We know a fair amount of what’s to come from Marvel Studios, aka “The House that Kevin Built.” The studio plans to slow down production and release, putting out only one movie into theaters this year (Deadpool & Wolverine in July), and two upcoming Marvel shows heading to the Disney+ streaming service. But behind that plans lies a SLEW of projects that have been announced for the MCU, and they need updated information. The two most significant have to be the two Avengers movies – Avengers 5 and Avengers: Secret Wars – and a veteran Marvel director just put his name in for Secret Wars duty.
Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has been making the rounds as of late to promote the upcoming horror movie Boy Kills World, but he also fielded a number of questions regarding his future in the Marvel universe. Primarily, there have been rumors that Raimi might make Spider-Man 4 with Tobey Maguire. We still want to see that. However, Raimi also told ScreenGeek that he’s down to direct the forthcoming Avengers: Secret Wars, explaining:
I love 90% of the Marvel heroes that I’ve read in the great Stan Lee Marvel Universe comic books. I would love to work with Marvel again. They haven’t reasonably asked me to. I hope they had a good experience with me. They haven’t asked me yet. I hope they do.
In addition to helming three Spider-Man movies with Tobey Maguire, Sam Raimi recently returned to the Marvel fold to direct Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a film that embraced the concept of the Multiverse (big for the MCU in Phases 5 and 6), while also delivering this massive team-up scene that involved the Illuminati. This scene, alone, could serve as Raimi’s audition reel for why he’d be the right fit for Avengers: Secret Wars:
Another reason why I think Sam Raimi would be a perfect choice for Avengers: Secret Wars is that a project of this magnitude – which assumedly is going to serve as a massive team up movie pitting the bulk of the MCU’s heroes against an established villain – needs the steady hand of a filmmaker who has been through the grind more than once. It’s part of the reason I’m mildly concerned that Marvel Studios handed The Fantastic Four to Matt Shakman, and not to a seasoned filmmaker with more comic or filmmaking experience. Go back to the earliest days of the MCU, and you’ll find proven talents such as Jon Favreau, Kenneth Branagh and Joe Johnston helming these origin stories. Shakman mainly has done television. Great television… but television.
At the moment, we’re not even confident on the MCU’s release date for Avengers: Secret Wars. It will come after such significant movies as Avengers 5 (which used to be The Kang Dynasty), The Fantastic Four, Blade, probably Spider-Man 4, and maybe an X-Men project. There have been rumors that Secret Wars would soft reboot the MCU, allowing multiverse variants of existing heroes to enter the fray. We might know more after Deadpool & Wolverine this summer. But I don’t think we’ll be any closer to Sam Raimi helming the blockbuster by then.
