Through their ability to construct unique character personalities and create an abundance of exceptional comics, movies, and series, Marvel Studios reigns supreme in the cinematic history of superheroes and supervillains.
This saga has stretched across 23 films (and counting) grossed at around $22.39 billion at the worldwide box office, won three Oscars and one best picture nomination, and has published over 37,000 comics to date.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as a whole has become an industry seemingly from another dimension, however, what many don’t realize is that it’s divided into distinct phases that have overarching storylines.
Phase 1 (2008-2012) marks the beginning of the MCU with iconic movies such as Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers.
Phase 2 (2013-2015) contains Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Ant-Man.
Phase 3 (2016-2019) has Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Following these three phases, Avengers: Endgame marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.
Marvel Studios head, Kevin Feige, confirmed at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con that Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will include at least eight films and five TV shows released over the next several years.
Feige recently sat down with Emmy magazine to discuss WandaVision, the first series to be released in their streaming platform Disney +, and spoke of his feelings about the platform.
“Streaming is 100 percent the future and where consumers want to watch things. And hopefully, they’ll want to watch our long-form narrative series. An experience like WandaVision is something you can’t get in a movie. You go to movies for things you can’t get on streaming, and you go to streaming for things you can’t get in a theater. And of course, everything in a theater goes to streaming eventually,” said Feige.
This is relatively new to the MCU. In the next coming years, they will be released through Disney + and will consist of roughly 8-12 episodes and each around 30-50 minutes long. These shows will include The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Loki, What If…?, and Hawkeye.
Besides releasing projects on streaming platforms, it’s visible that a lot is riding on Phase 4 to prove that the MCU can continue once most of the original Avengers have left.
To date, Marvel has revealed movies such as Black Widow, The Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Spider-Man 3, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther 2, Captain Marvel 2, Ant-Man 3, and Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
With more than 20 different Marvel movie and television projects in development, the MCU is well on its way towards potentially creating something even bigger and better in the coming years.
