For the second year on the trot, 2018 will herald three brand new features from Marvel Studios in the form of Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and the soon-to-be-released Ant-Man and the Wasp – which, by the way, is on the verge of unleashing its latest trailer, so stay tuned to WGTC tomorrow for the full reveal.
But is this new, three-film template the new norm for Marvel Studios? It’s possible, according to head honcho Kevin Feige, but during an extensive interview with Collider, the MCU architect called for patience, stating that Marvel will only consider accelerating its production “for very good reasons.”
Reasons, say, that relate to the impending Disney-Fox merger? Surely the advent of the X-Men, along with Deadpool and the Fantastic Four, would give Marvel Studios the impetus to launch four MCU movies per annum? Here’s what Kevin Feige had to say about the matter at hand:
I think it depends. It depends on what happens with big corporate deals, it depends on how we’re feeling as a studio to grow. We always intended to just do two a year until we got to a natural place where it felt like not doing three meant we were holding things back or preventing work from being done. Totally comfortable with three a year, which we’ve been doing for a few years now. If it ever gets to four, it would only be for very good reasons.
Whatever the case, it seems Marvel Studios and its tight-knit brain trust has already mapped out the next six-to-seven years for the MCU, after Feige admitted that he’s already had meetings about possible features that would slot into 2024 and 2025.
The question, really, is whether the Marvel Cinematic Universe will succumb to the pitfalls of franchise fatigue over the next half-decade, even if Infinity War‘s record-shattering box office says otherwise.