Remember way back in October 2014, right after the first "Guardians of the Galaxy" was released, when Kevin Feige held that big press conference and announced the entire slate of Marvel Phase Three films, all the way up to the fourth "Avengers" movie slated for summer 2019? Remarkably, there were very few deviations from that initial plan. "Inhumans" was dumped, "Spider-man" came home, and a few dates were changed around, but what was announced was mostly what we got.
And now we're only a few days away from "Captain Marvel," the first of three big Marvel films being released in 2019, and there have been no official announcements as to what's coming in 2020 and beyond. Up until last summer, the big 2020 release was going to be "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," except the controversy with James Gunn happened, and the sequel has now been pushed into limbo. It will get made eventually, but there are no guarantees as to when we'll see it. The whole situation is a good reminder as to why announcing ambitious slates of films so far in advance generally isn't done. There's no predicting what's going to throw a wrench into the works, and something always inevitably does. Just look at what happened to the DC and Sony superhero slates.
Even at Disney, which has seen the most success with these kinds of franchise films, and has the most resources, clearly keeping to that announced Phase Three schedule was tough. If there weren't those release dates set in stone, would we have gotten better versions of some of these films? Would they have been able to react to certain criticisms faster, and maybe avoided some of the negative fallout? There's no arguing that the Marvel films haven't been massively successful, but there are plenty of things that could have been done better, both onscreen and off. So while I'm as curious as anyone else about what's coming up, the lack of a big, splashy Phase Four announcement doesn't bother me. The lack of one will give the filmmakers more flexibility to make better movies. And to weather the next inevitable crises better.
So what is coming up in 2020 and beyond for the MCU? We know Marvel has called dibs on two release dates in 2020, three in 2021, and three in 2022. The general rule that there are three years between direct sequels isn't holding true anymore, since the "Spider-man" movies came two years apart, and it'll be at least five years between "Doctor Strange" movies. With "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" in a holding pattern, until at least 2021, that means that the most likely 2020 titles are the ones that we know are being filmed this year - "Black Widow" and "The Eternals." Cate Shortland has been announced as the director of "Black Widow," and casting is underway at the time of writing. We know very, very little about "The Eternals," based on another cosmic title about a group of off-world superheroes, but Chloe Zhao is directing.
Beyond that, things become much more uncertain. "Guardians 3" is getting made one way or another, and my guess is that it'll show up at some point in 2021, along with the next "Doctor Strange" and either a "Spider-man" or "Ant-man" sequel. The "Black Panther" sequel is also a possibility here, though my guess is that it'll be positioned as the big title for 2022. There's also been recent news of Marvel fast-tracking a film about "Shang-Chi," an Asian superhero. I think that the earliest we can expect another "Avengers" movie or anything involving the newly acquired X-men characters would be 2023. And of course, this is all assuming that another Gunn-level disaster doesn't happen.
Characters we know are not getting their own films include the Winter Soldier, Falcon, Loki, Scarlet Witch and Vision, because they're currently slated for series on the Disney+ streaming service. Hulk is also unlikely at this time due to rights issues.
In short, there is plenty of Marvel content headed our way soon, and some of it very exciting. However, with the uncertainty of the Fox merger and a major title still in a precarious place, Disney has every reason not to want to commit to anything before they have to.
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