Marvel hasn't exactly been hesitant when it comes to capitalizing on success. After Iron Man shattered expectations in 2008, a sequel was immediately put into pre-production and came out two years later, and now Iron Man 3 is set to hit theaters on May 3, 2013. Thor, which came out earlier this summer, made over $100 million before the movie even came to North America and the sequel, Thor 2, is scheduled to arrive on July 26, 2013. But what do you do with Captain America? The patriotic hero's solo adventure was yet another hit at the box office, raking in over $350 million globally, but Marvel can't fill summer 2013 any more without putting its own films in competition with each other. The answer to the problem is simple: bump Cap to 2014.
Chris Evans, who stars as the stars and stripes protagonist, recently spoke with The Playlist and confirmed that his contract is for five more films, but fans wanting to see more of the character may have to wait two years after next summer's The Avengers to see him again. "Marvel has a lot of balls in the air, they aren’t going to cannibalize their films," Evans said. Because Evans is specifically signed on for three Captain America movies and three Avengers movies, you also shouldn't expect him to appear in any of the other franchise projects. Said Evans, "Out of those six films, if I pop up in one of those [other films], it counts as part of the deal. So if they needed me in a third Cap, and I say, ‘Fuck you, give me $30 million,’ well…they want to avoid that."
Marvel announced two secret release dates in 2014 last month, one on May 16th, the other on June 27th, so we can probably expect the second Cap adventure to fall on one of those days. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have already begun working on the script for Captain America 2, so it looks like they'll have plenty of time to tinker and toy and make sure that it's perfect. Sounds like a good deal to me.
