After bringing the three-phase Infinity Saga to an end with 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, directors Anthony and Joe Russo are describing 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday and 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars as a “beginning.” The Robert Downey Jr.-fronted Avengers sequels will conclude the Multiverse Saga spanning such films as 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, drawing from both the 1984 Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars and the 2015 multiversal crossover comic storyline Secret Wars.
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“We got to get immersed in a 20-movie arc and see an ending to that arc,” Joe Russo told Omelette about Infinity War and Endgame closing out a decade of MCU movies. “What’s compelling about these two new Avengers movies is they’re a beginning — it’s a new beginning.”
“We told an ending story, and now we’re going to tell a beginning story, and who knows where we’ll go from there. Maybe it’ll be another five years,” he added of the Russo’s break from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Following their four-film, five-year run — 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, 2018’s Infinity War and 2019’s Endgame — the duo turned their attention toward their production company AGBO (which includes Captain America and Avengers co-writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely as their co-presidents of story).
The Russo brothers directed the Tom Holland-led drama Cherry, the Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans action-thriller The Gray Man, and the just-released sci-fi robot movie The Electric State, starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.
“Those four [Marvel] movies that we did were, frankly, in like a seven-year timeframe,” Joe Russo continued. “It’s one of the craziest runs you could possibly go on. That was really intense, it was exhausting. We shot Infinity War and Endgame back-to-back with four weeks off between the two. [Anthony] got pneumonia between the two. They were physically demanding movies. As soon as you wrap the movie, you’re in post while you’re prepping the next one, then you’re on a press tour for six weeks flying around the world, talking to press every day for six weeks, [then] back to set, onto the next one. And we did this over and over again for seven years.”
“We just needed a break,” he added. “Sometimes you have to just step away in order to see the path forward from there.” That time and perspective showed them the way forward: with former Iron Man actor Downey also returning to the MCU, this time as the villainous Victor von Doom.
“The only thing that brought us back was the right story,” Joe said. Added Anthony, “We got to direct things that were different and similar from the work we were doing at Marvel. We got to direct Cherry, and The Gray Man, and now The Electric State, but also with our company AGBO, we were producing as well.”
As producers shepherding such projects as the Chadwick Boseman action-thriller 21 Bridges, the Chris Hemsworth-starring action flick Extraction, and the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Russos thought Endgame was their sendoff from the MCU. But like Nick Fury said of forming the Avengers: There was an idea…
“Even though we said [we were done] five years ago, really, we didn’t know what our road forward was in the MCU. After we’d finished Endgame, we weren’t sure about what it was,” Anthony Russo said. “What happened was a creative idea just came to us, and that ended up feeling like the right idea. So it motivated us to do it again. I’ll say we feel like we have something fresh, we feel like we have a story that’s important to be told.”
“We have an amazing group of collaborators again — some old and some new — and we’re very excited,” he continued, adding that these are “difficult” movies with “a lot of expectations.”
“Endgame was 2019, before the pandemic, before that changed theater-going. And so we know there’s a lot riding on [Doomsday and Secret Wars] — for us, for fans, for everybody, moviegoers,” he said.
The Russos return to Marvel Studios as it navigates the final stages of phase 5 (which will end with Thunderbolts* in May) and the first steps of phase 6 (which will begin with The Fantastic Four: First Steps in July).
Although the Russos have dubbed Doomsday and Secret Wars as “a new beginning,” Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige had another name for the post-Avengers saga: Marvel’s Mutant Era.
Avengers: Doomsday is set for May 1, 2026, followed by Avengers: Secret Wars on May 7, 2027.
