After The 'Endgame': Here’s Where The Phase 4 Future Of The Marvel Cinematic Universe Goes - Page 4 of 4

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2023 & Beyond

The year Fox begins? More below and note, there are no official release dates beyond 2022.

“Deadpool 3”
The “Deadpool” franchise has been a huge hit and been moved to the summer, but if we’re right and Fox/Marvel take a minor breather and wait until 2022, “Deadpool” will have to move. Nothing is known about “Deadpool 3” right now, but we do know this: Ryan Reynolds will be back, the series will remain R-Rated, that means it’ll likely be branded as Fox, not Disney, which means it probably won’t directly connect to the MCU in any major way (that comes later) and that both Kevin Feige and Disney‘s Bob Iger have said that no one should mess with its winning formula. That likely means the core creative team of writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds (who was credited as a writer on “Deadpool 2”) remain the core creatives. A director is up in the air, as is the return of Cable (Josh Brolin), but one suspects at least Domino (Zazie Beetz) comes back. But it remains a big question mark, even on this release date.

The X-Men Universe
Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has said we likely won’t see the “X-Men” in the MCU for about five years and while you shouldn’t hold him to that exact time table, the above list demonstrates that Marvel simply doesn’t have time and space to introduce them anytime sooner, their card is full. There are many ways Marvel can go here, seed mutants along the way and maybe include a couple scattered throughout some prior MCU movies, in post-credit sequences (though those kinds of ta daas! seem passé now), introducing some of them as characters in solo Disney+ shows, solo movies ramping up to an X-Men movie ala “Avengers,” or just one big “X-Men” movie like ‘Guardians’ or previous “X-Men” movies. There are tons of possibilities, but I don’t think an “Iceman” solo film leading up to an event “X-Men” would work. They’ll likely just start as “X-Men” an original team and build from there, but Feige has so many possibilities at his disposal. We could speculate on and on—how mutants will be first introduced for example—but we’ll be here all day. Suffice to say, “X-Men” is a large universe unto itself and an ‘Avengers’ like property that doesn’t need any immediate MCU crossover to work.

The “New Mutants” Problem
After years of delays and questions, the path to “New Mutants” is clear. Disney just announced the fourth release date shift for the beleaguered 20th Century Fox “X-Men” spin-off film. Once arriving this August, “New Mutants” is now scheduled for an April 3, 2020 release, back to the spring date they once had years ago, so presumably, this means, all the Hulu talk is squashed. But the central question remains: will the mooted reshoots ever happen? Fox has said to be unhappy with the film for years and at one point it was reported that Fox and producer Simon Kinberg wanted to reshoot 50% of the movie and add an entirely new character digitally. Given this franchise is ending (presumably??), one would imagine all those resources wouldn’t go into the film, but time will tell.  Some have quickly speculated that Disney could work this movie into the MCU, but don’t bet on that.

The Fantastic Four Universe
The oft-repeated rumor is the Fantastic Four is a team stuck in the quantum realm, stuck there after some science experiment gone wrong banished them there. Some rumors suggest the team has been stuck there since the 1960s—which might be a fun way to explain their quirks and silly costume’s if they want to stick to that aesthetic. It’s a fun angle and could provide a period-piece flavor to the MCU we haven’t seen before without having to use de-aging, but it’s all speculation for now. Feige technically hasn’t commented on the Fantastic Four—maybe they could come sooner than five years?—but he ends up having the same problem: phase 4 or whatever it ends up being called, is well mapped out. All of it is TDB, up in the air, and figuring out how to intro both FF and X-Men into the pre-existing MCU, is probably Marvel’s most difficult challenge at this point. But bet on this: there’s really no reason for that “Doctor Doom” movie Fargo creator Noah Hawley wrote, so we’d scratch that one off the table if we were you. But either way, don’t expect Fantastic Four anytime soon either, although at Comic-Con, Feige did announce that a movie was being put into development.

“Deadpool”/X-Force” Franchise
As already suggested. “Deadpool” in many ways is Marvel’s most difficult Fox problem to have. Disney brass has spoken of the franchise’s “why fix it if it’s not broken?” quality which means, the property stays R-Rated, with the same principal cast and they’re likely not going to mess with the formula. But then the question remains, how do you crossover and integrate into the MCU, especially when R-Rated “Deadpool” movies remain branded as Fox movies? That’s a bigger question and possibly a flip from R-Rated to Pg-13 and back depending on what film you’re in. And what of “X-Force” that essentially was going to be “Deadpool 3″?  Many assumed “Deadpool 3” was going to be an “X-Force” movie, but our confident bet is this: The X-Men will have not been introduced into the MCU yet and Marvel/Disney will not want the subversive, jokey, anti-hero team of X-Force to outshine or overshadow the first introduction of mutants into the MCU. Thus, X-Force is likely waiting for a beat and “Deadpool 3” will be another “solo” movie—or at least as much of a solo movie as “Deadpool 2” was. Also? Expect them to shy away from the Xavier mansion, X-men costumes, and X-Men connections. This might be in part—if we’re right—why “Deadpool 3” has to wait so long. Because it has to rethink itself and likely strip itself of its X-Men elements (or dial them back anyhow), because Marvel will want to save them for the actual “X-Men” movie.

READ MORE: ‘Falcon’ And ‘Winter Soldier’ Limited Series in The Works For Disney’s Streaming Channel

Disney+ (Updated below with tweets)
Anything beyond this is broad speculation, but for the sake of connectivity, keep in mind the Disney+ streaming network will have five Marvel limited series shows: a “Loki,” series “WandaVision” (Scarlet Witch and Vision), “The Falcon And The Winter Soldier,” “Hawkeye” and eventually, a “What If?” animated series. That’s all we know about for now and people online have speculated about dozens of other shows in development or in the early gestation stage, but nothing is confirmed outside of those five and they’ll begin running in 2020, 2021 and beyond (dates are very TBD).

That’s it and a lot to mull over. What’s truly next for Phase 4 or whatever Marvel ultimately calls it? Expect at least the 2021 films to be announced in July at Comic-Con this summer. We’ll update this article with new dates if and when they arrive.