The Marvels: Captain Marvel Sequel Delayed to Summer 2023
In a surprise Friday afternoon news drop, Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company have announced a change to their 2023 release calendar, revealing that The Marvels has been delayed five months. The sequel to Captain Marvel, which will feature a few other Marvel heroes as well such as Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau, was previously scheduled to arrive on February 17, 2023 and has now moved back to July 28, 2023. It wasn't the only Marvel movie to get a readjustment in release as the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has moved up from July 28, 2023 to February 12, 2023, meaning the two films just swapped release dates.
The Marvels is a unique movie for Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe since it's not only a sequel to the billion dollar Captain Marvel movie from 2019 but also acts as a follow-up to two of their Disney+ TV shows. Not only will it see the return of Teyonah Parris' Monica Rambeau from WandaVision but will bring back Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, the lead of the upcoming Ms. Marvel TV series. Marvel Studios' official logo for the movie incorporates all three of their symbols as well.
All three characters have an intrinsic bond in the pages of Marvel Comics, and for both Carol and Monica a complicated relationship that hasn't been fully explored on screen, but it represents a point in the MCU where the movies and the streaming TV shows will converge into one place in a major way. That said, it has three major Marvel characters that will be fighting for the spotlight.
"It's interesting, and something we thought about and worked through a lot, which was how do we get each of these really big, exciting heroes space in a two-hour film," director Nia DaCosta previously told Inverse about balancing the characters in the sequel. "Captain Marvel has a history from the first film, Kamala will have her Ms. Marvel show, and Monica Rambeau, we've only seen her a little bit in WandaVision. A lot of what we've been thinking about is what part of the journey do we need to see for each of them? How do we honor the part of the story they're at in terms of the canon, while also within our story making them equal?"
The Marvels is set to be released in theaters on February 17, 2023.