Marvel And DC Have a Ridiculous Amount of Movies Scheduled in the Next Two Years
2020 will be the first year in more than a decade without a new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in theaters. There was one DC Comics movie before the pandemic — Birds of Prey — and there could be a second, Wonder Woman 1984, if it opens as it’s currently scheduled on Christmas.
That is a pretty big if; WW1984 has already had three previous release dates this year. Originally scheduled for June, it got bumped to August, and then to October before moving a final time to the holiday season. Still, whether Warner Bros. moves ahead with Wonder Woman’s release this winter, or waits until the summer of 2021, this fact remains: Delaying so many 2020 movies has created a major backlog of superhero movies. Between now and the end of 2022, 13 different blockbusters featuring Marvel or DC characters are on the schedule.
Via Variety, here is the full lineup at present:
- Wonder Woman 1984: December 25, 2020
- Morbius: March 19, 2021
- Black Widow: May 7, 2021
- Venom: Let There Be Carnage: June 25, 2021
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: July 9, 2021
- The Suicide Squad: August 6, 2021
- Eternals: November 5, 2021
- Spider-Man 3: December 17, 2021
- Thor: Love and Thunder: February 11, 2022
- The Batman: March 4, 2022
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: March 25, 2022
- Black Panther 2: May 6, 2022
- Captain Marvel 2: July 8, 2022
For years, industry pundits have warned about audiences getting “superhero fatigue” from the endless churn of comic-book movies. To date, it never really happened; Avengers: Endgame at the conclusion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s big “Infinity Saga” was the most popular superhero movie to date by a wide margin. Thus far, the audience’s appetite for these films has been insatiable.
Assuming these movies begin coming out on time — maybe not the safest assumption — this would be a glut of comic book movies the likes of which audiences hadn’t seen before; the cinematic equivalent of that scene from The Simpsons where Homer endlessly gets donuts shoved down his mouth. Viewers could be so starved for these kinds of blockbusters after 2020 — no films on the scale of the stuff on the list above except Tenet and maybe Disney’s Mulan — that they may be excited to have many reasons to finally return to theaters. Whatever happens, one thing is certain: It’s going to be an interesting couple of years in Hollywood.
Gallery — Every DC Comics Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best: