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It’s been an eventful day for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although not necessarily the kind of events that you usually want to see. The MCU is usually (the endless release date leapfrogging during the early days of the pandemic aside) such a steady rolling juggernaut that any time there are a bunch of shake-ups in a row, it seems alarming, even though it probably isn’t.
The more innocuous Marvel movie event of the day is that a pair of movies from their 2023 schedule have switched places on the release calendar. Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels, had previously been scheduled for release on Feb. 17, 2023. That is instead moving to July 28, 2023. That release date had been reserved for Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, which will slip into The Marvels Feb. 17 slot instead. According to Deadline, it was simply a matter of Quantumania being “further along in the production process” than The Marvels.
The good news there is that it means we’ll get to meet Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror a little sooner than expected since he’s the main villain of the Ant-Man sequel. If Kang is going to be a recurring menace during MCU Phase 4, then it would make sense to get him introduced a little earlier.
The bigger, and perhaps more worrisome news, is that Jon Watts has stepped down as director of the MCU’s long-awaited Fantastic Four movie. Watts, of course, directed the wildly successful Spider-Man trilogy for Marvel Studios and Sony, which culminated in 2021’s box-office reinvigorating Spider-Man: No Way Home, an ambitious blockbuster which told a multiversal Spidey story under heavy clouds of secrecy. According to Deadline, Watts just “needs a breather” after a packed schedule the last few years.
Source: Den of Geek
