Unless you were living in the alternate dimension created by the Tesseract cube this weekend, you probably know that the jolly green Hulk and his fellow “The Avengers” swept any box office competition away with a record-breaking $200.3 million opening weekend. While the public is certainly lapping up director Joss Whedon’s superhero opus, they’re also eager to see what’s next from Marvel Studios. Many are wondering if we'll be seeing more heroes making their way to the screen, with a number of potential candidates in the mix. Well, one potential frontrunner has re-entered the rumor mill thanks to a tweet from “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” helmer Edgar Wright on Saturday.
With Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently saying that the Edgar Wright and “Attack the Block” filmmaker Joe Cornish penned script for the studio’s ant loving hero “Ant-Man” was “the closest its ever been” to heading into production, Wright wasted little time teasing his followers this weekend as he posted an image of a very intriguing piece of art containing the image of a man, an ant, and what’s very clearly our hero “Ant-Man.” Wright captioned the photo, “Received this in the mail. What can it mean?” What a tease, though is it indeed some sort of gift from Feige letting Wright know that it’s time to roam the mounds to give “Ant-Man” life or did Wright just receive a lovely present from one of his many adoring fans?
While we eagerly anticipate further news on “Ant-Man,” Feige has recently been revealing Marvel’s future plans at the very height of all this superhero excitement, though once again he’s remaining coy on Marvel’s planned 2014 releases. What we do know is that “Captain America 2” is currently planting a big old American flag right in the ground of its previously announced April 4, 2014 date, but Marvel and distributor Disney have a prime May 30, 2014 slot readied for a currently mysterious movie. Feige told Crave Online back in April that, "We know what our second movie in 2014 is going to be, but we haven't announced it yet,” to which he added that currently talked about features like “Ant-Man,” “Dr. Strange,” “The Inhumans,” and “The Guardians of the Galaxy” are all on the table in varying stages of production. He does perhaps rule out “Dr. Strange” as a possibility for the May 30th date, saying to a Chicago NBC affiliate that bringing in various aspects of the universe takes time. "The magic side, again, it's going to be 'Doctor Strange.' Someday we will introduce that side of it, and when we go over that it's going to be through the eyes of Stephen Strange. When that happens, we don't know," he explained. Could Wright's time to shine at Marvel be around the corner?
The mystery surrounding Marvel’s upcoming projects doesn’t end there either. While Feige continues to be the reliable talking head for Marvel, he recently spoke to SuperHeroHype, where he gave accolades to his fellow creative types and executives and hinted that Marvel Co-President Louis D'Esposito –who's executive produced all the movies—“directed a little something that we're going to reveal in the coming months.” Now this could just be a throwaway short in the vein of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson adventures that can be found on the “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” DVD releases, but perhaps it could be something more. There are no details besides that, but right now we’d assume it’s something that will pop up on the “The Avengers” home entertainment release.
Marvel is certainly weaving an intricate spider web of mystery as they continue their ambitious task of bringing all their heroes to life, but they certainly have a bright future ahead of them. As they proved this weekend, they can culminate years of teasing and great to mediocre superhero films into a crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster, so we can only wait anxiously to see what’s next.