Kevin Feige Unveils Some of the MCU’s Big Next Moves

The grind never stops at Marvel Studios, and Kevin Feige has gone and revealed some juicy nuggets about what is and isn’t to come in the MCU.

The longtime producer recently talked to press about Marvel’s next moves, and he was naturally asked about Blade. We’re now on the six-year anniversary of Mahershala Ali being announced for the role, and he recently told press to pester Marvel about the film’s infamously troubled production. To Deadline and other outlets, Feige confirmed that yes, there have been four separate takes of the character in the development process so far: two in the past and two in the modern day. (One would’ve been set in the Prohibition era, and it was far enough along its background costumes were instead used for Sinners.) The version now being developed has “landed on modern day” and will see Ali do more than “put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires.”

“We didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and he didn’t want to do that to us,” Feige explained to THR. “You can start and have a good script and make it a great script through production, but we didn’t feel confident we could do that on Blade.” Additionally, he confirmed that Ryan Coogler isn’t in the running for that project, as he’s focused on developing Black Panther 3.

Another character fans have been wanting to come to the MCU is one Miles Morales, aka New York’s one and only Spider-Man (other Spiders may be available). It sounds like fans should keep on waiting, as Feige said the studio “has been told to stay away” by Sony, which owns Miles’ film rights. The character’s animated trilogy is expected to wrap with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse in June 2027, but until then, any plans to bring him into the fold “are nowhere” on the MCU’s end. Sony, on the other hand, has its own plans for bringing him out of animation.

When it comes to long-term plans, Feige told press Marvel’s current roadmap stretches to 2032. Naturally, the X-Men are part of those plans, and they’ll be recast for their MCU debut, which’ll be directed by Thunderbolts’ Jake Schreirer. X-fans will get one more chance to see the original Fox actors reprise their roles in Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars. But the new X-Men will also prepare audiences for bigger MCU characters like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers to be eventually played by newer actors down the line.

But don’t worry about any of that until Secret Wars, which will end with a “reset” that brings the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the same universe as the current crop of MCU heroes. Feige stressed to Variety that this isn’t a reboot, which he considers “a scary word that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Reset, singular timeline—we’re thinking along those lines.”

“Secret Wars very, very much sets us up for the future,” Feige teased. “Avengers: Endgame was about endings, literally, and Secret Wars is about beginnings.”

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