Take that, DC.
We should have known Marvel Studios wouldn't let their bitter rival stay on top for long. Warner Bros and DC last week announced their upcoming slate, which includes the long-awaited Wonder Woman movie, and yesterday (October 28) came Marvel's counter-move.
In the kind of bravura unveiling many were disappointed not to see at Comic-Con this summer, the studio announced no fewer than nine new titles and release dates going all the way through to 2019 – five of them sequels, four of them new standalone projects – and got Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans up on stage to introduce Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther.
Below, Digital Spy runs down the must-know basics about each of Marvel's upcoming titles.
Captain America 3: Civil War (May 6, 2016)
It's long been rumoured that Cap's third outing would be based on the comics' Civil War plotline, and with the title unveiling Marvel have confirmed it (after briefly fooling us all with the decoy title Serpent Society, those jokers). Joe and Anthony Russo will return to direct.
Civil War pits Captain America against Iron Man in the wake of the Superhero Registration Act, a legislative bill brought in to keep track of super-powered individuals, which is seen by many as unconstitutional. Tony Stark's all for it while Steve Rogers is violently opposed, and the latter's resistance ultimately gets him imprisoned and assassinated.
The original series came out in 2006 as a partial response to the Iraq War's impact on American values, and takes on fresh significance now in a post-Edward Snowden age. Although Kevin Feige said that the film script will diverge from the comic canon, the SRA certainly feels like a logical next step after the politically bleak The Winter Soldier, and Rogers' death would pave the way for Sebastian Stan and/or Anthony Mackie to take over the Cap mantle as has been rumoured.
Doctor Strange (November 4, 2016)
When word emerged on Monday night that Benedict Cumberbatch was in final negotiations to play surgeon-turned-sorcerer Stephen Strange, many assumed that Marvel's big announcement had leaked early and would derail their much-touted mystery event.
Not only did that not prove to be the case, but Cumberbatch's casting went unmentioned in the announcement, with Feige confirming that no cast had been finalised for the Scott Derrickson-directed movie. The only new titbit is that Strange's release date has been pushed back from July to November 2016, which does tally with the rumour that Marvel are working with Cumberbatch's reps to accommodate his Sherlock-and-Hamlet-packed 2015 schedule.
We've got everything you need to know about Doctor Strange covered at greater length over here.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (May 5, 2017)
James Gunn will return to write and direct this cosmic sequel, with Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel all expected to return as the Guardians along with Josh Brolin's Thanos.
Expect some crossover with The Avengers – Gunn teases this to Digital Spy in the video above – given Thanos is due to appear in 2018's Avengers 3. Gunn has also said that the plot of Guardians 2 will delve into the mystery of Star-Lord's father, whose identity will be different than in the comics.
"There have been a lot of documents passed around about who Peter Quill's father is between a select two or three of us," Gunn told Empire. "That's been part of the plan since the beginning, that's something I had to work out before we shot the screenplay. We wanted to make sure Yondu's place in everything made sense and it does, so it's all very specific stuff. It's definitely not the character who it is in the comics, I'll say that much."
We don't learn a huge amount about Quill's dad in the first Guardians, except that he hired the Ravagers to abduct his son from the hospital, and that he probably had a hand in giving Quill his funky, not-entirely-human genetic code.
Thor: Ragnarok (July 28, 2017)
Probably the most intriguing title of the lot, this third chapter will pick up where we leave Thor in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and will take the Asgardian beefcake "to another level of his own franchise". Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston will return as Thor and Loki, with no other casting yet confirmed (don't be surprised if Natalie Portman is a no-show).
"What we'll do between now and the release date is educate the rest of the world on what that word 'Ragnarok' means," Feige promised. In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is essentially the apocalypse: a series of future events which results in the deaths of several gods including Odin, Thor and Loki. So things aren't looking too good up in Asgard.
But there's more. Ragnarok is also the name given to a dark bio-engineered clone of Thor, who was created by Tony Stark after Thor's disappearance, and made his first appearance early in the Civil War storyline.
Black Panther (November 3, 2017)
Doctor Strange might have become the casting equivalent of an uncatchable white whale for Marvel, but they've had no such issues with Black Panther, whose movie is a whole year further away from Strange.
Chadwick Boseman, best known for playing James Brown in this year's biopic Get On Up, will take on the role of Black Panther, who joined the Avengers lineup in a 1968 issue after making guest appearances in Fantastic Four and others.
Black Panther was mainstream comics' first black superhero, although he won't be Marvel Studios' first, Anthony Mackie having already made his charismatic entrance as Falcon in The Winter Soldier earlier this year.
"Black Panther and all of [his home country] Wakanda is one of the most interesting characters in Marvel history," said Feige. "He's a bit of a prince, he may even become a bit of a king, but it's all about how this isolationist country meets the world. Maybe it goes well, maybe it doesn't."
The Avengers: Infinity War, Part One (May 4, 2018) & Part Two (May 3, 2019)
It was inevitable. Splitting the third movie into two parts is just how it's done in franchise Hollywood now, and even The Avengers aren't immune. Infinity War, which will centre on the Avengers' battle against Thanos, will be divided over the summers of 2018 and 2019.
We know that the Avengers line-up will look significantly different after Age of Ultron - if comic canon is anything to go by then Black Panther might have joined, for one thing - but from Feige's comments it sounds as though a bigger shake-up is on the way.
"We've always had a plan since Nick Fury broke into Tony Stark's house and told him he's part of a bigger universe," Feige said. "Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 is the beginning of the culmination of everything that has come before."
Both Thanos and the Infinity Stones have been teased in Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Infinity War will see Thanos gaining control of the Infinity Gauntlet, which is essentially really bad news for the entire universe.
Captain Marvel (July 6, 2018)
Which Marvel movies pass the Bechdel test?
Marvel have been dragging their feet and making excuses about their lack of female superheroes for some time now, and fan unrest reached new heights this year after Black Widow's beefed-up role in The Winter Soldier. People were rightly wondering why on earth Natasha didn't merit her own movie after three ensemble appearances, especially given Johansson's box office clout.
Well, Feige has confirmed we're no nearer to a Black Widow movie, but the announcement of a Captain Marvel solo outing is arguably way more exciting, marking the studio's first female-lead superhero movie.
Captain Marvel's appeared in a few different incarnations throughout the comic canon, but the film will take her more recent alter ego Carol Danvers as its protagonist.
Danvers is a former Air Force pilot whose sharp intellect landed her a job at the CIA and, later, a gig alongside Nick Fury. She's working for NASA by the time she gets caught in an explosion that leaves her with formidable superpowers: the kind of skillset that would make her a threat to any one of Marvel Studios' established heroes.
Her powers include flight, superhuman strength, energy absorption and limited precognition (ie she's not psychic, but she's got one hell of a sixth sense). So depending on how closely the movie hews to comic canon, Captain Marvel is potentially the most powerful character in a Marvel movie yet.
Inhumans (November 2, 2018)
In addition to the three new solo movies, Marvel also announced a brand new team-up movie to follow up The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy.
The Inhumans was a storyline originally introduced in the Fantastic Four comics in 1965, which saw a group of primitive humans being experimented on by an alien race called the Kree.
Once the experiments were abandoned, the mutated test subjects formed a society and developed technology of their own. They're ruled by the monarch Black Bolt and his Royal Family, but we're a long way from confirmation on exactly how the line-up will shape up on the big screen.
"We really do believe the Inhumans can be a franchise unto themselves – they have dozens of powers and an amazing social structure," Feige said. "With our 20th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we wanted to continue to refine what that universe is about."
Yep, you read that right – Inhumans will be MCU movie number twenty. Guardians of the Galaxy was ten, if you're counting.
Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture, mental health, and true crime. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything.
