Is Secret Wars Marvel’s worst kept secret? Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige responds to rumors the “giant crossover” from the comic books is the next universe-uniting event in the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse after Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe unleashed the Multiverse in the first season finale of Loki, revealing He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) as a time-keeping variant of Kang the Conqueror (also Majors) who ended a Multiversal War. With the consequences of the Loki finale branching out to Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, is the endgame a rumored Secret Wars?
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“I’ve seen those rumors as well. Why is everyone talking about that now? That’s what I want to know,” Feige exclusively told ComicBook in an interview ahead of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, out September 3. “I think one person writes about it, and then another person writes about it, and then everybody’s writing about it, and then it’s happening.”
Former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who penned the Secret Wars limited series crossover of the 1980s, sparked rumors of a live-action adaptation when he revealed talks with Marvel during a recent convention appearance. The event series — which pits heroes like Spider-Man, members of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Avengers against villains like Doctor Doom and Kang the Conqueror on a planet called Battleworld — was followed by another Secret Wars crossover in 2015, this time seeing multiple universes fighting for survival in a Multiversal War scripted by Jonathan Hickman.
“Secret Wars is a great, giant crossover. There are a lot of great, giant crossovers that we could [adapt] — it’s the ongoing embarrassment of riches of Marvel Comics,” said Feige. “Which really is, I think, unprecedented in an ongoing fictional narrative. And we can sit here with our 25th film release, Shang-Chi; we’ve already started filming our 31st and 32nd MCU features [The Marvels and Quantumania], not counting that we’re going on seven, eight Disney+ series, and you can still be asked about other things that you haven’t [touched] yet. And that is remarkable.”
In the Loki finale, “For All Time. Always,” He Who Remains recalls the “all-out war” that broke out between realities, sparking the Multiversal War where each variant of Nathaniel Richards (Majors) fought “to preserve their universe and annihilate the others.” The premise is similar to Secret Wars 2015, where heroes and villains from across the Multiverse assemble as worlds collide — literally.
Anthony and Joe Russo, who directed the two-part Infinity Saga climax of Infinity War and Endgame, previously named a live-action Secret Wars as the next movie they hope to make for Marvel Studios. Last year, Anthony Russo described Secret Wars as “the biggest movie you could possibly imagine,” telling Bro-Bible: “That’s what really excites us about the story — the ambition of it is even bigger than the ambition of the Infinity Saga.”
Watch Feige’s full interview with ComicBook.com‘s Brandon Davis in the video player above.
Marvel’s Shang-Chi is playing only in theaters starting September 3, followed by Eternals on November 5 and Spider-Man: No Way Home on December 17.
