Kevin Feige Gives Updates on the Russos Directing Avengers 5 and 6, Spider-Man 4, and the X-Men
Kevin Feige is setting the record straight on some upcoming Marvel projects… sort of. The president of Marvel Studios spoke with Inverse about a recent article from The Hollywood Reporter that claimed Joe and Anthony Russo would return to the MCU to direct Avengers 5 and Avengers: Secret Wars. Feige didn’t exactly deny the report, but he did indicate it could be untrue:
“No I can’t comment on it except to say it was somebody else a couple of weeks ago and I look forward to seeing who it is going to be next week… We’ll see.”
Again, this isn’t a denial. There have been other rumored Avengers directors, with Destin Daniel Cretton actually being on board for what was then called Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, but he dropped out. Sam Raimi and Shawn Levy have also been described as either being courted or “a top choice” for the position. Feige appears to be waving those off as rumors, but I’m not so sure; I think Marvel is having a harder time than they anticipated finding someone to direct their movies because it’s no longer the prestige gig it used to be. Not only has the Marvel brand lost its luster, but the company has a reputation for taking films away from their directors or at least imposing a lot of demands and regulations on the movies, as well as changing them again and again before they’re released, racking up such high costs that it’s almost impossible for them to be successful. Who would want to have a film they directed mangled by a company no longer interested in quality and then be blamed for its failure? I do believe the Russo Brothers are in talks to direct the next two Avengers movies, as The Hollywood Reporter said, and I think Feige is getting ahead of the negotiations potentially falling through, as well as maybe trying to pressure the Russos by downplaying the public’s hype. The former is a good idea; even if negotiations are going well, you never know. But if he’s trying to handle the Russo Brothers, I doubt he’ll be successful; given where both parties are now, they’re holding all the cards, and Marvel needs them much more than they need Marvel.
Kevin Feige also spoke to io9 about two Marvel films that are still in early development: Spider-Man 4 and the MCU’s first X-Men movie. On Spider-Man 4, Feige said:
“Amy [Pascal] and I are working on it… We have writers who are going to be delivering us a draft relatively soon.”
That’s not much, but it is confirmation that they’re actively working on Spider-Man 4, something that was widely assumed since Spider-Man: No Way Home was by far Marvel’s biggest success since Avengers: Endgame – the second-biggest being Spider-Man: Far From Home; it turns out people kinda like Spider-Man. It’s been rumored that Feige and Pascal disagree on what they want Spider-Man 4 to be, with Feige wanting a more pared-down story and Pascal wanting a big, epic, cosmic adventure. If that’s true, I’m on Feige’s side, especially after the way No Way Home ended; we need a Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man to ground the character again. (Spider-Man: Just Stay Home.)
Feige gave a few more details about what to expect from the team we see in the inevitable X-Men movie:
“Well, it’s that phrase we use often at Marvel, which is ‘It’s an embarrassment of riches… And there are a lot of great X-Men characters in the Deadpool & Wolverine film. There are a lot of great X-Men characters in all of the Fox versions of the X-Men films. And there are a lot of great X-Men characters that have never gone on the big screen. So I think as we always try to do, as we did when we made the arrangement with Sony for Spider-Man, you’ll probably see a mix of characters you’ve seen before and characters you’ve never seen before.”
“I think the success of X-Men ’97 was really exciting for us to see people revisit and reconnect with that world… And dare I say, the soap opera elements of that world, which is one of the things that’s so exciting to us about jumping into it finally in the MCU.”
Depending on the team members they use, I think this is smart. You’re going to want some of the most popular X-Men – I don’t see them leaving Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, and Jean Grey out, and hopefully not Beast either – but there are plenty of mutants that haven’t been used who can give the audience someone new to discover through the films. The “soap opera” line is good if it means they want to incorporate those elements into a larger story; the Fox X-Men movies delved into it a bit, with the Scott-Jean-Logan love triangle and Bobby Drake torn between Rogue and Kitty Pride (the MCU is going to put him in just to make him gay, isn’t it?). Does Feige intend to do more than that? If so, it’ll be a fine line to walk; you can do that easier in comic books or a TV show, where there are new issues or episodes each week or month, but a movie can easily get bogged down in melodrama. But if they can pull it off – and it’s modern Marvel, so I’m not overly hopeful – then it could be great.
Both of these updates also make it seem as though Marvel is focusing on what it should have been doing in Phases 4 and 5 and making movies centered on the popular characters they have in their stable instead of second-stringers nobody cares about. Eric July has said this many times, and he’s right; the acquisition of Fox should have immediately resulted in X-Men and Fantastic Four movies going into development. Instead, they wanted Shang-Chi, The Marvels, Eternals, and those stupid TV shows. A Falcon movie is being released before a Fantastic Four movie, and they’re only so close together because Falcon’s film was delayed and reshot extensively. It makes you wonder if Kevin Feige has finally seen the writing on the wall and is getting his house in order.
