Studio president Kevin Feige has suggested the possibility of an end-date for the superhero saga, and its key stars’ contracts are running out. But behind the scenes, producers seem to be planning a future way beyond 2020

The only thing surprising about the spectacular success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is that all those box-office greenbacks and all that critical fervour haven’t really inspired other studios to simply swipe the blueprint, like a scheming supervillain who’s managed to hack his way into Tony Stark’s mainframe and build his or her own shiny supersuit. Sure, both Warner Bros and Twentieth Century Fox have made tentative steps towards launching their own shared big screen worlds for costumed crimefighters to inhabit. But each has stubbornly refused to ape the Marvel way of doing things.



The two best recent movies in Fox’s X-Verse, Deadpool and Logan, are only vaguely linked to the main X-Men saga, yet appear to have ushered in a new, triumphant subset of R-rated spin-offs. The version of the foul-mouthed mutant played by Ryan Reynolds in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine infamously bore very little resemblance to the iteration brought to us by the Canadian actor in last year’s solo outing. Likewise, the Wolverine of Logan appears to have lived through catastrophes that we are not entirely sure will ever take place in the main saga. He even hangs out with a completely different version of mutant tracker Caliban than the one we met just a year previously (in real time) in X-Men: Apocalypse.

Warner Bros’ DC Extended Universe (DCEU), for its part, has eschewed Marvel’s formula – based on setting up individual heroes before bringing them together for a royal superhero rumble in Avengers movies – in favour of an approach designed to send its own cinematic universe from nought to 2000mph in the space of just a single film. Last year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was widely panned, while its followup (Suicide Squad) was ripped apart in the editing suite after suits panicked that David Ayer’s hastily assembled supervillain epic might go the same way as its predecessor. The air of meticulous macro-planning that envelopes every Marvel offering like a steel blanket was nowhere to be seen.

Of the Disney-owned studio’s two chief rivals, Fox is undoubtedly in the better position, given that Deadpool and Logan each performed way beyond expectations. But the studio has no guarantee that the main X-Men saga will benefit from the success of either film, thanks to that paper-thin connection to the parent franchise. In order to develop each standalone movie as an original vision with its own distinct feel, the studio sacrificed its ability to play a part in the greater picture. Suddenly, we are starting to see why Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man never got made.

In short, Marvel appears to be the only studio capable of doing the superhero universe thing properly. So why is it that president Kevin Feige has been teasing a future in which its entire formula might be about to change?

“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,” Feige told Collider. “And what happens after that will be very different. I don’t know if it’s phase four, it might be a new thing.”

For those whose knowledge of the Marvel movies only stretches to the basics, “phases” are collections of movies within the wider cinematic universe that are usually released within two to three years of each other and share a common timeline. The current phase, phase three, is set in the aftermath of evil sentient robot Ultron’s attempt to take over the Earth in the most recent Avengers movie, and includes last year’s Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange, this year’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok, next year’s Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp, and 2019’s Captain Marvel (as well as Infinity War’s as-yet-untitled sequel.)

Play Video 1:54 Watch the first trailer for Thor: Ragnarok

So what does Feige mean when he suggests there may be no “phase four”? Elsewhere in his interview with Collider, the producer references the fact that many of the current stars of the MCU – we are talking Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America) and Mark Ruffalo (the Hulk) – are coming towards the end of their contracts. So the air of uncertainty surrounding the future of the superhero saga is hardly surprising. Would audiences accept a new actor as Tony Stark? Certainly the sense that Marvel’s world always obeys its own internal rules, that it is immune from the kind of Hollywood short term-ism that has seen three different actors playing Spider-Man in the space of a decade, would be shattered. And with that might well go the willingness of fans to turn out to see the next MCU episode simply because they loved the last one.

Marvel’s achievement here is not to be sniffed at. With the creation of the cinematic universe concept it has effectively solved the problem that has beset studios ever since the dawn of the blockbuster era: how to keep audiences constantly coming back for more without getting caught up in an ultimately self-defeating cycle of endless remakes and sequels? Having made such a groundbreaking achievement, it will not want to see it all fall apart. So the way in which the studio handles this changing of the guard – or indeed finds some way to avoid it happening altogether – is crucial to the future success of the MCU.

One way to avoid recasting, or risk continuing ad infinitum with an increasingly elderly cast - Downey Jr will be 55 in 2020 - would be to bring the saga to a natural conclusion with Infinity War’s sequel, with Marvel then rebooting the MCU from the start. Might we see new origins stories for the key Avengers, with the roles of Thor, Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man all recast?

Much clearly depends on the success or otherwise of phase three’s movies. But whatever Feige might be saying in public, there are signs that Marvel is planning for a future way beyond 2020. By the time Infinity War’s sequel rolls around, we will only just have seen the first solo outing for Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel; Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange will still have only appeared in a single standalone entry, and as far as we know we’ll only have seen Tom Holland’s Spidey front and centre in Homecoming (though there are worrying rumours the wallcrawler’s owner, Sony, is planning its own adventures outside the MCU). All of these superheroes are big beasts in their own right, Captain Marvel because she is portrayed by an Oscar winner, Strange because Cumberbatch has an elfin, offbeat star quality unmatched in current Hollywood, and Spider-Man because he is Spider-Man.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The future … Tom Holland will star as the new incarnation of Spider-Man. Photograph: Allstar/Columbia Pictures

These three heroes would also appear to be natural candidates to take the saga forwards in the event of previous leaders of the Avengers retiring from action or even being killed off. Why would Marvel bother bringing them tentatively into the picture if it plans to take the whole shebang back to the drawing board? Has the studio lost confidence in its ability to keep audiences interested without the core superheroes that fans have come to know and love? If so it seems like a strange time to suffer a crisis of confidence, especially as Iron Man, Captain America and Thor were hardly Hollywood household names prior to 2008, when the MCU was launched.

More likely, Feige is simply hedging his bets, so that if the unthinkable should happen, the studio can suggest that it planned to bring the saga to a natural conclusion all along. But don’t bet on it. Like Evans’s Steve Rogers in the opening scenes of 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, this one’s set to run and run.