Written by Mark Halyday
The next few years have countless comic book adaptations destined for the silver screen. Here’s what we’re looking forward to most and a little bit about them.
Avengers: Infinity War
Release Date: 25 April, 2018
(Almost) every hero ever shown on film will unite to battle Thanos as he searches for the Infinity Stones to conquer Earth. Thanos and his minions, The Black Order, will search high and low for the powerful Stones that have been scattered throughout the previous nineteen Marvel films. The trailer teased battles in New York, Wakanda and alien planet Titan. The excitement is palpable for Avengers: Infinity War. All bets are off. Heroes will die. Fans will be disappointed if half the universe isn’t blown up and then rebuilt (per the comics). This is the beginning of the end.
Deadpool 2
Release Date: 17 May, 2018
While some franchises are calling it a day, Deadpool is just getting started. After a ridiculously healthy debut, the search went far and wide to find the right actor for Deadpool’s buddy, Cable.
Thanos himself, Josh Brolin, has signed on for four films as the complicated brute. Nobody at Fox is going to say no to Ryan Reynolds and co for a while, so expect the crassest, craziest sequel imaginable. The whole gang, including taxi driver Dopinder, will be back for more R-rated shenanigans.
Ant-Man And The Wasp
Release Date: 5 July, 2018
The Ant-Man world grows bigger with the addition of Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne, stirring up all sorts of emotions and possibilities for the original film’s cast. Laurence Fishburne jumps over to Marvel for a co-starring role and the villain is a genderswapped Iron Man foe.
Venom
Release Date: 5 October, 2018
Venom wasn’t all that interesting a prospect after so many failed runs, but casting Tom Hardy as the anti-hero pricked up a few ears. Hardy is versatile and wildly talented, flitting from blockbusters to Oscar-bait to indies to television. The teaser trailers so far promise exciting things.
Aquaman
Release Date: 21 December, 2018
Jason Momoa’s Aquaman has been redesigned from head to toe and now it’s time for his solo debut. The plot focuses on the character trying to stop a war between the people of Atlantis and the surface of Earth while not really wanting to be king. The cast is filled with oddballs – everyone from Patrick Wilson to Willem Dafoe, Dolph Lundgren and Nicole Kidman.
New Mutants
Release Date: February, 2019
After the success of The Fault In Our Stars, Fox quickly ushered Josh Boone into the lucrative X-Men franchise, filling his cast with young pedigree such as Game Of Thrones’ Maisie Williams and Stranger Things’ Charlie Heaton. Most people expected a younger skew on the same thing as always, but the true horror vibe is another diversification of the superhero genre from FOX and it’s keeping audiences interested. Quietly confident.
Captain Marvel
Release Date: March, 2019
Captain Marvel feels fresher than all the other Marvel movies coming. Its cast is epic – Brie Larson, Jude Law and Samuel L. Jackson – against shapeshifting Skrulls in the nineties. So far so good. And despite Marvel promising they won’t use a Skrull to fake out too many things in Untitled Avengers, it’s all but guaranteed the comics Secret Invasion is on the cards in some form or another later down the line.
Untitled Avengers
Release Date: May, 2019
It was Avengers: Infinity War Part II, but Marvel changed it to something more spoiler-y and have said its title won’t be revealed until long after Avengers: Infinity War. Dang!
Thanos will fall and take a few heroes with him. The world of Marvel will be more drastically changed and Spider-Man will be our new flagship hero. Marvel has been hyping this up for over a decade. This is will be the definitive superhero cinematic experience for decades to come, let along these next few years.
Wonder Woman 2
Release Date: November, 2019
Wonder Woman 2 is interesting for a few reasons. First of all, it’s completely removed from all the messiness every other solo series has to tackle due to the virtue of being set in the past. Rumour has it the next instalment will be in the ’70s and focus on the villain Cheetah, a rival archaeologist who tampers with idols while on a dig.
Flashpoint
Release Date: February, 2020
Flashpoint is the definitive Flash storyline. Aside from the core plot and the Reverse-Flash supervillain, there’s a lot of interesting window dressing, such as an Atlantean/Amazonian war, Thomas Wayne as the Batman and Superman as an Area 51 Test Subject.
