What To Know Of Russo Bros Assembling

It’s no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe could use some pep in its cinematic step since shuttering the original lineup. 20 or so movies had compiled an extensive mythology that culminated in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, and the MCU produced what was possibly the last movie in history that could prompt this audience response or anything like it. The subsequent efforts have come nowhere close to being billion-dollar hits with the multiverse’s avalanche of new shows and movies feeling like homework, which led to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania struggling to break even and Captain America: Brave New World plodding along toward the same status.

Can the MCU be saved? Well, Thunderbolts* will arrive in theaters on May 2, followed by Fantastic Four: First Steps on July 25, and after that, Disney and Marvel Studios are hoping that the Russo Brothers will make magic happen again with a much larger ensemble.

Cast

Well, nobody could accuse Disney of not bringing the star power for this movie. It sounds… messy? Potentially. Probably. We will see.

Last summer at San Diego Comic-Con, MCU chief Kevin Feige made his wildest dreams come true by announcing that longtime Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. would somehow star as Doctor Doom. Then on March 26, Marvel Studios began a series of empty-chair announcements via social media, and, they’re potentially going to need a bigger battleground.

The official roster (of heroes past and present) includes the following:

– Chris Hemsworth (as Thor)
– Sebastian Stan (as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier)
– Anthony Mackie (as Sam Wilson/Captain America)
– Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/Invisible Woman)
– Letitia Wright (as Shuri)
– Paul Rudd (as Scott Lang/Ant-Man)
– Wyatt Russell (as John Walker/US Agent)
– Ebon Moss-Bachrach (as Ben Grimm/The Thing)
– Simu Liu (as Shang-Chi)
– Florence Pugh (as Yelena Belova/Black Widow)
– Lewis Pullman (as Bob/The Sentry)
– Danny Ramirez (as Joaquin Torres/Falcon)
– Joseph Quinn (as Johnny Storm)
– David Harbour (as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian)
– Winston Duke (as M’Baku)
– Tenoch Huerta Mejia (as Namor)
– Kelsey Grammar (as Beast)
– Hannah John-Kamen (as Ava Starr/Ghost)
– Tom Hiddleston (as Loki)
– Patrick Stewart (as Professor X)
– Ian McKellen (as Magneto)
– Alan Cumming (as Nightcrawler)
– Rebecca Romijn (as Mystique)

That’s not all, Marvel Studios kept naming names over the course of several hours, ending with Channing Tatum (Gambit, for real), James Marsden (Cyclops), and Pedro Pascal (Dr. Reed Nathaniel Richards/Mr. Fantastic).

Chris Evans is not on the roster despite wish lists circulating around the Internet. Also, the MCU is gonna leave Scarlett Johansson alone.

Plot

You’d need more than an accidental Signal chat to persuade somebody to reveal official plot points, but currently, Avengers: Doomsday production is “about to roll cameras in London,” according to Deadline. And this summer, it is entirely possible that RDJ’s Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom will make his first appearance in a credits scene of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

From there, hoo boy. The Russo Brothers need to solve The Kang Problem after Jonathan Major’s post-conviction dismissal from the MCU undoubtedly led to a substantial retooling. But also? That could be a net positive since, undoubtedly, many former MCU devotees gave up on keeping up with too much content and multiverse gibberish. So maybe Kang and incursions and all that ultra complicated comic lore will truly be a thing of the past. But for now, plot specifics and hints (more than speculation) will remain a mystery, at least until after the new Fantastic Four movie surfaces.

Oh, except for one thing. Anthony Mackie spoke with Collider and urged the audience not to get attached to the lengthy list of heroes: “You see these characters, and you see how they’re introduced and how they play in the universe moving forward, and no one is safe. Everyone is expendable.”

So… Cap definitely explodes as previously wished upon by Mackie? Got it.

Meanwhile, the Russo Brothers haven’t held back on revealing to Collider that both Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars will both have runtimes in the vein of Infinity War and Endgame, maybe the first being “two and a half, and the second one’s three hours.” Security will also typically be strict as always for an MCU production, and Anthony Russo declared: “We’ve sort of strategized to hopefully be effective with that.” Joe added, “We don’t want people getting photographs, so we are being pretty stringent.”