It’s quite clear that we’ll get more Marvel series on Disney+ this year than arguably Star Wars series.
At the top of the first Disney/Marvel TCA session, President of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer Kevin Feige gave a brief rundown of the studio’s plans.
March 5 reps the end of season one of WandaVision.
Then on March 19 The Falcon and the Winter Solider is debuting. That will run six episodes, a speculated season end date (if Disney doesn’t skip weeks) of April 23.
The next big event in the MCU to happen after Falcon and the Winter Soldier is the feature release of Black Widow on May 7. However, it’s not clear if all global markets will be open as Covid quells and vaccinations swell by that time. Disney will know in the next month whether they’ll move the Scarlett Johansson movie. It’s not just about New York and Los Angeles re-opening, and the hopeful capacity restrictions easing, but the rest of the world as well. Rival distributors guess that the next date that Black Widow would move to is July 9 where Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings is slotted. Disney CEO Bob Chapek has mentioned that the studio’s intention is to keep Black Widow as a theatrical release, and not as a Disney+-day-and-date-theatrical or strictly streaming release. Feige mentioned nothing about Black Widow going to the streaming service today, nor did he talk about the Avengers femme superhero movie rescheduling its theatrical release date.
Then, as announced today, Disney+’s Thor spinoff Loki series will drop on June 11.
At the top of the TCA session, Feige updated the press corps with the following Disney+/Marvel series today:
“Soonafter Loki, we’ll have our first animated series which is What If? and I’m here on set where we are finishing up Ms. Marvel. We’re also shooting Hawkeye currently, and in a few weeks we start She-Hulk, a week or so after that we start Moon Knight in addition to our features for the MCU thanks to Disney+.”
Not all Marvel/Disney+ series will get season 2 or 3s. Some will, and Feige didn’t reveal his hand on which of those that would be. Sometimes a series will segue into a big screen feature. A WandaVision season 2 is not imminent, rather Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch storyline will head straight into the Sam Raimi-directed sequel Doctor Stranger and the Multiverse of Madness (scheduled for March 25, 2022). Ditto for the Ms. Marvel series which is planned to drop on Disney+ later this year; that series will bleed into Captain Marvel 2 (theatrical date is Nov. 11, 2022).
Eternals will hit the big screen on Nov. 5, and then Sony/Disney/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home is scheduled to go on Dec. 17. And that’s your 2021 Marvel year.
Other 2022 Marvel theatrical releases include Thor: Love & Thunder on May 6, 2022, and Black Panther 2 on July 8 next year (There’s also an MCU series Wakanda planned as Deadline first reported).
“The fun of the MCU is obviously all the crossover we can do between series, between films. So it will vary based on the story. Sometimes it will go into a season 2, sometimes it will go into a feature and back into a series,” said Feige.
“Sometimes, and yet to be announced, we’re thinking of and planning second and third seasons for some of the upcoming series,” he added.
All we know about Star Wars so far this year is the Book of Boba Fett series is coming this fall to Disney+, and animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch drops on May 4.