With Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe now in full swing and Avengers: Infinity War fast approaching, attention is slowly starting to turn towards the fourth Phase of the MCU – although according to director Kevin Feige, the concept of ‘Phases’ may come to an end with Avengers 4 as we get “a new thing” going forward.
“We’ve been lucky that [contract expirations] haven’t factored in too much,” Feige told Collider during a promotional interview for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. “We’ve had people under contract for certain films, then we’ve had new ideas and new directions like Civil War like we wanted to do, and we’ve been lucky enough to make new contracts. Or Spider-Man: Homecoming, the cast has been awesome in their enthusiasm for the direction and the storylines that we’ve been telling. So it really does, right now, all start with where we wanna take the stories. Certainly as we get to Infinity War there is a sense of a climax if not a conclusion to, by the time we’re at untitled Avengers 4, the 22 movies that will have encompassed the first three phases of the MCU. And what happens after that will be very different. I don’t know if it’s Phase 4, it might be a new thing.”
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Feige also went on to note that most of Marvel’s focus at the moment is on the current slate of films, as opposed to what comes next: “We’re not actively discussing anything past untitled Avengers, other than we’ve dated Spider-Man: Homecoming 2—which that would not be the title but that’s what we would call it—because that’s the agreement we made with Sony for the inclusion of Spidey in the Avengers films, and James Gunn doing a third Guardians of the Galaxy at some point. But really the whole focus of Marvel Studios is, counting Guardians 2, the next eight films that are gonna take up all of our time. We have an idea [of what the MCU looks like post-Infinity War], and it’s gonna be very, very different.”
Presumably, by “very, very different” we’ll be seeing a shift in focus towards some of the newer characters of the MCU, but is it possible we could start to see “soft reboots” of some of the original heroes? Or perhaps younger characters taking on the mantle of some of the original Avengers?
What would you like to see from the MCU post-Avengers 4? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
Originally published April 22, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
