Where there’s smoke, there’s fire? Are the rumors of “Captain America: Brave New World” true? What rumors? Well, “‘Captain America: Brave New World” was once a summer 2024 movie set right in the heart of July. However, after the strikes, Marvel Studios revamped their entire schedule, moving “Deadpool 3” into that July position even though its production shoot—which is still going on now as we speak—wasn’t complete and ‘Brave New World’ had finished its principal photography. Delaying the finished film instead of the incomplete one? Rumors quickly surfaced that ‘Brave New World,’ which was pushed to February 2025, was in kind of trouble and needed months of reshoots to “fix” the picture starring Anthony Mackie in his first feature-length appearance as Captain America.
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While those rumors aren’t confirmed per se, when was the last time a new writer was announced for reshoots? Well, basically, the last time on such a major project was when Tony Gilroy was hired as the writer on reshoots for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” a movie that was extensively overhauled and re-created in the reshoot stage, with Gilroy basically taking over as director and supervisor of the post-production.
So, we’re not ringing the alarm bell quite yet, but Deadline’s report that Marvel has hired Matthew Orton, a consulting producer for Marvel Studios’ Disney+ series “Moon Knight,” to pen additional scenes and material is fairly significant, and yes, suggest a major overhaul. Those reshoots are apparently being set for spring/summer 2024 to give Orton time to write, which also definitely hints at major renovation on the movie.
The news is probably not the way Marvel had hoped to end the year, given the disastrous PR year that was 2023 and all the reports of behind-the-scenes dramas on their various TV and film productions (including a whole tell-all Marvel book that came out in the fall that repeatedly wrote about their, “oh, don’t worry, we’ll fix it in post” approach, which was starting to see diminishing results; listen to our podcast with one of its authors here).
“Captain America: Brave New World” follows the events of “The Falcon And The Winter Soldier” Disney+ series where Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), aka the Falcon, picks up the shield and finally adopts the mantle of Captain America.
Julius Onah (“Luce,” “The Cloverfield Paradox”) is the director, and the film is based on earlier drafts by Dalan Musson and Malcolm Spellman, the latter of which was head writer on “The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.” The film co-stars Liv Tyler, Harrison Ford, Shira Haas, Tim Blake Nelson, Rosa Salazar, Danny Ramirez, and Carl Lumbly. Some of these names (Tyler and Blake) you’ll remember from the Ed Norton version of “The Incredible Hulk”—yes, Marvel is bringing some of those in-universe cast members back. And some of them (Lumbly and Ramirez) are key characters from “The Falcon And The Winter Soldier”). But ‘The Hulk’ is connected to the super soldier series that first created Captain America, so expect that to be a key element of the storyline.
Harrison Ford takes over the Thunderbolt Ross role from William Hurt (another ‘Hulkj’ character), who passed away in 2022, and Ross is now the President of the United States, upgraded from his role of U.S. Secretary of State (the man who wanted to shut down the Avengers and introduced the Sokovia Accords in “Captain America: Civil War”).
Marvel Studios is currently licking its wounds from a troubled 2023, which featured their biggest ignominy to date: “The Marvels,” the lowest-grossing film in the franchise’s history that will likely go down as one of the biggest sequel drops in history (“Captain Marvel” grossed $1.1 billion, “The Marvels” will just limp over $200 million worldwide).