Tonight at the Walt Disney Investors Day, Kevin Feige, president, Marvel Studios, and chief creative officer, Marvel, shared plans for the expansion and future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “The Cinematic Universe weaves storylines, heroes, and villains across 23 feature films to date. And with Disney+, we’re able to extend this way of storytelling to a new format—creating series that are connected to our theatrical releases, making the MCU more immersive than ever.”
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You’ve seen a dozen stories tonight, but let’s house clean and finish things with all details revealed. First up, while you could hear that Kevin Feige got choked-up while talking about the loss of Chadwick Boseman, he promised that Marvel would not be recasting the role. However, the studio chief stopped short explaining their plan for “Black Panther 2,” which writer/director Ryan Coogler is busy working on. In the press release after the event, Marvel said, “Marvel Studios will not recast the character, but will continue to explore the incomparable world of Wakanda and all of the rich and varied characters introduced in the first film.” The presumption is Letitia Wright‘s Shuri character will take the lead role, but that’s unconfirmed. The sequel has been given a new release date of July 8, 2020 after previously being set for a May 6, 2022. This will certainly give the creative team a little more team to figure things out.
We finally know who the cast and characters of Destin Daniel Cretton‘s “Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings” will officially be. The martial arts action flick will have a cast that consists of Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, Tony Leung as Wenwu aka The Mandarian, Awkwafina as Katy, Meng’er Zhang as Xialing, Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, Ronny Chieng as Jon Jon, Fala Chen as Jiang Li, and Florian Munteanu as Razor Fist. The film is due next summer, July 9, 2021.
Additionally, Marvel confirmed “Black Widow” will be released theatrically on July 9, 2021. So much for fan speculation that all of Disney’s 2021 movies would be all dumped on Premier Access for an extra fee or free on Disney+.
Switching to the world of New Asgard, former Batman actor Christian Bale was officially announced as the villain in Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Love & Thunder,” which will begin shooting at Fox Studios Australia next month in Sydney. Bale has been placed in the role of Gorr The God Butcher, joining a cast that includes Chris Hemsworth as Thor Odinson, Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, aka Lady Thor, Tessa Thompson as King Valkyrie, and Taika reprising the role of Korg. Its release date has also been moved to May 6, 2022, after being initially set for February 11, 2022. I think it’s obvious to expect that the “Loki” series will plant seeds for the fourth movie, but we shall soon see.
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Finally, Mahershala Ali‘s “Blade” reboot was also given a shout-out, “Moon Knight” was mentioned (though not Oscar Isaac in the lead role), and Feige said “Hawkeye,” starring Jeremy Renner. will arrive at the end of 2021. Still, we didn’t learn anything new, and we didn’t hear anything about Ryan Reynold‘s “Deadpool 3” despite recently landing new screenwriters. That’s it, good night.