‘Captain Marvel’s Blockbuster Success Could Make Proposed All-Female ‘Avengers’ Film a Reality

The blockbuster success of Captain Marvel, Marvel Studios’ first female-led entry in its Marvel Cinematic Universe, could help nudge the Disney-owned studio towards greenlighting the proposed all-female Avengers spinoff championed by Marvel’s leading ladies.

With a growing $1.089 billion earned worldwide, Captain Marvel has surpassed DC’s Wonder Woman — recognized as the first female-led superhero movie in the modern era — to become the first female superhero movie to reach the one billion milestone, making it the seventh highest-grossing film in the MCU canon and the 25th highest-grossing movie of all time.

Like the groundbreaking success of Black Panther before it, which Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige says helped embolden the studio to continue to pursue diverse stories and superheroes, the ceiling-shattering box office prowess of Captain Marvel could ignite a push for future films answering the call for female representation and empowerment on a stage as grand as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The studio is already developing Black Widow, led by longtime Avengers star Scarlett Johansson, to usher in the next phase of the franchise; that film, under the stewardship of director Cate Shortland, was put into motion before Captain Marvel broke records, and is part of an effort to highlight underrepresented communities on the big screen.

This proposed female-centric spinoff would assemble Marvel’s leading ladies — Larson, Avengers stars Scarlett Johansson and Elizabeth Olsen, Guardians of the Galaxy stars Zoe Saldana, Pom Klementieff, and Karen Gillan, Thor star Tessa Thompson, Ant-Man star Evangeline Lilly, and Black Panther stars Danai Gurira and Letitia Wright, among others — as an offshoot of the Avengers franchise, mirroring Marvel Comics’ A-Force team.

Gillan, who plays Nebula, previously recounted how Larson emerged as a natural leader when bringing the idea of an all-female Avengers to Feige after a snapshot of the assembled actresses went viral.

“Brie Larson was like, ‘We should go up to Kevin Feige and tell him to make an all-female Marvel movie,’ so we marched up there in a group, a whole herd of us, and said that to him,” Gillan told IndieWire.

“He was like, ‘Yeah, that would be amazing!’ but he didn’t really commit to it, but he thought it would be a great idea.”

Lilly similarly once argued Captain Marvel is a natural selection for team leader, but added the female-led Avengers spinoff could deviate away from having any one member installed as captain and “change the game” entirely.

“I think I’m being a bit old fashioned and maybe a little bit rigid about this, because if it is an all-female Avengers film, then the sky’s the limit. We can reinvent the wheel,” she said. “We don’t have to do anything that anyone’s ever done before. We can just make it all up and change the game.”

When addressing the potential Avengers spinoff in a talk with Vulture, Feige noted Marvel possesses an “embarrassment of riches” in the way of strong female characters and said uniting those characters under one roof is “all about figuring out when and how.”

Marvel Studios next releases Avengers: Endgame, out Thursday.

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