San Diego Comic-Con 2024 highlights
This year’s San Diego Comic-Con looked like it might be a relatively low-key affair … until the Marvel panel dropped some major unexpected bombshells – so here are some of the main highlights from this year’s SDCC…
Marvel brings back Robert Downey Jr and the Russo Brothers for Avengers 5 & 6:
There’s no point burying the lead here – the biggest news to come out of this year’s SDCC was the completely unexpected news that Robert Downey Jr will be returning to the MCU, but not as Iron Man (who, as everyone must know by now, made the ultimate sacrifice at the end of Avengers: Endgame) – instead he’ll be playing the MCU’s new big baddie, Doctor Doom.
After the lacklustre box office performance of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and the legal troubles of Jonathan Majors, it was looking increasingly likely that Marvel would drop their plans to make Kang The Conqueror the main villain of the Multiverse Saga, and that the fifth Avengers film (which had been announced as being called The Kang Dynasty) would be sent back to the drawing board.
Then, a few days before SDCC, rumours began to circulate that Anthony and Joe Russo – the directors of the record-breaking Avengers: Endgame, as well as Avengers: Infinity War, Captain America: Civil War and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (four of the best films in the MCU) – may be returning to direct the next two Avengers films…
But at SDCC, it was announced that not only were the Russo Brothers (and one of their regular writing partners, Stephen McFeely) returning for the fifth and sixth Avengers films, but that those films would now be called Avengers: Doomsday (due on 2026) and Avengers: Secret Wars (due in 2027). And the change of title from The Kang Dynasty to Doomsday also brought confirmation that Doctor Victor von Doom would finally be making his MCU debut … and then, to everyone’s surprise, they revealed on stage that Doom would be played by none other that Robert Downey Jr.
What does all this mean? Well, RDJ’s casting strongly suggests that this version of Doctor Doom will originate from another parallel universe (rather than RDJ playing the ‘main’ universe’s Tony Stark and Victor von Doom), which would also make sense given the rumour that Secret Wars will conclude the Multiverse Saga with the prophesised multiversal war. All of which also leads into one of the other MCU announcements from SDCC…
The Fantastic Four movie will be subtitled “First Steps”:
Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach appeared together on stage at SDCC to mark the start of filming on the new Fantastic Four movie (due out in July next year), and they brought official confirmation that the film will not only be set it its own parallel universe (i.e. not the ‘main’ MCU universe) but also in a retro-futuristic version of the 1960s where the heroes will face the planet-devouring villain Galactus. They also confirmed that the title will be The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and that Marvel’s first family will then go on to appear in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
Marvel’s other 2025 movie releases:
Before The Fantastic Four: First Steps in July 2025, we have Captain America: Brave New World in February 2025 and Thunderbolts in May 2025. At SDCC we also learned that the fourth Captain America film will introduce Adamantium into the MCU via the Celestial corpse last seen at the end of Eternals (so we can’t make any more jokes about how no one in the MCU has spotted a giant corpse sticking out of the South Pacific Ocean), while Lewis Pullman was added to the cast of Thunderbolts, alongside Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes), Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova), David Harbour (Red Guardian), Wyatt Russell (USAgent), Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost) and Olga Kurylenko (Taskmaster) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Val).
But let’s not forget DC Studios…
There’s no doubt that Marvel stole the show at this year’s SDCC, but the new DCU did have a little something to show (even if Superman, due out next July, is still filming and didn’t have any footage to show yet) with the fun trailer for the animated series Creature Commandos (due out this December).
And although it’s separate from the DCU, there was a new trailer for the TV mini-series The Penguin, which is set to bridge the gap between The Batman and The Batman Part II (due in 2026).
Your can check out the trailers here:
There were, of course, plenty of other announcements and appearances – this is SDCC, after all – but these were arguably the main stories to come out of the weekend.
With the one-two-punch of Robert Downey Jr’s announced return to the MCU, and Deadpool & Wolverine having the best opening weekend of any R-rated film ever … it’s been a good week for Marvel!
