Why Every Marvel Fan Will Be Glued To Their Phones This Saturday Night

It’s that time of year…

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San Diego Comic-Con weekend is upon us. For the 53rd time in 55 years (2020 and 2021 had at-home and smaller-scale pandemic-influenced events), the major pop culture event will overtake the Southern California city. While all types of films and television projects will be represented at the convention, none will be under a bigger microscope than Marvel.

It’s no secret that the last several years have been unkind to the once-dominant Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). While their critical merits can be debated, there’s no denying that recent films from Marvel Studios like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels had poor showings financially at the box office, which means that — fairly or not — many think Marvel needs to be “fixed.” Even Disney themselves have weighed in, announcing they’re changing their approach to Marvel releases going forward.

All of this means that the eyes of Marvel fans, “haters”, critics, and Hollywood insiders will be trained toward the San Diego Convention Center’s Hall H for Marvel’s primetime Saturday night panel. Combined with the highly-anticipated release of Deadpool & Wolverine just days before, many think that this weekend will be a watershed moment for the MCU.

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The official description of Marvel’s panel reads, “Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige and special guests provide an inside look at the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

Within that short description, however, fans are EXPECTING a ton. For starters, we’d think that new footage from several upcoming confirmed Marvel projects like Agatha All Along (premiering on Disney+ September 18th) and Captain America: Brave New World (in theaters February 14th, 2025) may be shown. Beyond that, more information and possible footage/trailers from further upcoming projects like the Disney+ series Eyes of Wakanda, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (both scheduled for 2024), and Daredevil: Born Again (March 2025) and upcoming feature films Thunderbolts (May 5th, 2025) and The Fantastic Four (July 25th, 2025) could be released.

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However, rumors are swirling that Kevin Feige may have even LARGER announcements up their sleeves for San Diego. For starters, given the popularity of X-Men ’97 and the aforementioned release of Deadpool & Wolverine, many are anticipating an announcement about the casting of X-Men characters in the MCU. Some even believe that the currently untitled Avengers 5 (due in 2026, and having been retooled after Marvel severed ties with disgraced Kang actor Jonathan Majors) may be announced to be an X-Men vs Avengers film, similar to several classic Marvel Comics storylines.

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Some are thinking even bigger than that. The 2027 Avengers film (originally planned to be the second half of a two-part Kang story) is currently titled Avengers: Secret Wars. For those unaware, Secret Wars is the title that has been given to several universe (and multiverse)-spanning projects over the course of Marvel Comics history.

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That title, combined with rumors that the aforementioned Fantastic Four film will be set in another corner of the multiverse, has fans thinking that the 2027 film could be a massive multiversal blow-out and feature returning actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans reprising their characters (or alternate versions of them) as well as potentially resetting the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe with new actors in a new continuity.

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It remains to be seen how many, if any, of these Marvel San Diego Comic-Con rumors come to pass, but there is one thing for sure: This is a huge weekend for Marvel Studios, which has a chance to course-correct and restore luster to the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand name. Wait! Actually there are two things for sure: AllEars will be in San Diego to bring you the Marvel news as it happens!