Marvel Is Planning More Than 20 New Movies After 'Avengers 4'

2017 was an important year for Marvel, but 2018 will be even more so.

2018 should give us Black Panther, the first black superhero headliner, which is pretty cool. Then there'll be the eagerly expected new Avengers, which promises the demise of some of our fav characters.

2018 will also mark the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) tenth anniversary, as the first Iron Man was released on April 24, 2008.

Image: Marvel Studios

To celebrate this event, the whole crew gathered for a long article in Vanity Fair. Alongside the 83 artists taking part, from Chris Evans to Stan Lee and Scarlett Johansson (and so many others), the article is also a tribute to Kevin Feige, the man behind the MCU project. He took this opportunity to share his views on the future of the MCU.

Twenty-two movies are already on the cards until the end of phase three, but Kevin Feige boasts he's got enough material for another twenty, saying "we’ve got another 20 movies on the docket that are completely different from anything that’s come before—intentionally.”

Disney boss Robert Iger concurs: MCU holds the rights to seven thousand characters (!). Just imagine what MCU could do with this.

The 'After-Avengers 4'

Feige will have to work on actually killing off the current MCU, in a way, stating that “There will be two distinct periods. Everything before Avengers 4 and everything after. I know it will not be in ways people are expecting.”

That's partly because the contracts of some of the stars are ending (with among them Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Mark Ruffalo (Hulk)).

It's also a case of wrapping up the Infinity Stones narrative, which more or less was at the core of the twenty last MCU movies.

Of course, we still don't know much about this after-Avengers 4 future, only that there will be a sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2019 and a third Guardians of the Galaxy around 2020, once more directed by James Gunn.

We guess there'll be a sequel to Doctor Strange too, but it's just wait and see for now.

What we do know though is that the competition is hotting up, as proves the success of Wonder Woman, a hit lauded both for its feminist angle and for its overall quality.

Even if Justice League doesn't meet the audience's expectations and flops, DC too has quite a few stories it can play with: Aquaman, Shazam, Wonder Woman 2, a movie about Cyborg, Green Lantern Corps, Batgirl, The famous The Batman, Black Adam, Flashpoint, Gotham City Sirens, Justice League Dark, Nightwing, Suicide Squad 2, Birds of Prey, Deadshot, Deathstroke, Lobo, a sequel to Justice League, another for Man of Steel and, finally, a film centred on Harley Quinn and the Joker.

We can't be sure of the future of all these movies though, as it is quite difficult to predict how Justice League will be received by the public.