Marvel Studios’ Deadpool 3 has reportedly vacated its release date. Deadline reports that the superhero flick will no longer make its previously announced May 2024 release date. This, of course, is due to the ongoing actors strike. The outlet further reports that, even if the strike should be resolved soon, the film isn’t expected to resume production until early 2024.
It’s thought that Captain America: Brave New World, which was set for a July release, could move up to May 3rd. That film, unlike Deadpool 3, managed to finish production prior to the strike. However, nothing has been decided as of now. Should the film move, that would open up the July 26th date, as well as the December 20th date, which originally belonged to the delayed Thunderbolts film.
The ongoing strike is expected to impact even more films, so it’s likely we’ll see even more films pushed back soon. Until the studios opt to finally meet the demands of the actors.
Despite some positive momentum in the immediate aftermath of the settlement of the WGA strike, actors remain on strike as negotiations between SAG and AMPTP have broken down once again. As such, productions for screens both big and small remain on hold and with the strike now looking like it might drag into November or beyond, 2024 release dates are certainly in jeopardy. One project with such a date is Marvel Studios Deadpool 3 which was already deep in production in London when the strikes shut everything down. Should the SAG strike resolve soon, could the Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman team-up make its May 3rd, 2024 release date?
It doesn’t sound good, according to director Shawn Levy. In a recent interview with Yahoo!, Levy, who worked with Reynolds on Free Guy and The Adam Project and with Jackman on Real Steel, admitted that while “half the movie” has been shot and edited, he’s uncertain if they can make the date…or if the film is even still slated for May 3rd.
I wish I knew. I don’t even know if we officially have [a release date]. I know we were gonna be May 3. Certainly, the actors’ strike and the long pause in production have put that release date in true risk. We’ve shot half the movie. I’ve edited half the movie. We’re dying to get back to work and get this movie out next year.
Shawn Levy on the chances that Deadpool 3 makes its release date
After reshuffling its entire release slate in June, Disney has remained silent about what to expect in 2024 and beyond since, even skipping SDCC where they’ve often had a big presence. Should cameras roll on Deadpool 3 again in 2023, it might be possible for the film to make the May 3rd date; however, given recent concerns with VFX workers at Marvel Studios, it seems more likely that it might end up being pushed down the road a bit. Perhaps it might find itself filling the staked-out July 26th, 2024 release date that once belonged to Thunderbolts (which will certainly not end up in theaters until 2025) and is now set aside for Captain America: Brave New World. As fun as speculating is, however, it’s fruitless to think too hard about all these dates until the SAG strike is resolved AND cameras start to roll again.
As Marvel Studios looks to completely overhaul how it produces its streaming series, one of its most anticipated projects is getting a complete creative retooling. According to a new report from THR’s Borys Kit, the creative team behind Daredevil: Born Again, which was announced at SDCC ’22 and began production earlier this year, will be entirely replaced.
THR’s report explains that the lengthy shutdown caused by the WGA and SAG strikes gave Marvel Studios One Above All, Kevin Feige, and the executive producers of Daredevil: Born Again time to evaluate the work that had been done on the show and come to the conclusion that the direction it was headed in wasn’t one in which they wanted to continue. As a result, head writers Matt Corman and Chris Ord were cut loose along with the directors of each episode. While it’s expected that some of the completed footage will be used, the retooling will be significant and Marvel Studios is on the look for new writers and directors. The hope is that the new team will align better with the original intent behind all Marvel’s projects which is to respect the source material.
The WGA and SAG strikes shut down Hollywood for several months and in the absence of genuine news, a deluge of liquified bullshit ran wild. Marvel Studios long-gestating Fantastic Four was the subject of many such rumors, including one that indicated director Matt Shakman had departed the project. It looks as though that rumor–like many of the other rumors that have made the rounds since July–has been dispelled as Shakman provided an encouraging update on the project in an interview with Collider.
From the sounds of the interview, it seems unlikely that there was ever any chance of Shakman bailing on Fantastic Four. “Absolutely having a great time,” said Shakman when asked how his work on Marvel Studios First Family project was going. “It’s a dream of mine to be able to work on that. I’ve loved those characters since I was little. It’s such an awesome world to be in,” he explained. “The script is awesome, the characters are brilliant. I’m super excited. I’m obviously very happy now that the writers’ strike has resolved in such a good way, and we’re able to reunite with Josh Friedman, our amazing screenwriter. I’m really hoping for a fair and equitable resolution to the actors’ strike soon, too. Keeping our fingers crossed. But we’re going! We’re a snowball heading downhill. It’s awesome. It’s got a lot of momentum. It’s really fun.“
After updating the post-WGA status of the script, Shakman revealed that the project will be ready to go in front of cameras in 2024, “probably in the spring” at Pinewood Studios in London. The director also explained that the film should be able to make its projected start date because while the WGA and SAG strikes were ongoing, work continued with visual effects and production design crews to build the right mix for the world that the Fantastic Four will inhabit.
We have been nonstop. Despite the strikes, yes, we’ve been working with the effects and with production design and building our world, and that’s been incredibly exciting. You know, how do you translate those skills into live-action in dynamic ways? Because some things that work beautifully in John Byrne and Jack Kirby are a little tougher when you’re filming them. How do you make sure that things are exciting but also grounded in a scientific thing, which is also part of the Fantastic Four that I love? There’s some stuff I’m super excited about. I can’t say too much, you know?
Matt Shakman on the world building of his Fantastic Four film
While Shakman couldn’t give any updates on casting, he was pleased to heap more praise on the new script. “It’s different in so many ways,” Shakman said of Friedman’s rewrite. “I wish I could be specific. I wish I could say more. But we are doing things very differently from a story standpoint, from an approach to the filmmaking standpoint, that really fits the material. I wish I could say more. I would love to, but I can’t. But I think it’s going to be unlike anything you’ve seen before, and certainly unlike anything at Marvel that you’ve seen before.” Given the importance of this project not only to the Multiverse Saga but the continued health of the MCU, setting it apart not only from previous big-screen iterations of the team but other teams already in place is perhaps the most encouraging update fans could have hoped for.
After debuting in 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Dominique Thorne’s Riri Williams is set to take on her own solo adventure in the Disney Plus streaming series Ironheart. While a new listing at the U.S. Copyright Office points to it being quite a while before that series hits the streamer, some new information about the series has come to light.
Though it’s not set to stream for another 2 years, a new synopsis for Ironheart–along with some additions to the main cast–provides a little more insight into what to expect. The series is described as one “in which charming teenage super genius Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) returns from MIT to her hometown of Chicago in her iron suit and begins to unravel threads that bring danger and adventure to her doorstep.” While it doesn’t give away much, the synopsis does at least place the setting of Ironheart AFTER the events of Wakanda Forever, clearing up a subject about which there had been some debate.
The filing also fills out the series’ cast a bit more though it’s not quite as revealing as a similar filing that was made for Daredevil: Born Again. Solo: A Star Wars Story’s AldenEhrenreich is listed as Joe McGillicuddy which is almost certainly an alias or throwaway name as it’s widely believed the actor had been cast as Ezekiel Stane, the son of Jeff Bridges‘ Iron Man villain, Obadiah Stane. Manny Montana (Cousin John) and Shea Couleé (Slug) look to be members of the crew of Anthony Ramos’ Parker Robins with Couleé likely a version of Marvel Comics Ulysses Lugman and Montana a version of John King, the actual cousin of Robbins.
Anji White looks to be portraying Riri’s mother, Ronnie, while Lyric Ross looks to be taking on the role of Riri’s best friend, Natalie, who was shot and killed in front of Riri when she was 13. The Many Saints of Newark actor Matthew Elam is listed as Xavier Washington, who seems to be an original character and may end up as a love interest for Riri. Interestingly enough, Regan Aliyah, who joined the cast in August of 2022 and was rumored to be set to portray Zelma Stanton, is absent from the cast list.
Despite their efforts to conceal his identity here, there’s really no mystery to Sacha Baron Cohen’s “mystery man” as it’s been widely reported he will be portraying Mephisto. His presence–and that of the Hood–sets up Ironheart as a unique magic vs. science that should thrill fans when it arrives in 2025.
After getting off to a very public start of production in New York City, Daredevil: Born Again moved out of the eye of the public for some time before being shut down in the midst of the WGA strike. With the resolution of that strike and some good vibes being generated around a settlement of the SAG strike, the big wheel is starting to spin again at Marvel Studios and some new information about the anticipated series has come to light.
In the filing, Daredevil: Born Again is described as a story that sees “longtime rivals Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) try to leave behind their darker alter-egos to serve the people of New York only to have their pasts catch up to them.” Given all the uncertainty about just how this series ties to Netflix’s Daredevil, it’s eye-catching to see Murdock and Fisk described as “longtime rivals.”
The synopsis may be the least interesting bit of information found in the filing, however, as it not only confirms quite a few rumored castings but also reveals several actors and characters with major Marvel Comics ties. Confirmed are the castings of MargaritaLevieva as Heather Glenn and Nikki M. James as Kristen McDuffie, each of whom was a love interest of Murdock’s in the Marvel Comics. Of major interest is the listing of Michael Gandolfini as a character named Daniel Blade, Arty Froushan as Buck Cashman and Genneya Walton as BB Urich.
It has been rumored that Gandolfini is playing a young Wilson Fisk in flashbacks and “Daniel Blade” is not an existing Marvel Comics character, so there could be some alias work at play there. While Buck Cashman, a superpowered government special operative, has over 30 appearances as a supporting character in Daredevil comics, the most interesting name of the group is BB Urich. While there’s no BB Urich in the pages of Marvel Comics, it’s possible that Walton could be playing the daughter of Ben Urich, one of Daredevil’s most important supporting characters in the comics who was played by Vondie Curis-Hall in the Netflix Daredevil series. Urich was killed by Kingpin in that series so if Walton were to be playing his daughter, her inclusion may well line up with the idea of Fisk’s past catching up with him.
Whatever the case, the filing also indicates the show isn’t expected to stream until January 2025 at the earliest which means fans will have a long wait to find out exactly what’s going on in Daredevil: Born Again.
The recently resolved WGA strike and the yet-to-be-resolved SAG strike have taken a toll on Marvel Studios’ streaming plans. Streaming series such as Daredevil: Born Again and Wonder Man were forced to shut production down which began a game of dominoes with the once robust slate of programming. Without a solid idea of when series would resume production, much less complete it, the studio began to reshuffle its plans to make sure consumers would have something to consume in 2024. As a result, Echo, a finished product, was bumped out of November 2023 and into January 2024 and other series’ release dates, such as those for Agatha: Coven of Chaos and Ironheart, faced some serious uncertainty. Now, as the future of production schedules begins to become a bit clearer, some clarity around the release of these projects may have gained some clarity as well.
According to multiple filings with the US Copyright office, originally found by @ScarletWitchUpd, Marvel Studios has begun to plan out their 2024 and 2025 streaming schedules a little more specifically.
While these dates must certainly continue to be taken as tentative for the time being, it seems the current plan is to release the first episode of Agatha: Darkhold Diaries on September 29, 2024, the first episode of Daredevil: Born Again in January 2025 and the first episode of Ironheart on September 3, 2025. The late 2025 release date for Ironheart comes as quite a shock considering principal photography on the series wrapped in November 2022 and a good deal of footage was shown off at D23 2022 in Anaheim.
If these dates should hold–or even be relatively accurate–it also speaks volumes about Marvel Studios plans for series such as Wonder Man and Vision Quest. As it stands, it would seem that neither of those two series would be on the books before 2026. Given the studio once had eight unannounced series (of which Wonder Man and Vision Quest were two) set to stream between the Fall of 2024 and the Summer of 2025 it will interesting to see just how much fat has been trimmed from the slate since Bob Iger returned.
It’s no secret that the Doctor Strangesequel that made its way into theaters in 2022 was miles away from the film that was originally pitched by the director of the first film, Scott Derrickson. When Derrickson and Marvel Studios parted ways, the rumor mill churned out the idea that departure stemmed from the director being told his pitch was “too creepy.” That rumor was squashed by Marvel Studios One Above All, Kevin Feige, and never really made much sense anyway since the studio went on to work with Sam Raimi, who inserted plenty of creepy stuff into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That doesn’t mean, however, that Derrickson, who has directed horror movies such as The Black Phone, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Sinister, didn’t have creepy ideas in mind for the sequel.
In an interview with The Playlist, Derrickson opened up about the reasons he and Marvel Studios chose to part ways and his pitch for the film. “All I can say is that what we said publicly is exactly the truth,” said Derrickson. “We had real creative differences. You know, the movie I wanted to make and how I wanted to make it was different than–it was just increasingly obvious that we were pulling against each other. And that’s how you make a really bad movie, I think. When the producer or the studio and the filmmaker are making different movies, you end up with a monstrosity and, you know, that’s why I had to bounce.”
As for what the movie Derrickson wanted to make entailed, the director told The Playlist that is was an “extreme departure from the first film” and “a genuine horror film of sorts.” Concept art for Derrickson’s version of the sequel included designs for Nightmare, a Fear Lord who has served as one of Strange’s longest-lasting antagonists in the comics. So what becomes of all those concepts and ideas? As it turns out, Derrickson explains “there’s no bad blood” over his departure, backing up his previous comments about being open to returning to work with the studio. While it seems unlikely his pitch would line up with what Doctor Strange 3 seems to be about, it’s possible it might find life in whatever comes next for the MCU following the Multiverse Saga.
Though it’s undoubtedly at least partially revisionist, Marvel Studios has a history of success that seems strongly weighted by the Infinity Saga. The internet is full of talking heads who will tell you that following Avengers: Endgame, the MCU just hasn’t been the same and that the quality of the projects, both theatrical and streaming, has fallen off drastically. 2023 has added fuel to the fire with projects such as Ant-Man: Quantumania and Secret Invasion failing to impress the majority of fans–and even fewer critics–leading to an even louder refrain of “The MCU is dead” than ever before. Leave it to the ultimate agent of chaos and the most entropic entry in the Multiverse Saga to date to restore order to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The God of Mischief has heard your concerns and Season 2 of Loki answers them authoritatively.
Picking up directly where Season 1 left off, Loki quickly reframes what fans thought happened in the prior season’s cliffhanger and puts Loki up against the clock. As the MCU builds towards an adaptation of Jonathan Hickman’s 2015 Secret Wars, the first episode–and then again the first four–certainly have the feel of the Time Runs Out prelude Hickman weaved through his Avengers and New Avengers titles. While Season 2 of Loki is certainly no adaptation of those–indeed it seems not to be an adaptation of any particular comic run or set of stories but rather an original idea from the production/writing team of Michael Waldron and Eric Martin–the first four episodes are fast-paced, intense and make it very clear that time is running out for all time. Getting down to brass tacks, the premise of Season 2 is this: the death of He Who Remains has created a multiverse that the TVA simply is not prepared to manage.
Starting with but certainly not limited to that premise, it’s amazing just how often these first four episodes of Season 2 of Loki work as an allegory for the criticisms faced by Marvel Studios. As He Who Remains’ death allowed the timeline to break free and grow into something far too large and chaotic for the TVA to handle, so has the Multiverse Saga opened the doors to criticism about Kevin Feige and co. potentially adopting a quantity over quality approach with, at one point, 8 projects planned in a calendar year. The technological MacGuffin of the first four episodes, a Multiplier that allows the Temporal Loom to be able to collar and manage the new timelines, provides the impetus for Loki and Mobius to take a trip through time and allows for the introduction of Jonathan Majors‘ Victor Timely. As the buddy cop duo sets off to find a Variant of the man who built the TVA to restore it to its rightful status as a timespace behemoth, so has Bob Iger returned from retirement with a renewed focus on curating and managing projects and characters amid jeers that there’s simply too much content for fans to consume. And as an all-new, all-different Loki is mocked, reminded that he’s a villain, not a hero, and told to stick to what he’s always done, so too do the critics hammer away at Marvel Studios for breaking away from the “Marvel formula.” Much as the future of Marvel Studios seems up for grabs, the first four episodes of Loki’s second season end with a truly shocking cliffhanger that will leave fans suspended in uncertainty…but not before a return to form and a reminder of what these streaming series should be.
Like its predecessor, Season 2 of Loki allows Tom Hiddleston all the room in the Multiverse to explore the nooks and crannies of the title character. Hiddleston has filled the godly shoes for well over a decade now and as easy as it might be to question what else there might be left to do with Loki, the first four episodes–and Hiddleston’s continued brilliance in the role–provide plenty of answers. Keeping in mind that this particular Variant of Loki, Variant L1130, was created when he escaped with the Tesseract in the aftermath of the 2012 Battle of New York during a botched effort by the Avengers during their time heist, allows the audience to truly see the realtime (sort of, since it technically takes place out of time) evolution of the character. Not far removed from seeking to subjugate all of humanity, Loki now seeks glorious purpose in keeping them free and, as such, Hiddleston finds space for an empathic Loki who recognizes the true beauty and power of humanity–a truly heroic version of the character, though thanks to some fun plot devices is able to get back to some fun magical mischief.
However, Season 2 is not simply the Tom Hiddleston show. So much of what made Season 1 work so well was the chemistry between Hiddleston and his co-stars, specifically Owen Wilson and Sophia Di Martino and, thankfully, a new creative team did nothing to change that. The Loki-Mobius dynamic is just as strong as always and the fractured relationship between Loki and Sylvie allows for an even deeper exploration of both characters. The brilliant addition of Ke Huy Quan as TVA tech guruOuroboros will rightfully draw plenty of praise as Quan is an absolute joy in his surprisingly extended role; however, don’t underestimate Rafael Cassl’s saucy X-5/Brad Wolfe who ebbs and flows throughout the first four episodes as an agent of chaos in his own right. Majors‘ brings a definite strangeness to Victor Timely, who isn’t exactly what you think he might be and returners Wunmi Mosaku, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Tara Strong all get more to do to the benefit of the project as a whole.
As is always the case with pre-release screenings of Marvel Studios projects, critics and press have not seen the whole series which makes a true analysis of Season 2 of Loki impossible. Simply put, no matter how entertaining the first four episodes are, if the last two drop the ball, the project won’t be seen as a success and that’s not something Marvel Studios can afford at the moment. However, what can be said is that for four episodes, Marvel Studios leaned on one of their strongest and most veteran talents to put together what is unquestionably their best effort–theatrical or cinematic–not only of 2023 but of the entire Multiverse Saga. A combination of strong creative work behind the scenes by writer Eric Martin and the directing duo of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson and an enormously talented cast make Loki a fun sci-fi mystery that will fill the Void-sized void you may have been feeling.
With the Writers Guild of America strike coming to an end, Marvel Studios wasted no time in getting the big wheel of development up and running again. According to Deadline, Kevin Feige and crew are set to begin meeting with writers this Fall in search of pitches for their reboot of the X-Men!
According to the report, facing a major backlog of projects–both theatrical and streaming–Marvel Studios is set to take their time in finding the scribe for the project with a decision not expected until sometime in 2024. In days of old, that would mean the project might look to start filming in 2026 but with so much uncertainty around productions as the SAG strike continues and studio space at a premium, there’s been no certainty when the film might go into production much less make its way into theaters.
It is widely rumored that Deadpool 3 and Avengers: Secret Wars will close permanently close the doors to the Fox X-Men franchise, allowing the MCU mutants to be the only game in town. A 2021 report from The Illuminerdi indicated that, in an attempt to set its reboot apart from those Fox films, Marvel Studios was looking to develop the project as The Mutants. Though the idea was roundly dismissed online, documents showing that title did circulate and it is a title that was tossed around by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for the X-Men comic back in the early 1960s.
While Hugh Jackman is set to suit up as Wolverine for an MCU adventure, the shared cinematic universe has already seen its first mutant in Kamala Khan and a Marvel Studios-produced revival of the popular X-Men: The Animated Series is set to debut in 2024. All signs point to a BIG future for mutants within the MCU!
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