Back in late 2014, Marvel Studios made a splash when it held a special event announcing when all of the Phase 3 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would come out. Naturally there were some changes to the slate in the years afterwards, but for the most part, we knew what was coming and on what dates. With Phase 4, however, while some of the upcoming MCU movies have been officially announced or reported on, no specific release dates have been revealed yet, and according to Kevin Feige, we shouldn’t expect to learn what Marvel movie will follow Spider-Man: Far From Home until after the Web-Slinger’s adventure is released. When CinemaBlend’s own Eric Eisenberg asked what the game plan is for Marvel movies in production, the Marvel Studios president responded:
The game plan is to not reveal the game plan until after Endgame and Far From Home… And wanting the focus to be on, of course, Captain Marvel, Endgame, Far From Home, and really what will be a 23-movie journey, and there’ll be plenty of time to talk about what comes after that.
There you have it. Rather than clue fans in on what’s coming to the MCU in 2020, Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel brain trust would rather our attention be focused on what’s coming this year. This is similar to the approach Marvel took last year with waiting to reveal the title for Avengers: Endgame; Feige and the gang didn’t want to divert focus from the fallout of Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp.
And make no mistake, 2019 is a big year for the MCU, as Captain Marvel will wind the clock back to 1995 to tell Carol Danvers’ origin story, Avengers: Endgame will conclude Phase 3 by having its heroes fight to undo Thanos’ genocide and Spider-Man: Far From Home will kick off Phase 4 by having Peter Parker fight Elementals alongside Mysterio in Europe. Whew, that’s a lot!
So per Kevin Feige’s update, that means the soonest we could learn which Marvel movie will occupy that May 1, 2020 spot is sometime in the latter half of July, after Spider-Man: Far From Home has had a couple weeks to attract audiences. However, don’t be surprised if Marvel decides to wait even longer to announce when the next MCU movie is coming out, delaying that reveal until August or sometime in the fall. Ideally the company doesn’t wait too much longer than that to announce the big news. After all, as popular and successful as the MCU is, Marvel can still benefit from starting promotion as early as possible.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the Black Widow movie will end up taking that May, 1, 2020 release date. It has a director attached, filming is expected to begin later this year and if it’s anything like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it won’t require as many visual effects as your average Marvel movie. That means it would be easier to get Black Widow ready to go by May 2020 compared to something like The Eternals, which is also planning to shoot in 2019. Whether this is a correct guess or not, we have at least five months to go to learn the answer, if not longer.
Rest assured, once the release date for the next MCU movie comes out, we here at CinemaBlend will let you know about it. In the meantime, the MCU will pick back up with the release of Captain Marvel on March 8, followed by Avengers: Endgame on April 26 and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5. If you’re interested to learn what the superhero franchise has in development, look through our handy guide.
