Getting the rights back to the X-Men universe from Fox gives Marvel Studios the freedom to play with a whole host of new properties in the MCU. Obviously, this includes the mainstream mutant team like Wolverine, Deadpool and co., but it also means Marvel can tackle X-Men off-shoots that Fox never did. Off-shoots like Excalibur, for example.
We Got This Covered has heard from our sources – the same ones who told us that Taskmaster would be the villain in Black Widow and that Wiccan will debut in WandaVision (which was seemingly confirmed last week) – that Marvel’s planning on making an Excalibur movie at some point, possibly for Phase 5 or 6.
For those unfamiliar, Excalibur is a superhero team based in England in the comics. Captain Britain is nearly always featured as the leader of the group and is often joined by a changing roster of X-Men. Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Colossus and Phoenix, amongst many others, have all been part of the team at one time or another.
For the movie version, we’re hearing that Black Knight will feature as part of Excalibur, which makes sense as Kit Harington is set to debut as Dane Whitman, the MCU’s first English superhero, in next year’s The Eternals. We’ve previously reported that Marvel has big plans for Black Knight, too, including giving him his own movie and having him join the New Avengers.
Black Knight has often been part of Excalibur in the comics but, given his importance to the future of the franchise, we’re wondering if he might be bumped up to the leadership position that Captain Britain usually fills in the movie version. That said, we’ve also been told that Brian Braddock could appear in the film, so who knows?
Giving the United Kingdom its own superhero team would definitely continue the internationalization of the MCU that seems to be happening over the next few years, though. Already, we have Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi set to become the first Asian hero in the franchise, Black Widow taking place partially in Russia and obviously, we’ll return to Wakanda in Black Panther 2.
As for this Excalibur movie, it’s still early days, but we’ll certainly let you know as soon as we learn more.