excite and please fans with a pretty cool virtual stage-like set-up and did its main job of getting hype in the media and eyeballs on DC’s new trailers and clips.

     

    That’s more than we can say for SDCC, which occurred a month earlier to smaller-scaled panels with little fanfare or NYCC in October which was even less of a blip on the media’s radar. What some fail to realize is that in the past couple of years both of these events have been overshadowed to an extent by CCXP, a Brazillian event which has grown to about twice the attendance size of SDCC and in some years has matched or surpassed it in major announcements and exclusives, like 2018’s Spider-Man: Far From Home footage from Sony shown to attendees or 2019’s Wonder Woman 1984 trailer drop panel with an extended version played for those in the audience from Warner Bros. (Compare that to SDCC, whose only truly memorable panel in the past few years was the Marvel Studios one in 2019.) So the notion of major studios like Warner Bros. and Disney waiting to drop their goodies until the December event wasn’t out of left field.

     

    But then CCXP 2020 happened, with only minor news from Sony, nothing from Disney, and, in a stunningly disappointing example of quantity over quality, a six-hour panel from Warner Bros. with very little new information or material of note coming out of it. What was quickly becoming one of the top events for fandom news sunk just like its peers in 2020.

     

    Just like with DC Fandome eclipsing SDCC At Home, the disappointment of CCXP was quickly forgotten about when Disney put on their second Investor Day. The first, which was held last year, was when the company confirmed projects such as the first Marvel Disney+ shows, but this time they took the event to the next level. Clearly taking inspiration from DC Fandome’s format, Disney pretaped the entire event and made it appear to be occurring on a virtual stage. They didn’t have as detailed a schedule laid out as Fandome, but they made sure the fans knew at around what time they could expect the goods (AKA, announcements and trailers). And they truly delivered on that front, with two-and-a-half out of the four hour event being taken up by an onslaught of reveals and clips (some of these were only shown to the investors the day was said to be for, but Disney knew enough fans would be watching to make a point to mention that there would be plenty in store for them as well, even encouraging them to watch the event on the biggest screen they had available).

     

    This may have been the second “Disney Investor Day”, but it turned out to be more like a hybrid of the spring 2019 Investor Day and a D23 Expo, Disney’s biannual event for news and celebrations covering their entire brand that would not have been held in 2020 regardless of the pandemic, but had its 2021 edition pushed back to 2022 because of it. Disney knew fans were eager for news, and took the opportunity to drop it at a time when they would have everyone’s full attention.

     

    That last sentiment is what entertainment companies have been increasingly trying to achieve as of late. For most studios, dropping major news at an event like SDCC or CCXP where a lot of their competitors also have presentations runs them the risk of potentially being overshadowed, so it only makes sense for them to try to grab the spotlight for themselves. Disney had already jumped on this well before the pandemic with their annual Star Wars Celebration and the aforementioned biannual D23 Expo. And now others are doing the same. When E3, the biggest event in video games, was cancelled for 2020, the gaming companies simply put on their own events (which has made some question E3’s future despite plans for a 2021 edition moving ahead). Instead of presenting at SDCC, Warner Bros. took the opportunity to make their DC announcements their way, and now the DC Fandome isn’t just a single event, but a place for DC fans to “gather” for events online like the upcoming Wonder Woman 1984 virtual red carpet. And surely there will be more to come in the future.

     

    So while online events have been the talk of 2020 (and it’s possible they may continue in some form given the success of Fandome and Investor Day) the real story is that the landscape of major conventions – whether in person or virtual – is becoming less about general geekdom and much more studio- and franchise-specific. SDCC and NYCC have been the places to go for star-studded affairs with breaking news in the fandom world, but their format is ideal for most fans but not most studios in all likelihood they will continue to decrease in buzz moving forward in favor of full weekends of Star Wars, DC, Disney, or whatever other companies decide to grab the spotlight for themselves. So short of a big Marvel Hall H panel every couple years or a trailer or two being premiered in Brazil, if you want to be in the room for the biggest announcements in Hollywood you’d be better off saving for D23 or whatever in person event Warner Bros. inevitably mounts in the next few years than a trip to San Diego.

  • Disney Dates Next D23 Convention for 2022

    Disney Dates Next D23 Convention for 2022

    2020 saw the pandemic force the cancellation of almost every major convention that we have grown accustomed to as fans. While many cons opted to do some sort of online option, including the very well-watched DC FanDome, the general consensus was that fans and talent alike missed the con experience and couldn’t wait to get back. However, as we head into the Fall and COVID cases continue to creep back up around the world, it seems that at least one con we all expected next year won’t be there: Disney has announced the date for the next D23 and it looks like they’re sitting out next year.

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    The D23 Expo is a biennial event that began in 2009 and taken place every 2 years since. Last year’s Expo was a huge hit for Marvel Studios fans as Kevin Feige showed up to announce some unexpected new streaming series and casting info and setting fans abuzz. The expectation would be that they’d be back next year sometime but as experts continue to inform us that life won’t be quite back to normal by next summer, it seems Disney is taking the safe approach by delaying its next D23 Expo until September 9-11, 2022.

    While this news may come as somewhat of a shock to fans, it’s good to see Disney, who recently took Marvel Studios entirely off the 2020 theatrical slate, take a proactive approach. We’ll have to see what other changes are yet to come to the film slate, but as of right now we can expect 2022 to be an absolutely wild and jam-packed year for Marvel Studios with at least 4, if not 5, films set to release. Imagine them capping it off with a huge info drop of what to expect in 2024 and beyond (X-Men anyone!).