Last week Marvel announced five new release dates, pushing the limits of its ever-expanding cinematic universe to 2019. At this point in time, no films have been announced for those dates, but that’s likely going to change this weekend when Marvel takes the stage at Hall H during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con. Now, just hours after Sony announced that The Amazing Spider-Man 4 had vacated its May 4th, 2018 release date (and that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 had been pushed into an unspecified date in 2018), Marvel has stepped up and claimed that May 4th date for one of its own films.
This continues Marvel’s aggressive trend of planting flags years in advance and is something that will only intensify the release date war currently waging between the likes of Marvel, Sony, Fox, and Warner Bros., which are all making big pushes to unleash superhero tentpole films.
While the studio is remaining tight-lipped about its plans for this new May date, there’s a very good chance it could be reserved for Avengers 3. We initially speculated that the third Avengers film could arrive in 2019, but that’s only because there wasn’t a May date available in 2018. I could be wrong, of course, but judging by the way the studio has structured the MCU so far, releasing Avengers 3 in May 2018 just makes more sense.
Marvel probably won’t unveil all of its future plans at Comic-Con this year, but we should definitely expect some big things from them this week. As of right now, its release date schedule looks like this:
August 1st, 2014: Guardians of the Galaxy
May 1st, 2015: Avengers: Age of Ultron
July 17th, 2015: Ant-Man
May 6th, 2016: Captain America 3
July 8th, 2016: Unannounced (Doctor Strange?)
May 5th, 2017: Unannounced (Thor 3? Iron Man 4?)
July 28th, 2017: Unannounced
November 3rd, 2017: Unannounced
May 4th, 2018: Unannounced (Avengers 3?)
July 6th, 2018: Unannounced
November 11th, 2018: Unannounced
May 3rd, 2019: Unannounced
What do you think? Will Avengers 3 land on that 2018 release date? Sound off below!