It’s no coincidence that the quartet of Avengers movies account for the four highest-grossing installments in Marvel Cinematic Universe history, with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes proving to be a much stronger force at the box office than their disparate standalone adventures.
In fact, if you count the superhero spectaculars as a standalone mini-franchise in its own right, then the Avengers are the stars of the fourth most lucrative property in the history of cinema behind only the MCU at large, Star Wars and the Wizarding World. Make no mistake; a fifth outing is happening eventually, we just don’t know how far away it is.
Plenty of groundwork will be laid throughout the Phase Four slate on both the big screen and Disney Plus, but in a new set visit interview via ScreenRant, longtime Marvel Studios producer Nate Moore explained the difficulties in starting the Avengers machine up again in the wake of Endgame‘s unprecedented success.
“We’re kind of nerds, so we like to build towards things and we like to spread breadcrumbs and see where they come. I think audiences also want to be surprised so to some degree, we don’t want to say, you saw that trick, let’s do that trick again. What’s the new way to surprise people? If and when we did an Avengers movie, what would be the funnest version of that?
How do you go the opposite and make the stakes really personal and small, because what’s bigger than Endgame? I mean, how do we make the stakes bigger than that? Is the universe is going to collapse? I don’t know. Or is there another way… oh, here’s a really clever Mission: Impossible style Avengers movie that gets to be smaller. Again, all ideas we can play with but I do feel like the door is a bit open and audiences would be kind of game to follow us.”
Fans have become conditioned to expect a new Avengers blockbuster to cap off each phase of the MCU, but we’re not even sure what the overarching narrative is going to be post-Infinity Saga. The impact and effect of the multiverse would be the smartest guess, but there are 31 projects currently in development at Marvel Studios, none of which have been confirmed to involve the Avengers as of yet.