Marvel Boss Kevin Feige On His Future At The Studio, ‘Blade’ Update & Why ‘Fantastic Four’ Needed A Reboot

When it comes to the future of Marvel Studios, which has taken its licks this year with misfires Thunderbolts* and Captain America: Brave New World, the No. 1 superhero box office brand isn’t letting up.

Marvel Studios Producer and President Kevin Feige in a sit down with the press at Marvel’s Burbank HQ gestures toward a series of locked doors in a meeting room.

“It’s a seven-year plan,” teases Feige, “I think it goes to 2032.”

“It’s on magnets, it can move around.”

Feige is particularly chipper, for even though Marvel is skipping San Diego Comic-Con this year as they remain knee deep in production on the Russo Brothers’ Avengers: Doomsday and in prep on Spider-Man: Brand New Daythe Marvel Boss and former X-Men associate producer, finally has his hands in The Fantastic Four thanks to the Disney-Fox merger. Having that subset of Marvel characters has liberated Feige to take even bigger swings with the MCU. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is looking to be Marvel Studios’ biggest opening YTD with $100M-$110M stateside.

While Fox had respectable success with 2005 and 2007 Fantastic Four movies (which starred Chris Evans as Johnny Storm pre-Captain America), the former studio saw a Josh Trank directed 2015 reboot completely tank after a full reshoot, grossing only $167M worldwide. This time, it’s different, it’s Feige’s Fantastic Four.

“Why Fantastic Four?” explains Feige on the reasons for another redo. “Because it’s Marvel’s first family. It’s in the history of our characters; they deserve to be A-listers. They were A-listers in the comics. Every crossover movie we’ve made in the Infinity saga, Civil War, leading to Infinity War and Endgamewhich is really the Infinity saga from the comics, the Fantastic Four were huge players in those comics and obviously we couldn’t do that then.”

While several Marvel projects post Avengers: Endgame have dovetailed between TV series and films, for Feige, it was important to have the Fantastic Four be contained in their own world sans any callbacks to the Avengers‘ blip or other verse characters.

“It’s a no homework required go-see-the movie. It’s literally not connected to anything that was made before,” says Feige, “It kicks off phase six.”

“There were a lot of left turns and surprises that happened over the last seven or eight years,” Feige continues, “A positive one was to finally have those characters back and the X-Men.”

Getting access to the Fox Marvel characters has enabled Feige to plus-up the next two Avengers movies with the most notorious antagonist in the comic-books: Dr. Doom. While the original plan for the Avengers movie announced at Comic-Con 2019 was to feature Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror as the main baddie, the character’s future was thrown into question after the actor’s arrest for assaulting his then girlfriend in early 2023.

Feige says, “Even before what had happened to the actor, we had started to realize that Kang wasn’t Thanos.”

“There was only one character that could be that because he was that in the comics for decades and decades, and because of the Fox acquisition, we finally had it, and that’s Dr. Doom,” says the studio boss.

“We had started talking about Dr. Doom even before we officially pivoted from Kang,” he says, “In fact, I had started talking with Robert about this audacious idea before Ant-Man 3 even came out.”

Already Patrick Stewart’s X-Men papa Dr. Xavier has made a cameo in the Disney/Marvel Studios Universe Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with a slew of X-Men characters, i.e. Channing Tatum’s Gamit, and even Wesley Snipes’ Blade making cameos in last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine.

Speaking of Blade, despite being taken off the calendar, the project remains in development with 2x Oscar winner Mahershala Ali still attached. The movie with the actor was first announced at SDCC 2019 with Ali taking the Hall H stage in what was a then huge announcement of the MCU’s plans across cinema and Disney+.

Feige revealed on Friday that while there were four versions of Blade in the works, two of them period (one of them set in the 1930s), “we landed on modern day and that’s what we’re focusing on.”

On pausing Blade after the exit of two filmmakers, Yann Demange, exit and then assam Tariq’s departure, Feige says “We didn’t want to put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires.”

“You can start and have a good script and make it a great script through production, but we didn’t feel confident we could do that on Blade,” he continues, “We didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and didn’t want to do that to us.”

In the wake of the success of his own vampire movie, Sinners, one reporter wondered whether Ryan Coogler would get to take a crack at directing Blade. Feige says there’s no plans, rather the director remains committed to Black Panther 3.

Feige’s next phase of the MCU are fewer, more quality movies, numbering anywhere from 1 to 3 movies annually with less connectivity between the movies and TV shows. Marvel learned the hard way that their over-reaching Disney+ series and theatrical movie plans were too much of a good thing for fans, evident in the bombing of The Marvels ($206.1M global box office) which fused together Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel (who had her own $1 billion grossing film) with the lesser-known characters of Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau. The takeaway was that many fans and general moviegoers didn’t buy tickets for The Marvels because they weren’t caught up on Ms. Marvel on Disney+

Still, while storylines won’t crossover between series and film, characters will, read Jon Bernthal’s The Punisher cameo in the upcoming Sony/Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

“Where we have great actors playing great characters, I think it would be fun to see them in multiple places,” says Feige.

With Downey Jr. now playing Dr. Doom, are there plans to recast the core Iron Man, Captain America, etc on the big screen? Yes and no. Feige sees a star such as Chris Hemsworth still in his prime to play Thor, and even cherishes the return of thespians (i.e. Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Stern in Captain America: Brave New World) who played Marvel characters years ago. But, yes, in the long-term like with many other storied movie franchises, Marvel classic superheros will get new faces. When exactly? “X-Men is where that will happen,” promised Feige.

In addition, post Avengers: Secret Wars, there is a plan he says to “reset singular timelines” and reboot he MCU. Are there more R-rated MCU movies after making the highest grossing R-rated movie of all-time with Deadpool & Wolverine at $1.33 billion? Sure. “Where appropriate and where necessary,” says Feige.

In regard to Feige’s future and whether there’s more Marvel under him, he’s not going anywhere. While his contract is up in two years, he tells us, “Do I want to be making big movies for big audiences in ten or 15 years from now? Yes, that’s all I want to do. Marvel is great way to do that.”

Upcoming Marvel schedule according to Comscore:

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Sony) – July 31, 2026

Avengers Doomsday – Dec. 18, 2026

Untitled Marvel – July 23, 2027

Avengers: Secret Wars – Dec. 17, 2027

Untitled Marvel – Feb. 18, 2028

Untitled Marvel – May 5, 2028

Untitled Marvel – Nov. 10, 2028

Untitled Marvel – Dec. 15, 2028