The Deadpool franchise is back in action with Deadpool 3 in the active works. The film marks the Merc with a Mouth’s Marvel Cinematic Universe debut after the Disney-Fox acquisition. Ryan Reynolds will star alongside fan favorite Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine for an event that is sure to be special on its own but also within the context of Marvel Studios utilizing newly obtained Fox properties. Still, the threequel apparently is not the only Deadpool movie impacted by the Disney acquisition.
Just in time for the holidays, Reynolds revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that a fully-written Deadpool Christmas movie exists, but that it never got made. The actor and producer said:
Four years ago, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and I wrote a Christmas movie starring Deadpool. But it got lost in the shuffle of Disney acquiring Fox and it never got made…Maybe one day we’ll get to make that movie. It’s not a musical, but it’s a full DeadpoolChristmas movie. So one day.
Ryan Reynolds
It is not often that shelved and forgotten movies make a magical comeback. But with Marvel Studios leaning into holiday specials like Werewolf By Night and the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas-themed special, anything is possible.
Deadpool 3 is slated for a November 8, 2024 release date.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever delivered a fascinating backstory for the underwater nation of Talokan and its God-king, Namor. Writer/director Ryan Coogler created a unique version of the legend of Atlantis that allowed for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s take on the Sub-Mariner to stand apart from the comics while still staying true to the character’s core characteristics. Interestingly enough, despite nearly entirely recreating the character, Coogler also left room down the road for Namor to retroactively become a part of a comic book-based team with which he’s long been associated: the Invaders!
In the pages of Marvel Comics, the story of the Invaders was first told via flashbacks to World War II. Originally comprised of Namor, Captain America and John Hammond, the Original Human Torch, the Invaders were a group of heroes who sought to take on the Axis powers of Europe in the 1940s. The team grew to include teen sidekicks Bucky Barnes and Thomas “Toro” Raymond and, over the years, dozens of other characters. The original members of the team have reunited over the years but the bulk of their great stories took place during WWII fighting against one of the greatest evils the world has ever known. Despite just being introduced into the MCU in its present day, it seems that nothing about Namor’s known history could prevent him from being a part of such a team in the MCU.
As shown in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Namor is over 450 years old and despite his desire to keep Talokan and its people hidden from the surface world, the film’s events do not depict the first time he’s had contact with humans. Not only has Namor been spotted on beaches in and around the Yucatan Peninsula, but he also burned down a plantation and murdered several of its inhabitants as a young boy. Though he serves as the antagonist of Wakanda Forever, Namor is no villain. Arrogant, prideful and extremely temperamental, Namor is also compassionate and has a strong sense of justice, so while he holds no love for the surface world, you can be sure that he would share Captain America’s sense of disdain for the Nazis.
Historically speaking, the Nazis had a very real fascination with the lost continent of Atlantis and undertook several attempts to find it. As outlined here, it wouldn’t take much to retcon what audiences know of the MCU’s WWII era to bring Namor, Steve Rogers and John Hammond (who was introduced in Captain America: The First Avenger) together to fight Nazis. In fact, all it would take would be a threat to Talokan to invoke Namor’s imperious impulses and find himself compelled to fight alongside other righteous heroes. If Marvel Studios did it right, it might even explain why Nick Fury had an icon in the Atlantic Ocean on his map of superhero hot spots seen in Iron Man 2.
That map has been widely interpreted to represent the locations of heroes Fury was following closely. The icon in the Atlantic has been thought to be Atlantis while the one in Africa thought to be Wakanda. However, there’s no reason to believe that those icons couldn’t simply represent places where interesting activities have taken place in the past rather than events that were taking place in and around the events of Iron Man 2. Fury didn’t have to know the exact location of Wakanda, for example in order to have become aware of some past incident in the area that drew his attention. The same could be said for the area in the Atlantic. The Nazis were known to be searching the seas far and wide for any potential signs of Atlantis so there’s no reason they couldn’t have engaged with Namor and the Invaders in that region, which is not insignificantly located near Tristan da Cunha, the most remote island archipelago in the world with a current population of only 264 inhabitants. Should a battle involving the Nazis, a flying fish man, a flaming, flying android and the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan have taken place in such a location, it wouldn’t take much imagination to figure out why it wasn’t part of the history books in the MCU but a guy like Fury would have means to find out about it.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever delivers a great origin and introduction for K’uk’ulkan and does an equally wonderful job of not cutting off any more stories for the character, past present or future.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is in theaters now.
Daredevil: Born Again looks primed to be Marvel Studios most anticipated streaming series to date. Between the confirmed roles of Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio and the rumored return of JonBernthal as The Punisher, the hype around the series has grown steadily since it was revealed by Kevin Feige at SDCC ’22.
Though the show doesn’t go into production for another few months and little about the plot has leaked out, Feige has indicated that Daredevil, along with Spider-Man, will lead the charge of street-level heroes in the MCU. To that end, a new rumor from a wildly inconsistent source claims that another street-level hero from the pages of the Marvel Comics will be making an appearance in Daredevil: Born Again. According to GFR, White Tiger will join Daredevil in the streaming series.
The mantle of White Tiger has been carried by several characters over the years and Matt Murdock has a pretty solid history with a pair of them in Hector Ayala and Angela del Toro. The rumor claims that Marvel Studios has landed Jenna Ortega for the role, meaning Daredevil: Born Again will likely feature del Toro’s version of the character, who played a large role in and around New York City in the years prior to the Shadowland event.
This is the part of the article where outlets tell you to take the information with a grain of salt; however, I’ll only say that not only does White Tiger make sense for an 18-episode street-level series but also that the character was mentioned to me this week in two different conversations, though at no point were actors discussed.
Should Ortega indeed land the role, it would be her second within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ortega previously played the daughter of Miguel Ferrer’s Vice President Rodriguez in 2013’s Iron Man 3. Cue the ridiculous fan theories. Daredevil: Born Again begins production in February of 2023 ahead of a 2024 release on Disney Plus.
Winston Duke’s star has been on the rise for over half a decade. Duke is best known for his roles in Black Panther and Us and for his thick thighs, which have made him an ongoing source of social media thirst. After garnering attention as M’Baku in Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War, Duke’s role was beefed up significantly for Black Panther: WakandaForever, where he served as an advisor to Queen Ramonda and Princess Shuri. The film’s final moments seemed to indicate that M’Baku may have taken on an even more significant role in Wakanda and now the star has confirmed it in an interview with Esquire. Spoilers to follow…
The final moments of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever see Shuri, who became the Queen of Wakanda following the death of her mother, Ramonda, head to Haiti to be with her nephew, Prince T’Challa, and his mother, Nakia. Being in Haiti, she is not able to be present at Warrior Falls when M’Baku “challenges” her for the throne, seemingly allowing M’Baku to become King of Wakanda, though clearly with Shuri’s blessing. Though it seemed pretty clear, fans have questioned the outcome on social media but Duke came by to put those questions down, saying of the moment “Yeah, it’s kind of cool to be revealed asM the King of Wakanda at the end of the movie. That’s huge. So whatever that entails, it’s gonna be a fun one.”
Though M’Baku sits the throne of Wakanda, Shuri remains the Black Panther. The post-credit scene would seem to indicate that she’s determined that her role as Protector of Wakanda is better filled in Haiti where she’s able to look to the safety of Prince T’Challa. Whether Marvel Studios ever intends to follow the story of the Prince’s claim to the throne or if the PCS simply serves to make good on the film’s subtitle and show that the Royal Family of Wakanda will live on for another generation isn’t clear. But having the Thigh King become the King of Wakanda is a brilliant way to show that part of T’Challa’s legacy was reuniting the long-fractured nation of Wakanda.
After having been announced as a streaming series at Disney’s 2020 Investor Day presentation, it was recently revealed that the Don Cheadle vehicle Armor Wars was changing gears and being developed as a feature film. Other than the idea that the events of Armor Wars will spin out of the 2023 streaming series Secret Invasion, Marvel Studios hasn’t let much slip about what to expect from the project. However, in an interview with Matt Belloni, Marvel Studios Executive Producer and Parliament member Nate Moore gave some insight into how its development involved and what fans can expect.
First and foremost, Moore made it clear that the series became “too big” of a project for the streaming service.
“Yeah, I mean in that case, there were some great ideas that were coming out for that show but that, to be quite honest, felt too big for that show.”
Nate Moore
When asked if “too big” referred to budget constraints or the scope of the story, Moore elaborated.
Kind of both. Kind of conceptually and from a… Our Disney+ shows are awesome and we love them, but the budgets are not the same as the features, that’s not secret. And when you’re talking about a show that wants to be about seeing all the cool armors, and Don Cheadle interacting with all these armors, and the legacy of Tony Stark, that became cost-prohibitive to do as a show.
Nate Moore
Moore went on to explain that the large role Armor Wars is set to play in the future of the MCU also weighed heavily into the decision to shift the story to the big screen.
And we realized as a feature, not only can we get into some of the beautiful imagery that is from publishing and there’s certainly an Armor Wars run, but also there’s ways then to leverage the ideas of that movie that affect other movies down the line. So it becomes a multiplication really of, once you figure out what is cool about something…
Nate Moore
Given Marvel Studios’ theatrical slate is pretty full for the next several years, it’s not clear exactly when Armor Wars will make its way onto it, though with the story seeming to serve as a follow-up to Secret Invasion and a bridge to projects beyond it, it would seem Marvel Studios wouldn’t want to wait too long.
Daredevil: Born Again looks to be Marvel Studios’ most ambitious foray into streaming yet with a nearly year-long production timeline and an 18-episode season set to hit Disney Plus in 2024. Both Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are confirmed to reprise their respective roles as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk, but though casting is underway no additional roles for the series have become public knowledge to date. Of course, fans haven’t let that stop them from speculating who will be in it and predetermining who should be in it and a common name on both those lists is Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page. While fans are eager to see her reprise the role, Woll may have delivered some bad news.
In an interview with Inside of You podcast, Woll revealed that she hasn’t been invited back for the role yet despite filming being scheduled to kick of in February. When asked about her potential involvement in Daredevil: Born Again, Woll got straight to the point.
I can say this: they have not called me yet. So as of now, I am not a part of it. I would be thrilled to get to be a part of it. They know where I am. Like I said, I love the character Karen Page. I love telling that story. I feel like I have more to say. But it is up to them what kind of story that they want to tell.
Deborah Ann Woll
Given Daredevil’s abrupt cancellation at Netflix, it stands to reason that Woll, along with many other actors and actresses who were a part of the show’s 3 seasons, would believe that their individual character arcs were not complete. In fact, given how key Page was to the events of the first 3 seasons of Daredevil, it’s hard to imagine continuing the story without her. However, Marvel Studios One-Above-All Kevin Feige has indicated that Daredevil: Born Again is not considered to be Season 4 of the Netflix show and Cox has called the D+ series a “whole new deal”, so it’s possible that the Marvel Studios series will be exploring a new take on the character, complete with the sort of retellings that Cox has readily teased. And it looks like, for the time being at least, that means having Murdock move on without Page. Could a love interest like Kirsten McDuffie be headed for Daredevil:Born Again in Page’s absence? With casting right around the corner, perhaps fans will find out soon enough.
Quentin Tarantino is not a big fan of modern superhero films. The acclaimed director recently told the Los Angeles times he’s never helmed one because he’s “not a hired hand” and while “the writing’s not quite on the wall yet”, he believes the fascination with superhero films will eventually fade similar to when audiences tired of big-budget musical productions in the 1960s. Films like 1961’s West Side Story and 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night thrilled audiences for the better part of a decade before interest waned and filmmakers were forced to look elsewhere. Tarantino stated that he and other modern filmmakers “can’t wait for the day they can say that about superhero movies.”
Of course, rather than making reporters ask Tarantino fewer questions about the potential for him to step behind the camera for a superhero flick, his comments inspired more…and somewhat surprisingly, Tarantino had an answer at the ready. In an interview with Variety, Tarantino revealed that were he to have his choice of Marvel IPs to bring to the big screen, it would be a classic book that inspired his 2009 film Inglorious Basterds.
In a 2009 interview with MTV, Tarantino shared that the 1963 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby series Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandoes was an inspiration for the main crew of Inglorious Basterds.
“[The Basterds] are a kind of comic book. A big influence on the Basterds was Marvel Comics’ ‘Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos.’ That was definitely an influence on that flick.
Quentin Tarantino
Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandoes ran for nearly 20 years and saw 167 issues published about the adventures of Nick Fury and his ragtag team that included Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, Izzy Cohen, Jim Morita and more. A version of the team, lead by Dugan and featuring many of those listed, was featured in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. While fans probably shouldn’t hold their breath, the though of Tarantino revisiting that team and some of their unseen adventures in World War II is titilating.
One of the money shots of the marketing footage for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever showed the descent of Namor onto his massive, underwater throne. Namor has always been a big throne guy in the comics, but the crew on Wakanda Forever really upped the ante in adapting the Sub-Mariner and his throne room for the MCU, having Namor seated in the jaws of an ancient beast! Fans have been buzzing about the set piece since first seeing it, speculating on just what sort of creature the jaws belonged to and now they have their answer.
Production Designer Hannah Beachler, who won an Academy Award for her work on Black Panther, returned to work on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and took to Twitter recently to detail some of the fascinating features from some of the most breathtaking sets from the film including Namor’s throne.
Namor's throne seat. A Magalodon jaw with Jade Teeth. The Hieroglyph carved in the bone reads, "This Jade Tooth Bites." I thought it was charming and dangerous like Namor. The piece was 12 feet tall by 10 feet wide. It was BIG! pic.twitter.com/lFypY6qRIH
As fans believed, Namor’s throne was indeed created from the jaws of a Megalodon. The extinct Megalodon is the largest species of shark to have ever lived. Recent estimates indicate the average Megalodon was likely 34 feet long (Great Whites average 20 feet, for comparison) with teeth about 7 inches long! The production design team did their homework not only in depicting the size of the jaws but also in keying in on the fact that more than a quarter of the total number of Megalodon fossils have been found around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
Given the details of the piece, including the description carved into the lower jaw, it would be a shame if it weren’t seen again soon in the MCU!
Theory Thursdays are pretty special at Murphy’s Multiverse and it looks as though one of the most recent bits of speculation might turn out to have been spot on! According to a new report from insider Daniel RPK, the villain of the upcoming Disney Plus streaming series Wonder Man will be exactly who Hunter Radesi posited him to be just a few weeks ago.
Casting has begun for the series, which is expected to begin production in the Spring of 2023, and with that comes a description of the villain of the piece, who happens to be the agent of struggling actor Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man. As pointed out in the theory, the villain may well be based on a character first introduced in 1991’s Wonder Man comic book series, created by Gerard Jones and Jeff Johnson. That series introduced Simon’s agent, Neal Saroyan, who was ultimately revealed to be a supervillain in charge of a cadre of assassins known as The Nobility.
Rumors swirled recently that Bob Odenkirk was engaged in talks for the role of the agent, but no official word has come along on if he’d taken the role. Given Odenkirk’s body of work in Better Call Saul and Nobody, he would seem the perfect fit for an otherwise non-descript character who turns out to be a deadly assassin. Wonder Man is expected to stream on Disney Plus in 2024.
With the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Marvel Studios has completed its theatrical slate for Phase 4 which began when Black Widow was released in July 2021 after a long wait due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With Phase 4’s films all now available for consumption, Team MM thought there was no time like the present to rank them.
Hunter Radesi
1 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2 Spider-Man: No Way Home 3 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 4 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 5 Eternals 6 Thor: Love and Thunder 7 Black Widow
Anthony Canton III
1 Spider-Man No Way Home 2 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 3 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 4 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 5 Thor: Love And Thunder 6 Black Widow 7 Eternals
Charles Murphy
1 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 3 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 4 Spider-Man: No Way Home 5 Eternals 6 Black Widow 7 Thor: Love and Thunder
João Pinto
1 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 2 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 3 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 4 Spider-Man: No Way Home 5 Black Widow 6 Eternals 7 Thor: Love and Thunder
Michael T. Ford III
1 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2 Spider-Man: No Way Home 3 Black Widow 4 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 5 Eternals 6 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 7 Thor: Love and Thunder
Jared Kirschenbaum
1 Spider-Man: No Way Home 2 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 3 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 4 Black Widow 5 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 6 Thor: Love and Thunder 7 Eternals
Dalbin Osorio
1 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2 Spider-Man: No Way Home 3 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 4 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 5 Eternals 6 Black Widow 7 Thor: Love and Thunder
Torbjorn Frazier
1 Spider-Man: No Way Home 2 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 3Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 4 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 5 Thor: Love and Thunder 6 Eternals 7 Black Widow
Spider-Man: No Way Home: It was the worst-kept secret in Hollywood about what this film was going to be, and yet No Way Home still provides the best live-action cinematic experience of Spider-Man. It has a truly epic scope, successfully pays off (and improves) films outside of the studio that made it, and even still is a strong personal story for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. No Way Home is the largest success of Phase Four.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: While other films on this list are built upon the legacies of the past, Shang-Chi is the strongest film in Phase Four based on its own individual merits. The core four of the cast all bring their best, Destin Daniel Cretton established himself as a marquee director of the future, and the film has left audiences with a great future to look forward to.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Trying to rank a film like Wakanda Forever feels futile and plays into the argument of why rankings can be arbitrary and reductive. Even still, Ryan Coogler adeptly manages the insurmountable task of having to manage the grief of Chadwick Boseman’s death and turn it into this beautiful exploration of grief and loss. It continues the strong desire for Wakanda to play a major role in the MCU.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Sam Raimi’s return to superheroics was a strong success in my eyes. It is much closer to the imaginative experience that Doctor Strange should bring to the big screen with his magic and dimension-hopping. As well, it’s a film where I found the fast pacing to be more of a benefit here as opposed to Love and Thunder. And to boot, I appreciated all the narrative themes and allowing Benedict Cumberbatch’s to be more quiet and nuanced than most MCU protagonists.
Thor: Love and Thunder: This film is a perfectly fine adventure into the world of New Asgard and the power dynamics of the Thors. Natalie Portman is fantastic in her return to the role of Jane Foster aka Mighty Thor. For me, the biggest issue is the film being too fast-paced and really needing another 10-15 minutes to slow down.
Eternals: While I completely understand the issues some have with this film, I am someone who absolutely adored Eternals. The time spent marinating on the human experience and the concept of family resonated in an unexpectedly fantastic way. Though the film’s pedestrian attempts at the superheroic tropes do hold it back in these rankings.
Black Widow: It was a refreshing experience watching this film as the first MCU film released post-pandemic and a perfectly passable romp of a spy film. However, it still feels like it would’ve been much better served in Phase Three and doesn’t move the needle for the future beyond Florence Pugh’s iconic Yelena Belova.
Average Ranking
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Spider-Man: No Way Home Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Black Widow Eternals Thor: Love and Thunder
1.8 2.1 2.8 3.9 5.5 5.8 6.2
Power Ranking
Murphy’s Multiverse Power Rankings are calculated by assigning point values for rankings. In this instance, a film received 7 points for being ranked #1, 6 points for being ranked #2 and so on down to 1 point for being ranked #7.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Spider-Man: No Way Home Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Black Widow Eternals Thor: Love and Thunder
6.3 5.9 5.3 4.1 2.5 2.3 1.8
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