Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe shouldn’t be shocked to learn that Marvel Studios president, Kevin Feige, is a bit of a planner. Whether it’s a necessity when you have to plan for years-long development cycles or just because he likes to know how everything connects, it’s clear that Feige has the MCU planned out for years further than has been announced. But according to Malcolm Spellman, the head writer of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” fans would be surprised at just how many things Marvel Studios actually does have in the works.
Speaking to Murphy’s Multiverse, Spellman talked about what surprised him about the upcoming slate of Marvel Studios films. And the writer doesn’t mention one project in particular. Instead, he just mentions how he was surprised by the sheer number of unannounced movies.
“I was surprised about how few of the upcoming Marvel movies have been announced,” said Spellman. “Fans will start to become more and more clear as these projects get announced.”
Previously, Feige had said that there were plans in place for films up to 2025. But that was years ago. Clearly, since they’ve already announced things that date until 2023, there are probably plans that extend well past 2025. You have to assume projects such as “X-Men” fall into that category (Madripoor, a common X-Men location, does show up in ‘Falcon’). Perhaps something like “Thunderbolts” or “Young Avengers,” also (considering US Agent and Eli Bradley are also in ‘Falcon’). But either way, there’s a lot more in the works than what fans are probably imagining.
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One of those projects is probably not “Captain America and White Wolf,” though that almost became a thing if Spellman had his way. According to an interview with THR, the writer toyed with the idea of the end title card of ‘Falcon’ to read “Captain America and White Wolf” instead of “Captain America and the Winter Soldier.” This idea was supposed to reference the Wakandan name given to Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and how, at the end of the new series, he has shed that Winter Soldier mindset for good. However, it would appear that the Powers That Be didn’t necessarily think it was a good idea.
“I got to see that moniker [White Wolf] in watching one of the cuts, and man, it really affected me emotionally,” explained Spellman. “The reason [the closing title card] still says The Winter Soldier is solely based on Marvel feeling like they needed to keep some of the original title in there to land that feeling. I don’t think it had anything to do with where Bucky is going or how Bucky evolved as a character. I think that they felt like if they went too far away from the original title, you wouldn’t feel the impact of those words. But I’m speculating here.”
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Obviously, White Wolf isn’t such a great superhero name, but it would illustrate just how far Bucky had come since the beginning of the series. Personally, I would have rather seen the title card read, “Captain America and Bucky,” referencing the fact that the comics actually refer to Stan’s character as Bucky. But hey, maybe that’s for a future reveal, where he dumps the Winter Soldier name for good? Maybe that’s in one of those unannounced projects that Feige is working on?