Marvel Studios Head Addresses Spider-Man And The Avengers Rumors

While Marvel bombarded their fans with announcements concerning their Phase 3 film schedule at a Los Angeles event earlier today, they still left many of the biggest questions fans have unanswered.

The studio today announced Avengers: Infinity War, a two part Avengers movie that will see Part I release in 2018 and Part II follow in 2019. However, they did not address rumors that Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War directors, Joe and Anthony Russo, were in line to helm the films after Avengers: Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon departs the franchise.

Similarly, they had nothing to say concerning rumors that Marvel Studios and Sony were working on a deal to share the use of Spider-Man in their films, making him available to play a role in the story of Civil War.

During a question and answer session following the event, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige was asked if he could clear up any of these rumors.

"Anything that wasn't specifically and obviously revealed today is either not true at all, or still rumor until it's worked out," said Feige.

That's mostly a non-answer, with Feige refusing to confirm or deny the rumors at all until they are made official. However, that last bit about a rumor remaining a rumor "until it's worked out" makes you believe that at least one of those two rumors is something that the studio is working on.

It's impossible to parse out which one he's talking about, assuming that he's implying anything at all. The Russo Brothers rumor seems much more plausible given that the Russos are already on board with Marvel Studios. The studio, in turn, seem to have a lot of faith in the Russos, having signed them to direct Captain America: Civil War – arguably the linchpin of their entire plan for Phase 3 – before Captain America: The Winter Soldier even opened.

On the other hand, we have nothing to go on with the Spider-Man rumors beside the rumors themselves and that Marvel and Sony seem to have a pretty healthy working relationship as concerns merchandising and advertising. Sony does still have plans to expand their Amazing Spider-Man universe, though those plans seem to be constantly in a state of flux, and one would have to wonder how they would reconcile the Amazing Spider-Man continuity to the Avengers continuity without having to introduce an entirely separate version of Spider-Man to the film universe.

Of course, Feige did also mention today that Doctor Strange will introduce the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the concept of "parallel dimensions," so maybe that's exactly the backdoor they need to make this idea work.