Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: Secret Invasion

  • Deep Thoughts: One Hypothetical Marvel Studios 2022 Release Calendar

    Deep Thoughts: One Hypothetical Marvel Studios 2022 Release Calendar

    Earlier this week, we looked at one hypothetical 2021 release calendar for Marvel Studios. That possible calendar saw Hawkeye wrapped up on Christmas Eve 2021 and it seemed like a bad place to stop thinking. Following the same premise of trying to get new content out on as many Fridays as possible, here’s one totally made up and hypothetical way Marvel Studios could do that in 2022!

    ***NOTE***

    Please read and share responsibly and don’t latch your hopes and dreams onto this. Don’t take it seriously and don’t start marking your calendars. This is one possible option with the only real intention behind it being to see if it could be done well.

     

    After originally thinking Hawkeye would carry over into 2022, we learned that the series is only 6-episodes, meaning it will conclude on Christmas Eve 2021 and they’ll probably skip out on New Year’s Eve content. If we assume Marvel Studios follows a similar start to WandaVision in that it allows the studios to return from the 2-week holiday layoff, get whatever press events and social media teases up and running in the week leading up to release, the 2022 Marvel Studios onslaught will kick off on January 14th!

    She-Hulk is going to get to kick off 2022 in style. The Tatiana Maslany-led comedy series begins filming in Atlanta in March 2021 and could easily turn episodes around in time for a mid-January 2022 release. The series is filming for quite a long time and we’ve seen some information that leads us to believe they could be filming as many as 10 episodes next year. Whether that is one long season or two is unknown, but should it be one, long 10 episode season, it could run from January 14th until March 11th, which fits nicely in our big puzzle.

    Should Marvel Studios continue their Marvel Studios Legends series, they could stream a Doctor Strange episode the weekend of March 18th, one week ahead of the release of Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness. By the time this film comes out, it’ll have been 6 years since the first film and almost 3 years since we last saw the Sorcerer Supreme on the big screen, so it wouldn’t be the worst idea to catch fans up and tell the story to new audiences. We would also expect the final trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder and the first trailer for Black Panther II to be released ahead of this so theater audiences could preview them ahead of the film.

    The sledding gets a little rougher here with Moon Knight potentially running into the theatrical release of Thor: Love and Thunder. Thankfully, I am reminded that Season 1 of The Mandalorian took a Friday off so that audiences could head to theaters to catch The Rise of Skywalker (big high five to The Machine for helping me get out of my mental rut). That same idea could work here and who knows, maybe a film that includes a God Butcher could unexpectedly tie-in to a series about a guy working as the Earthly avatar of an Egyptian god…

     

    Thor: Love and Thunder promises to be an absolutely wild ride. Taika Waititi is back and has made no bones about the fact that he’s turning everything up on this one. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is the first Marvel Studios solo character to move beyond the trilogy structure meaning all bets are off. Natalie Portman returning as Jane Foster to become the Mighty Thor is the biggest news, but adding Academy Award Winner Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher, bringing back Jamie Alexander as Lady Sif alongside Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie AND having the Guardians of the Galaxy along for the ride make this the studio’s biggest non-Avengers film to date.

    An episode of Marvel Studios Legends for Nick Fury and Talos seems like a must leading into Secret Invasion. We know Talos has posed as Fury in the past and it’d be alright if Marvel Studios cleared some of that up heading into Secret Invasion and that could stream on May 13th, one week after Thor 4 hits theaters.  Secret Invasion is still in the earliest stages of development, so there’s no word on an episode count, but for the purposes of this calendar, we’re sticking with the standard six; hypothetically, if Secret Invasion kicked off a six-week run on May 20th, it would conclude on June 24th, just ahead of Black Panther II.

     

    It’s still tough to think about a sequel to Black Panther happening without Chadwick Boseman, but Marvel Studios has a plan and a date. An episode of Marvel Studios Legends ahead of this film could serve not only as a tribute to Boseman, but also as a way to highlight whomever Marvel Studios has chosen to focus on from the World of Wakanda. Black Panther II is currently set to premiere on July 8th, which means it would be accompanied in theaters by trailers for Blade and Captain Marvel 2.

     

    While there was no direct indication that What If…? Season 2 would stream in 2022, Kevin Feige did mention in an interview in December of 2019 that they were already hard at work on the 10-episode second season. As was the case with What If…? Season 1, there’s no indication of whether or not Marvel Studios will stream a new episode of the animated series each week or drop them all at once, but given the nature of the premise is to slot new content on as many Fridays as possible, I’m going with the former.

    Like Moon Knight before it, Ironheart could be headed for a one-week hiatus to get Blade in theaters on October 7th (something that is yet to be announced by the studio but we’ve included in our little experiment). Marvel Studios could get Riri Williams’ story started on September 23rd and 30th before taking the week of October 7th off for Blade.

    Though there’s no word on when Blade would hit theaters, the official Disney Investor Day Fact Sheet lists it chronologically ahead of Captain Marvel 2 and Disney still has the October 7, 2022 date set aside for a Marvel Studios project. With those things in mind and for the purpose of our hypothetical calendar, we are putting Blade right here.

    Ironheart returns from its one-week hiatus and jumps back into action, concluding its run with a 4-episode stretch from October 14th through November 4th.

    Following the pattern of Marvel Studios preparing audiences for the return of popular characters through episodes of Marvel Studios Legends, a Captain Marvel episode could stream on November 4th. With Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan joining Carol Danvers in the film, a Legends episode could prove pretty useful to catch fans up to speed ahead of the November 11th debut of Captain Marvel 2.

    While he’s never been the centerpiece of his own project, James Rhodes has been in 7 Marvel Studios films. His story is one worth recapping in a War Machine episode of Marvel Studios Legends on November 18th one week before he takes the lead in Armor Wars!

    Breaking from the mold just a little here, the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special can debut on Thanksgiving, which is the kickoff of the U.S. holiday season.

    Boom, you looking for this! The final Marvel Studios project of 2022, Armor Wars, could begin its six-week run on November 25th and run right up until the final Friday of the year on December 30th.

    Piecing this one together meant taking quite a few liberties, including adding a film that has not officially been given a date. But again, the working premise here was to get new Marvel Studios content on as many Fridays as possible. As things developed, keeping streaming series from dropping new episodes on the same days as films would make their theatrical debuts became a secondary concern and that meant having to color outside of the lines a few times. However, it looks like we mish-mashed together a way to get 51 weeks of Marvel Studios content in 2022!

  • Nick Fury Disney+ Show Revealed as ‘Secret Invasion’

    Nick Fury Disney+ Show Revealed as ‘Secret Invasion’

    There was the reveal a while back that Nick Fury would be getting his own Disney+ show. Well, it looks like that show turned out to be the other rumored show focused on the iconic Secret Invasion storyline. Well, it turns out that both shows were actually one, as it has been revealed that Samual L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn are returning in their iconic roles for the show Secret Invasion. No details are given about the series but it looks like they might be taking a unique route with this story.

  • ‘Secret Invasion’

    ‘Secret Invasion’

    Premiere: TBD 2023

    One of Marvel Comics most intense and wide-ranging comic book crossover events is coming to the MCU in 2022 with Secret Invasion! Announced at Disney’s 2020 Investor Day, Secret Invasion will focus on a faction of less-than-friendly Skrulls who have spent years infiltrating Earth and are now ready to take over.

    Kyle Bradstreet will develop and oversee the project as Samuel L. Jackson returns as Nick Fury and Ben Mendelsohn reprises his role as Talos. In April 2021 Olivia Colman was confirmed to be in negotiations to join the series, and just a couple of days later we learned that Emilia Clarke was also talks to join the cast in an undisclosed role. Kingsley Ben-Adir and Killian Scott are also expected to have their names added to the cast list.

    The following month the show found its directors in Thomas Bezucha and Ali Selim, and also got Christopher McDonald on board portraying a newly created character. Samuel L. Jackson confirmed production had started by October 2021.

    Notably absent from the announcement cast list, Cobie Smulders was confirmed to be reprising her Maria Hill role per a trade report in early December 2021. A few months into 2022 Samuel L. Jackson accidentally confirmed that Martin Freeman‘s Everett Ross would be making an appearance in the show.

    Colman‘s role was reported to be that of Union Jack with her character’s surname (Fallsworth) being shared by two of the comics’ iterations of the character. Clarke‘s character, initially undisclosed, was confirmed to be that of Abigail Brand.

    Cast

    • Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
    • Ben Mendelsohn as Talos
    • Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill (?)
    • Don Cheadle as James Rhodes / War Machine
    • Emilia Clarke as Abigail Brand
    • Olivia Colman as Sonya Falsworth
    • Martin Freeman as Everett Ross
    • Kingsley Ben-Adir as an unknown Skrull villain
    • Killian Scott as Fiz
    • Christopher McDonald as an unnamed news personality

    Promotional Material

  • ‘YOUNG AVENGERS’ May Be On Deck for Marvel Studios

    ‘YOUNG AVENGERS’ May Be On Deck for Marvel Studios

    On October 16th, Disney created 3 new production companies. The fact that they were created on the same day might point towards them being Marvel Studios properties. Marvel Studios has a track record of creating production companies in bulk where as other branches of Disney usually produce them one at a time. For example, as revealed by Murphy’s Multiverse, Grass-Fed Productions and Solve Everything Productions were created on the same day as were many of Marvel Studios upcoming Disney+ projects. While we don’t know that they are Marvel Studios production companies, we did find some additional evidence that backs up the possibility that they are Marvel Studios productions, though it wasn’t enough to make us 100% certain. So what are they?   The production companies are Standoffish Productions, Blueberry Waffles Productions , and Log Jam Productions. While we can’t tie them to any Marvel property, we do have some ideas.

    While this is a very loose connection, we think we have an idea of what one of the production companies could possibly be. Blueberry Waffles, here is our explanation. We have seen in Young Avengers Volume 2, written by Kieron Gillen and launched in January of 2013, that the team continuously meets up at Joe’s Diner for breakfast. In one of the issues, Kid Loki eats blueberry pancakes. As I like to say, waffles are just pancakes with abs, so this could be the production we are looking for. While we already know Marvel is developing a Young Avengers project, this could be them moving forward with the project. We are not 100% sure, but this could the answer.

     

     

    While this is some pretty shaky evidence, we do know that Marvel Studios is developing many other projects like Blade (he stakes vampires with wood, so Log Jam…get it?), Ghost Rider, Illuminati, Ironheart, Secret Invasion and Secret Warriors, in addition to Young Avengers, so there are plenty of reasonable options for these production companies. Keep in mind that not all production companies are tied straight to the comic books. For example, WandaVision was Static Productions. Nobody would have ever found that one out. It is the same situation for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier streaming series that was Pandemic Productions. Until we have further proof, all we can do is keep this in the back of our minds as something to think about and with Marvel Studios slate already pretty full, it would be a while before any of these projects got up and running.

  • New Evidence Links ‘Grass-Fed Productions’ to Marvel Studios

    New Evidence Links ‘Grass-Fed Productions’ to Marvel Studios

    As mentioned in this piece, Murphy’s Multiverse was able to independently confirm that Captain Marvel 2 has been registered in the UK. While searching for information on that, something even more interesting came to the surface…Grass-Fed Productions is also registered in the UK with the paperwork signed by none other than Marvel Studios representatives. So, as speculated on the other day, Grass-Fed is a Marvel Studios production. A lot of people doubted it; I’ll admit it even made me doubt myself, but the evidence is clear at this point.

    Avengers 4: Has the MCU been planning a Secret Invasion all along ...

    What does all this mean and how does it tie into the earlier report on Captain Marvel 2? As of now, the next property set to film in the UK is Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness and it’s probably closer to getting off the ground than we think. The leaked audition video for America Chavez was a couple of weeks old and the fact that is was, for a time, publicly available almost certainly means that the actress who posted it was informed she did not get the role. Now that doesn’t mean that someone has, but it does mean they’re down the road a bit in that process, so I wouldn’t be shocked if they found the right actress for the role. Should the Strange sequel be able to start by November or so, it could wrap up by next March or April (the original shoot was set for April/May-August and we can expect that productions might take a bit longer now). Captain Marvel 2 is probably going to film in the UK after Strange is done, so it could get started as soon as May of next year and finish around September. From there, they likely move on to whatever film Grass-Fed Production is and that could start production in or around October of 2021. So what film could it be?

    The other day, I speculated on the possibility that it might be either Blade or the Secret Invasion project that Marvel Studios is developing. If you’re curious, you can read the reasoning behind those guesses here. My gut instinct is that this is Blade because it’s the only other “announced” Marvel Studios project for which there is no known production company, but another interesting possibility has come to light in the past few days.

    Earlier this week, it was revealed that Sony had brought Olivia Wilde on board to helm their Spider-Woman project. The rights to the character are split between Sony and Marvel Studios so, without getting into too much detail, the character can’t be fully realized in a project unless the two studios cooperate on the production, similarly to how they’ve worked on Spider-Man. As explained more here, Amy Pascal and Rachel O’Connell, who both worked with Marvel Studios on the first two Spider-Man films, are producing Spider-Woman, so until we have it clarified by one studio or the other, fans of the character are holding out hope that the studios will play nice, work together and set the film firmly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just like Tom Holland’s Spidey, with the possibility of telling other stories in whatever Sony’s universe is.

    But how do you get from “Grass-Fed” to Spider-Woman? It’s actually not as big of a leap as you might think. As one of my Twitter followers pointed out earlier in the week, Jessica Drew was actually raised by one of the High Evolutionary’s New Men, Bova, a cow evolved into a highly-intelligent humanoid. Bova cared for Jessica until she was a teenager and then placed her in an orphanage where Jessica stayed until her own adventures began. Drew’s origin has been retconned several times and, if this is a Marvel Studios project, there’s no telling which origin they’d use or if they’d include Bova, but the subtlety of the reference and not knowing whether or not they’d tell this story does not mean they wouldn’t jokingly reference it while naming the production company.

    Bova with Jessica from Spider-Woman #20

    Canonically, both Blade and Jessica Drew were born in the UK and spent time all over Europe, so filming out of the UK would give the production crews easier access to a lot of European locations, rather than flying back and forth from America, and give either film a more authentic feel. At a time where travel isn’t quite as easy as it once was, that probably matters. If we follow the timeline I laid out above, Blade would seem to make the most sense given that it would line up for an October 2022 release and Marvel Studios still has a date set aside there; however, don’t forget that prior to COVID altering everything, Sony had planted a flag for an Untitled Marvel project on October 8, 2021 and some speculation at the time centered on that being Spider-Woman. And yes, even though Spider-Woman would be a Sony film, it would be a Marvel Studios production which means they would register the production company like the did for Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home, though Sony would chose the date for the film.

    Unfortunately, we don’t have enough information at the moment, but given Sony’s recent movement, it’ll be informative if Marvel Studios follows suit at some point over the next few weeks.

  • ‘CAPTAIN MARVEL 2’ to Film in the UK

    ‘CAPTAIN MARVEL 2’ to Film in the UK

    The sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel could well be shooting in the UK next year. After being tipped off that the studio had registered a production company in the UK, Murphy’s Multiverse was able to independently confirm that Marvel Studios had indeed done so, indicating that the studio has plans to at least shoot part of the film in the UK and/or Europe.

    Captain Marvel': What Is Binary?

    The film, which will be directed by Nia DaCosta and based off a script from Megan McDonnell, is expected to tie into the Marvel Comics Secret Invasion event that saw the Skrull Empire attempt a hostile take over of Earth and revealed that Skrull sleeper cells had been on Earth in positions of power and in place of Earth’s mightiest heroes for some time. Marvel Studios is also developing a Secret Invasion project would could serve as a companion piece as a streaming series on Disney Plus or, perhaps, be its own event film.

    Captain Marvel filmed in California, under the California Film Commission’s Tax Credit Program, and in New Orleans with a post-credit scene being filmed in Atlanta. Captain Marvel 2 is set to debut in theaters on July 8, 2022 and should go into production late next Spring or early next Summer.

  • Solving Everything: A Possible Timeline for ‘BLADE’ and ‘FANTASTIC FOUR’

    Connecting Imaginary Dots are pieces we write here that allow us to be what we all truly are: fans. These should not be taken as scoops, exclusives or facts; just speculation about the things for which we all share a great passion.

    With the news that Disney has created production companies for what may be two upcoming Marvel Studios projects (Fantastic Four and Blade), there’s plenty of room for speculation. Should Solve Everything Productions and Grass-Fed Productions turn out to be those projects, questions will surface/ Why are these being filed now when there’s such a back log of projects? When will we be seeing them begin production? When might we expect them in theaters (I know that’s a loaded question in the midst of a pandemic)? Who might the studio have found to create the projects? Unlike Reed, I can’t answer all of these questions: the cost is just too high, but we can look into some of them and maybe, by piecing together what’s out there, we can come up with a starting point.

    For me the most most answerable of all the unanswerable questions is: why are these being filed now? At the moment, Marvel Studios seems to have a massive traffic jam on the production highway. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Loki and Shang-Chi were all in production when the world came crashing to a stop in March. If not for that, we’d probably be watching The Falcon and The Winter Solider now, but the domino effect of not only the Marvel Studios projects being halted but also other studio projects that featured actors from various Marvel Studios projects meant that other projects which were scheduled to begin never got up and running. Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness would probably be done filming by now, Spidey 3 would have started up last month, Thor: Love and Thunder would be getting ready to go in Australia right now and Ms. Marvel may have even begun. But, as we all know, none of that happened so here we are with a ton of projects off schedule, Ant-Man 3 having been bumped out of its original slot on the schedule and the uncertainty of the pandemic still causing chaos, so the question of “why now?” is incredibly relevant.

    While there’s no hard and fast rule here, there is a pattern worth noting that might get us to an answer to that pressing question. Over the past couple of years, Marvel Studios seems to register these production companies when they have given the green light to projects and have a tentative timeline for start of production. While there are certainly exceptions to the rule (for example, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 stands out because it’s timeline shifted, which shifted Black Widow’s timeline), it seems that Marvel Studios usually creates these production companies about 12-18 months before the EXPECTED start of production. If they follow that pattern here, that means they’d be looking to film these two projects between August 2021 and February 2022.

    Continuing down the line of established patterns, whenever possible Marvel Studios also likes to start production on their films about 12-15 months ahead of when the films are expected in theaters. So a film that goes into production in the August-October 2021 window would be ready for theaters around October 2022…and it just so happens that Disney still has a date reserved (October 7, 2022) on their slate for an Untitled Marvel Studios film, a date that would be just right for a vampire film. A film that goes into production around January of 2022 would be ready for theaters around February 2023…and it just so happens that Disney has a date reserved (February 17, 2023) on their slate for an Untitled Marvel Studios film. We all believe that Ant-Man 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 are destined for that 2023 slate, but given Guardians A-list status and Ant-Man 3’s rumored big happenings, it’s possible that the studio would prefer them as traditional May and July tentpole releases, leaving room in February for something like the family friendly Fantastic Four. Of course all of this is contingent on studios showing they can keep a production going, the current state of the upcoming slate staying stable and is all based on wild speculation to begin with, but the pieces do fall into place if you let them.

    The final and most tantalizing tidbit comes when we try to answer the question of whether or not Kevin Feige and his core group have identified creative teams for these projects. Past precedent suggests that, whenever possible, the studio likes to bring a writer on board about 2 years before they expect the project to hit theaters and pair that writer with a director as soon as possible. You can safely bet that they’ve been searching for those teams for Blade and Fantastic Four for some time now and given all the down time creators had, it’s no stretch to imagine they found their teams. If we buy that, we can come to a pretty exciting conjecture: Marvel Studios is getting ready to announce these teams or they will shortly be leaked through the trades. In the past, Disney has registered their companies shortly before either making public announcements or trade leaks. Simply put, Disney knows these are going to be found so they’ve always been smart about WHEN they create the entities. Fans have been clamoring for Marvel Studios news and I’m sure that they’ve noticed the hype around FanDome but here’s the thing as explained to me by one of my trusted sources: should Marvel Studios want to do their own pre-recorded online fan event, they don’t need to jump through very many hoops. They’ve got their own streaming service and could drop a pre-recorded “con-like event” on Disney + whenever they want. They could go as far as to not even hype or advertise the event and, within 10 minutes, it would be trending on every social media platform across the world.

    Again, none of this is confirmed to be true and all starts from a foundation that’s based on guesses to begin with, but this is what being a fan is all about and that’s, first and foremost, what we are here at Murphy’s Multiverse: fans.