Nearing the five-year mark since Marvel Studios’ One Above All, Kevin Feige, surprised the crowd at SDCC ’19 by bringing Mahershala Ali on stage to announce a Blade reboot was in the works. It may be another five years before the vampire film sees the light of day. The film has been delayed multiple times as original director Bassam Tariq left the film in 2022 and at least five different writers have taken a turn on the script after original scribe Stacey Osei-Koffour parted ways with the project. Now, the project has taken yet another stake to the heart.
According to THR, Marvel Studios and Ali remain committed to bringing Blade to the screen but given all the delays, they are in no rush. Though Michael Green was the latest reported scribe to give Blade a pass, THR reports that Marvel’s finisher, Eric Pearson, has taken a cup of coffee on the film.
Currently slated to hit theaters on November 7, 2025, Blade could be one of the first casualties of the studio’s mandate to cut back on the number of projects released per year. While it was expected to enter production this Fall, there’s no telling how long a search for a new director may take which could see the film move to 2026.
In 2022, Marvel Studios’ Special Presentation Werewolf By Night was an unmitigated success. Michael Giacchino‘s 53-minute black-and-white feature paid homage to Universal’s classic horror films and opened the door for monsters to make their way into the MCU. However, nearly two years later, the studio has yet to follow up on that premise despite having a hotly anticipated film in the genre, Blade, in the works since 2019. Beset by a worrying inability to put together a script good enough to get the project up and running, a change in directors and the 2023 Hollywood writers’ strike, Blade has been delayed again and again, though it sounds like production will finally kick off later this year.
Despite the delays to Blade, rumors have persisted for some time that the studios was already developing a follow-up project, Midnight Sons, that would see the Daywalker team up with the cast of characters from Werewolf By Night, Moon Knight and, possibly, Ghost Rider to take a major supernatural threat. While it was originally rumored that Marvel Studios was hoping to reteam with Giacchinoon the project, other names, such as Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez, have also been tossed into the mix. Despite all the rumors, however, the project has yet to be mentioned by either the studio or a trade and until that happens, it’s best to let rumors be rumors no matter how interesting they may be. On that note, a new rumor about the project has popped up that, if true, could suggest Midnight Sons is on the fast track to the big screen.
Green’s impressive resume includes quite a few superhero properties in addition to Blade and Logan. Though he has the misfortune of having 2011’s Green Lantern on his filmography, he also worked on Smallville and Heroes in addition to writing for DC Comics. While we wait for anything official about Midnight Sons to come down from the studio (that COULD happen this summer during the convention circuit) we’ll continue to monitor the more interesting rumors about the project.
From 2013 to 2019, fans grew used to Marvel Television churning out seasons of traditional and streaming TV series that mostly consisted of 22 (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) or 13 (Netflix’s Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage). As Marvel Studios began to produce their own series for Disney Plus, episode counts dropped significantly as did total runtime. The studio’s first series, WandaVision, was made up of 9 episodes that added up to only just about six hours of content. To date, with the exception of the five-episode Echo, the studio’s live-action series have had either six or nine episodes that have been structured more like films than TV series. Moving forward, the studio’s production practices are said to be changing and a series that the studio has hardly addressed at all may be one of the first examples of those changes.
First reported to be in development in June 2022, Wonder Man will finally introduce one of Marvel Comics’ classic Avengers to the MCU. Yahya Abdul-Mateen ll will play stuntman turned super hero Simon Williams in the series which was written by Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine scribe Andrew Guest and overseen by Shang-Chi and the Legend of The Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton. Despite photos of the production making their way online, fans have questioned if the series truly existed or if they were experiencing the Mandela Effect. Now, another trade has provided an update on the series that should help alleviate any concern.
[Wonder Man will] be definitely influenced by the comics. One of the things that we’re excited about it is that it’s going to feel very unique. It’s not going to feel like anything you’ve quite seen in the MCU before. And the kind of stories we can tell on Disney+, which has been fun. Like streaming, serialized storytelling is a totally different muscle. So, we’re having a blast making that one.
The road to Avengers 5 has been bumpy but it seems as though things are smoothing out as Marvel Studios begins the march toward production. First introduced as Avengers: The Kang Dynasty at SDCC ’22, the project quickly gained momentum with Jonathan Majors set to lead the way as the titular villain, Destin Daniel Cretton signing on to direct and Jeff Loveness set to draft the screenplay. Originally slated for a May 2nd, 2025 release as part of the studio’s Phase Six plans, there were rumblings that the production on the project would kick off in late 2023. However, rather than see the project come together, late 2023 saw it fall apart entirely.
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.
With Levy’s first collaboration with the studio looking to be a sure hit, Deadline reports that Marvel has given Levy first crack at taking the job and provided him with Waldron’s latest draft of the script. While Levy ponders where the project could or could not fit in his very busy schedule and the studio waits for his decision, they are reportedly scheduling meetings with other talent to helm the project should Levy decline the gig.
For MCU fans, discovering the identity of Giancarlo Esposito‘s mystery character in Captain America: Brave New World has become their latest obsession. While many roll out uninspired guesses like Doctor Doom, Magneto, Mephisto and Norman Osborn, others are digging deeper to figure out who the “antagonist agent of chaos” played by Esposito might be. Now, the first look at the character’s costume has fans’ heads spinning.
Photographer Atlanta Filming, who has a long history of capturing photos from the sets of Marvel Studios’ projects, has given fans some interesting details to chew on in their Wiki searches for the identity of Esposito’s baddie.
From his sketch of the character and the look at the stunt double, it seems clear that Esposito’s character is decked out in tactical gear. That likely indicates he’s an assassin or mercenary hired to take out one of the film’s main characters. Recent reports from the set have centered around Sam Wilson being involved in a car chase which was comparable to those seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Could Captain America be in Esposito’s sights?
By Esposito’s own admission, his character is unlikely to have a major role in Brave New World, calling it a “tease” before the character returns for a presumably larger appearance in a streaming series. With that in mind, Esposito’s time on set may be coming to and end shortly, which may mean we’ve seen all we will see of his character. Perhaps, just maybe, the identity of that character will stay under wraps until the film hits theaters on February 14th, 2025.
For years, fans have dreamt of Giancarlo Esposito landing a role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Esposito recently revealed that dream had become a reality and teased fans that his character, which he hinted would be “new and original and fresh” would be revealed “sooner than you think.” He wasn’t wrong.
Wouldn’t you like to see me play a character in a Marvel movie who is original, and new, and fresh? So, mark my words: This will happen sooner than you think.
Giancarlo Esposito, CCXP24
Murphy’s Multiverse can confirm that Giancarlo Esposito is set to appear in Captain America: Brave New World.
A significant portion of Captain America: Brave New World was filmed in 2023 before the Hollywood work stoppage forced the production to go on pause. During that time, Marvel Studios execs determined that the project needed a major overhaul and brought writer Matthew Orton on board to assemble a script for reshoots. It would seem that Esposito‘s character, who appears as an antagonistic agent of chaos in the film, was added by Orton.
The MCU has knocked on my door and it’s a role you won’t predict. It will be teased and there will be a series afterwards.
Esposito has thrived as a disruptive force on the screen for nearly 20 years. The actor played arguably one of TV’s greatest villains as Gus Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and has since continued to make his mark as a big bad as The Mandalorian‘s Moff Gideon, the corrupt Stan Edgar in The Boys and, recently, Stanley Johnson in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. While he won’t be playing Magneto or Doctor Doom in the MCU, as so many had hoped, Esposito‘s role in Brave New World certainly matches the actor’s indication of it being one which fans will not have expected and it appears as though he’s set to be a serious thorn in Sam Wilson’s side.
Captain America: Brave New World hits theaters on February 14, 2025.
We have the best in the business working toward whatever the story might be. But until we’ve cracked it, we have a legacy to protect. The third movie was so special in so many ways that we need to make sure we do the right thing. This is the first time in this process that I’ve been part of the creative so early. It’s just a process where I’m watching and learning. It’s just a really fun stage for me. Like I said, everyone wants it to happen. But we want to make sure we’re not overdoing the same things.
-Tom Holland on Spider-Man 4
Watts helmed Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home, all of which were very successful critically and financially; however, the studios are said to be searching for a new vision for their next Spidey trilogy and, given the names that have surfaced as possibilities to direct it, it seems as though they are looking for directors who have a history with high-octane action. While he’s said to no longer be in the mix, Fast and the Furious director Justin Lin was reportedly considered for the gig. More recently, Bad Boys for Life and Bad Boys: Ride or Die directors Adil El Arbi and Bilal Fallah were said to be in the mix for the job as well. The directing duo can certainly handle action and have experience working with Marvel Studios, having helmed two episodes of the D+ streaming series Ms. Marvel. While at a screening for Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Fallah was asked to comment on the rumor and his response will certainly do nothing to dispel rumors of his involvement.
سألنا مخرج فيلم BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE 'بلال فلاح' عن إشاعات إخراجه لفيلم SPIDER-MAN 4 المنتظر
Clearly caught off guard by the question, Fallah took just a second to collect himself but in that second he may have given away the possibility he and El Arbi have at least had conversations about directing Spider-Man 4. Having worked with both of the studios behind Spidey films, El Arbi and Fallah do seem uniquely positioned to land the job. Should the two indeed land the job, it sounds as thought they’ll have a big job ahead given the rumors that Spidey 4 will feature both a street-level civil war and a meeting between Peter and the symbiote left behind by Tom Hardy‘s Eddie Brock.
Spider-Man 4 currently has no release date though speculation continues to mount that it will hit theaters in 2025.
In early May, Disney’s top dog, Bob Iger, spoke publicly about his plan to reshape Marvel Studios’ release slate. We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three,” said Iger, adding “And we’re working hard on what that path is.” That means that the release slate rolled out by the studio at D23 in 2022 probably isn’t something worth holding onto for fans as projects may be moving on and off the slate. According to a new rumor, one project that seems to be moving surprisingly quickly will be a sequel for one of the franchise’s longest-standing stars.
According to a new report by insider Daniel RPK, Marvel Studios is currently searching for a creative team to get a fifth film in the Thor franchise up and running. While the report did not include any potential writers or directors, it did indicate that the studio hopes to roll cameras on Thor V by the Fall of 2025.
After recreating the character over a three-movie arc (Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame), Chris Hemsworth has been pretty vocal about the portrayal of Thor in the latest installment, Thor: Love and Thunder. “I cringe and laugh equally at it,” said Hemsworth. “I think we just had too much fun. It just became too silly.” He’s also gone on the record multiple times to say he’d be willing to come back as the Odinson if the studio found a way to take the character in a new direction.
If I was going to do something again it would have to be tonally different. And we’d have to do something very drastic to keep people on their toes. Otherwise, it’s just the fatigue of those characters and those films, where people are like, “I’ve seen it.“
-Chris Hemsworth
Reading between the lines, it seems as though Hemsworth return as Thor is at least partially dependent on the absence of Taika Waititi, who directed the last two films. Interestingly enough, just as the studio begins a search for a new director, George Miller–who recently worked with Hemsworth on Furiosa–expressed interest in working with him again on the next Thor film. “I would work with Chris on anything. I really would. He’s a wonderful actor. He’s got the full range of all the skills,” said Miller. No matter who comes on board for Thor V, they’ll have plenty of source material from which to mine their next story and it shouldn’t be too hard to find a way to find a way scratch Hemsworth’s itch to reinvent the character one more time.
During a panel at CCXP24, Esposito shocked the audience with the news that he had reached a deal to join the MCU in a mystery role. “I cannot promise you it’ll be Professor X, because here’s what I think. I think that there’s something about being original,” said Esposito. “We’ve seen different versions of Professor X. Wouldn’t you like to see me play a character in a Marvel movie who is original, and new, and fresh? So, mark my words: This will happen sooner than you think.” As expected, Marvel Studios refused to comment on the news and the buzz around it died down…until Esposito reignited it at another convention.
While making an appearance at Phoenix Fan Fusion, Esposito teased a little more about his MCU role, saying, “The MCU has knocked on my door and it’s a role you won’t predict. It will be teased and there will be a series afterwards” before telling those in attendance he would “knock it out of the park.“
“The MCU has knocked on my door and it’s a role you won’t predict. It will be teased and there will be a series afterwards.” #phxfanfusionpic.twitter.com/RF5yjcHaqm
The news that whoever this mystery character is will appear in a series doesn’t give fans much to go in terms of deciphering who Esposito will be playing; however, it does indicate that whoever the character is won’t be a one-off and could be fairly important to one of the studio’s developing storylines.
Esposito’s dalliance with Marvel Studios has been ongoing and has been interesting to follow. After years of being fan-cast as Charles Xavier, Giancarlo Esposito reached out to set up a meeting with Marvel Studios in 2022. And while the studio wasn’t “quite ready to get into that conversation” at the time, according to the actor, they must have come around to the notion of Espositio joining the MCU.
I love how all this happens…[t]he fans come to me when I’m in line, a lot of comic cons, and it started with Dr. Doom maybe over a year ago. And then fans came and said [that I should do Freeze]…then it was Magneto. And these are fans suggesting to me what might be appropriate for me to do. And then, right, so the last year…people are coming and saying it’s [Professor] X. And they asked me, would you like to do that? I said I’d love to be in the Marvel Universe. And so all that got translated when the fan casting started to blow up that they’d like to see me play Professor X. It got so huge, I finally had to have my people call Marvel and explain that, you know, that this is a fan want and we would love to work with you. And [Marvel Studios isn’t] quite ready to get into that conversation. But when they are, I am here.
-Giancarlo Esposito in 2022
Esposito once revealed he was turned down for a role in the D+ streaming series Loki. “The truth of the story is this,” said the actor in a 2022 interview, “about four years ago I met with Louis D’Esposito who [is] in the television unit of Marvel. And they had come to me to play possibly play Loki on the television side. And so I did not do [that part], and there were reasons for it. I think I wasn’t the one who was chosen [would] be the honest truth. But I would have maybe liked to do it.” Esposito continued, “And then I thought when I wasn’t selected for that, that it would be great if I could be in a Marvel movie, not just a television show because I like films a lot. I love television, obviously, I had a great run in the television world, doing last year was four shows at one time and the year before five shows.” Now it seems as though the star will get a chance at both.
“Mr. Stark, you’ve become part of a bigger universe; you just don’t know it yet.” When Fury, Nicholas J. dropped that bomb on Tony Stark in the MCU’s first-ever post-credit scene in 2008’s Iron Man, the Marvel Cinematic Universe took flight. Over the next decade, the MCU expanded in ways nobody could have ever predicted. Through an onslaught of Easter eggs, cameos, name drops and references, the largest interconnected cinematic universe in Hollywood history became so popular that Anthony Mackie‘s Sam Wilson could show up in Ant-Man and everyone in the audience knew who he was….hell, they knew who Ant-Man was! So ingrained in the experience of the MCU was that connectivity that in 2018, Marvel published an MCU guidebook titled “It’s All Connected.” Fans fawned over every fragment of connectivity, theorizing which character might show up where and how each post-credit scene might set up the next big thing. Doctor Strange! Reed Richards! Mephisto! But then, a funny thing happened on the way to the Multiverse.
With the dawn of Disney Plus, the rate of expansion of the MCU increased. New, unfamiliar characters were introduced, causing a sense of disorder and uncertainty among fans. Entropic chaos ensued. Once the strength of the franchise, the MCU’s connectivity–along with a few less-than-successful projects–quickly threatened to cripple it. As Bob Iger returned to Disney, Marvel’s top creatives began to formulate a response to the dilemma and by the time Echo debuted on Hulu and Disney Plus in January 2024 and fans were introduced to the Marvel Spotlight banner, the studio’s solution began to become clear: the MCU would no longer be all connected but rather, through a series of moves behind the scenes, become à la carte.
Marvel Studios is now–at least in part–reborn. As the studio forges ahead through its uneven Multiverse Saga, fans will find themselves on more of a choose your own adventure journey that Marvel hopes will help keep attracting new viewers. Following Echo, X-Men ’97 became the first production to debut under the new Marvel Animation banner. This Fall, Agatha All Along will mark the debut of the resurrected Marvel Television banner. The hope, according to Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation, Brad Winderbaum, “is to “signal to the general audience that we’re creating a lot of options, and you can follow your tastes within this brand.”
There was a lot of pressure post-‘Avengers: Endgame’ on the public to feel obligated to watch absolutely everything in order to watch anything. Part of the rebranding was a signal to the general audience that we’re creating a lot of options, and you can follow your tastes within this brand. Some will be more comedic, some will be more dramatic, some will be animated, some will be live-action. Marvel is more than just one thing — it is actually many different genres that just happened to coexist in a single narrative.
-Brad Winderbaum
Even as the Mutliverse Saga moves ahead, the rebranding does not create different universes within the MCU. That would be messier and increase confusion. Instead, as Winderbaum points out, “the characters still live and breathe in the same universe, but the interconnectivity is not so rigid that you need to watch Project A to understand Project B.” In that sense, the experience, says Winderbaum, should become more akin to that enjoyed by comic book readers who can pick up a Captain America comic without worrying about what’s going on in the most recent run of The Avengers. “The hope is that, like the comics, you can just pop in anywhere and have a satisfying experience. We’re trying to dispel the idea that you need to do any kind of setup work to watch anything else.”
Iger’s return to Disney also came with a mandate that some of the larger studios–Marvel included–pull back a bit on the quantity of their streaming output. According to Winderbaum, that’s something that Marvel Studios had already begun working on. So, in addition to the reduced pressure to watch everything because “it’s all connected”, there’s also a reduction in content which should add up to an increase in quality and, hopefully, a better experience for the audience. “We were already, as of two years ago, adapting our process from being, you know, fill the service as fast as possible no matter what, to a more considered approach,” said Winderbaum. “I really like the idea of two shows a year, especially because we are developing more than we make. We used to treat the shows like the features where we’re gonna make a show and that’s it, we’re going to hit a release date, hell or high water. Well, it’s hard to do for a two hour feature, it’s even harder to do for, six, seven, eight, nine hours. So now we have a more traditional approach.” And so while the studio may have a lot of projects in the pipeline–like the LONG-GESTATING Nova series–there’s no guarantee that they’ll hit D+ soon, if ever; only that if and when they do, they’ll have been carefully curated.
Ultimately, the rebranding changes absolutely nothing for your average MCU superfan. The banner that hits the screen for a few seconds won’t stop the completist from watching everything and criticizing the VFX; however, the strategy behind the rebranding isn’t aimed at those fans but rather at drawing new viewers in without overwhelming them. For a studio that hopes they have a whole lot more stories to tell, that’s the only way to stay in the game for the long haul.
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