It’s become common knowledge now that every actor that signs up for a Marvel movie gets handed a contract that says “You WILL star in six of our films. We don’t just mean ‘make a cameo appearance’ either. You’re gonna star in six of these things.”
Then they have to sign it in blood and do the ancient dance of the mouse.
Disney contracting protocol aside, this makes predicting the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe a little easier since we can be guaranteed that Disney will try and keep Robert Downey Jr. in the game as long as possible, especially if they want the Iron Man/Captain America clash that was hinted at in The Avengers, and especially if they plan on going the full Civil War route for Avengers 3.
Does this mean that we won’t get another Iron Man film between Avengers 2 & 3? Yes.
According to Chris Evans, three stand-alone films and three Avengers films is very much the way that Disney is handling this, so unless they do market research and find out that audiences require a fourth Iron Man movie to maintain interest, they’ll keep that final film dangling in the balance until Avengers 3 just to ensure that he’d return.
Let’s go ahead and throw it up on the board just for continuity’s sake.
Phase 3
Not Iron Man 4 (May 2016)
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Avengers 3 (??? ????)
Yeah, that’s a pretty strong looking list up there.
Since we know that Ant-Man is in production, we may be able to plot him firmly into this area, preferably as early as possible as to not keep Edgar Wright hanging in the wings for too long.
We can probably expect to see either Captain America 3 or Thor 3 since they’re both big enough names to generate an audience (unless of course Marvel wants to save them for a post-Avengers 3 game plan), but we more than likely won’t see both in the same phase again.
This might also be a great time to throw in a second Hulk feature since fans proved with The Avengers that they would pay to watch Mark Ruffalo play Hulk over and over and over again.
Okay, we just want to see him take out a Leviathan the size of a city block with one punch again. Jesus.
Of course, since Ruffalo came late to the party, it may be accurate to assume that we’ll be seeing the Hulk even after Avengers 3 comes out (maybe in a Planet Hulk movie?)
Since the script for Doctor Strange is already underway and a Black Widow script is already completed, it might just be up to the discretion of Disney after the performance of the next six films to determine which one to greenlight first. It’s not a matter of which one will be greenlit, Avengers was big enough to convince any producer to invest in a related property, at this point it’s just a matter of when it will fit in.
Then again, Loki probably wouldn’t have brought up the hospital fire in Avengers if it wasn’t ever going to be brought up again.
Assuming that only one between Captain America 3 and Thor 3 gets greenlit, our vote is on Cap in preparation for a possible Civil War storyline, something that Feige has admitted he’s considering for the future of The Avengers.
With that, here’s an incredibly shaky and tentative prediction of how Phase 3 might play out.
Phase 3
Incredible Hulk 2 (May 2016)
Ant-Man (July 2016)
Black Widow (November 2016)
Doctor Strange (April 2017)
Captain America 3 (July 2017)
Avengers 3 (May 2018)
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