Given that we’re 14 years deep into a sprawling superhero franchise that’s now expanded into television, one that currently has upwards of 30 projects either set for release or in various stages of production and/or development, a massive amount of planning clearly goes into the short and long-term future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
However, four-time director Joe Russo has revealed that Kevin Feige isn’t quite as studious as we’ve been led to believe. In fact, the Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Endgame filmmaker revealed to Deadline that the MCU tends to believe in ideas rather than a locked-in roadmap.
“No, the way it works at Marvel is — I’m sure at some point somebody will talk in detail about this, but part of Kevin’s brilliance is that there isn’t really a plan. There’s an idea, but you can’t have a plan if the movie you’re making tanks. There’s no plan after that, right? So it’s really about, as the movie succeeded, then there was sort of enthusiasm about, ‘Well, what else could we do?’
And then that’s when new ideas would come out. And there were hopes, we hope one day we can get to the story if you keep doing this, right? Maybe we can all get there, like Infinity War and Endgame, but a lot of the stuff was made up in between the movies.”
While that makes complete sense on the surface, the MCU has yet to find itself in the position where one of its movies has tanked spectacularly at the box office. That being said, Eternals was released two months after Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, but Simu Liu’s martial arts master has long since had his second outing plunged into development, which could set some alarm bells ringing among fans of the immortal aliens.
We know better than to doubt Feige and his baby at this stage, though, even if things aren’t as meticulous as we’d assumed for well over a decade.