“I am Iron Man.” 

Four words and the start of a cinematic universe. This last quote of the first ever Marvel movie opened the doors to a wide world of superheroes. But what lies ahead for this multi-billion dollar company?

Starting off as the Timely Comics in 1939 and adopting the name Marvel in the 1960s, Marvel has become home to many highly rated movies. Marvel has twenty projects planned to come out from now until 2026. This includes the fourth Captain America, ‘Captain America: New World Order,’ which will be released May 3, 2024, and “Deadpool 3,’ which was originally planned to be out by September 2024 is now pushed back to Nov. 8, 2024.

This ended up pushing back the entirety of the MCU releases schedule. Phase 6 of the MCU was set to open with the Fantastic Four on Nov. 8, 2024, but is now set to come out on Feb. 14, 2025. An untitled Marvel film set to come out on February 14, 2025 is now set for Nov. 7, 2025, so on, so forth up until May 1, 2026, when the furthest ahead scheduled movie has been removed from the calendar.

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantimania,’ which comes Feb. 17, 2023. The new ‘Ant-Man’ will also include newcomers, including Kathryn Newton as Cassandra Lang and Jonathon Majors as the villain, Kang the Conqueror. This isn’t the only film featuring newcomers. The MCU has been adding new faces such as Melissa McCarthy, Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in Thor: Love and Thunder. Secret Invasion, a TV series coming out in 2023, will hold new actors and actresses including Emilia Clark, Christopher McDonald and Olivia Coleman.

Along with the movies Marvel also plans to release new TV series to Disney+, including ‘The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special’ in December 2022, ‘Secret Invasion’ in Spring 2023, ‘Loki’ season 2 in summer 2023, and ‘Agatha, Coven of Chaos,’ will be coming out in winter 2023-2024. 

The MCU is also looking to increase their diversity. It wasn’t until the release of ‘Black Panther’ in 2018 when the lead of a movie wasn’t a white male. Up until this point many people of color were sidekicks or disregarded roles. However, the release of ‘Black Panther’ “was a true tipping point”. Eleven of the sixteen new movies released since then all had a diverse lead, whether it be a “woman or a person of color”. After finally taking this big step, Marvel seems to be continuing in this direction.

Sony Pictures owned the rights to Spider-Man, but seeing as he was a “highly coveted character” they made a joint agreement allowing Spider-Man to appear in Marvel studios. However, since the story of Spider-Man was originally written by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, the Ditko family now filed a notice of termination. According to Screenrant, this would allow “the legal ownership of written works to revert from the publisher to the original author (or their heirs) after a set period of time.” 

If this termination goes through, the after-fire could be disastrous for Marvel, since this isn’t the only character at risk. The MCU is also facing similar lawsuits for other heroes such as Iron Man, Black Widow, Doctor Strange, and more. With all these lawsuits forming for separate characters Marvel could face many severe losses in less than next two years. 

Despite these not-so pleasant possible outcomes, the MCU has a lot in store for us and will continue to take big steps forwards in many directions.