Marvel News

Feige loves DC films and he wants them to do well. I absolutely believe the first point, but put a caveat on the second (even though raising tides lift all boats). As corporate competitors the camaraderie only goes so far because there's a limit to how much on-screen product the genre can support--as expansive as it is, eventually superheroes will hit a wall and Marvel Studios are well aware of this. With the MCU coming to Disney+ and moving towards the brand being on-screen all year round, the competition is reaching a new level. If DC were truly on the ball they'd go very dark and largely stick to R-rated ventures (since Disney, thus far, has shown no inclination to compete in that space), but the money is better for PG so I expect WB to keep trying.

This is on my mind because I wonder how much DC's planned Flashpoint storyline (for 2022's The Flash) impacted Marvel's decision to push the multiverse. The general thinking when this was announced is that it would bring the Fantastic Four and Mutants into the MCU, but that approach really isn't necessary (see below). The MCU started teasing the multiverse with Ant-Man in 2015, which was when the torturous process of bringing The Flash to DC began at WB. I could be reaching here, as the multiverse is a normal part of Marvel, but the MCU does react to DC (Civil War is the most obvious example), so I throw it out as a possibility.

Murphy went on The Den of Nerds to talk MCU and here are the main points from the nearly hour long video:

• Re: The Dark Avengers - no new information (not even a hint that it's being planned, although a spec script was written for it awhile ago, which is not uncommon) and he expects, if they pursue it, they will take their time with it (to me it seems redundant given the following)
• Re: The Thunderbolts - because of the persistent use of General Ross he believes that's the direction Marvel is going (speculation on his part--you can see more below)
• Re: Christian Bale - his character is not 100% motion capture, but motion capture is involved; the role isn't a cameo because he's unavailable for other roles at the time Thor 4 is being filmed (Murphy mentioned that his sources for this were agents--they had no information on whether Bale had signed a multi-film deal); he reiterated his speculation that Bale is going to play Minotaur because an agent told him Bale was playing Dario
• Re: Secret Wars - thinks that could be where the MCU is going years down the line, but has no specific insight that it is
• Re: Nova - no concrete information other than it's 'in development' (at various points this past year 4chan, the Redditor known as TMSM, and Sutton claimed a film was being developed)
• Re: Nightmare in Doctor Strange 2 - speculates that Derrickson left the project because Nightmare was left out (if this speculation is true it would explain the October re-write of the script, as the original Cargill script undoubtedly focused on that character, cf)
• Re: Doctor Strange 2 - believes it will be like Age of Ultron in terms of setting up the MCU going forward
• Re: Sonyverse - shares my opinion that it will be treated like the Jeph Loeb shows and ignored by the MCU
• Re: Shang-Chi - believes (but can't confirm) the tournament idea that's floating around
• Believes a lot of super soldier serum elements are coming (Black Widow, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, etc)
• Re: Namor - has nothing concrete about him and no news about a change in the rights situation (this was presumably asked because of the recent Conrad rumour; this answer does suggest it's unlikely he's appearing in Black Panther 2)
• Re: Midnight Sons team-up - no insider information, but thinks it's likely (this is something LotLB have discussed going back to when I first found them--originally as a Hulu idea--inexplicably I don't seem to have ever mentioned it previously)
• Re: Netflix characters - nothing official going on (related to Conrad's rumour in October)
• Re: Falcon and the Winter Soldier - none of the unexpected characters who will appear in the show will be mutants (which makes sense given when the script was written, but see below)
• Re: Mutants - no inside information, but said there's no point in filming for a week in Madripoor unless it's intended to set-up something down the line

There's not much new here, although it does imply some of the rumours being pushed the last few months are unlikely to have any substance to them. Murphy is pretty cavalier about on-set script changes regarding the Fox IP, but the lack of mutants suggests that my suspicion that Madripoor is mostly an easter egg for fans to anticipate them is correct.

Murphy believes that Miki Ishikawa (added to the cast in December) is playing Jolt (which he expressed at the time without going into it). His theory is based on: 1) the exercise regime she's putting herself through, 2) a tattoo she has of a lightning bolt, 3) liking a now-deleted comment about being in that role. The third point, I think, is the strongest evidence. Jolt is one of many members of the Thunderbolts and helps increase both the female and diverse quotient of the team.

Murphy says Loki has moved its production forward by ten days, meaning it will start shooting shortly. I don't know what conclusions can be drawn here, as it's such a short amount of time it won't impact its release schedule.

Conrad reports "Marvel is looking to cast two stand-ins for the series and the first is pretty interesting. They’re looking for a female who portrays Caucasian between 5’6″ and 5’8″ with BLONDE hair. They were very specific to specify the blonde hair. The other is an African American female a bit taller between 5’7″ to 5’9″." He speculates the blonde stand-in is for Enchantress, based on the description (saying there aren't any other major characters with that look in the IP). I can't speak to his former assertion (Valkyrie was race-swapped, otherwise she would be another), and we've certainly had our share of Enchantress rumours/speculation:

• Last January (4chan) claimed she was the villain in a Sif Disney+ show (at the time Discussing Film claimed such a show was in the works)
• October (Reddit) as the villain in Loki who will also appear in Thor 4
• November (Variety) broke that 5'7 Sophie Di Martino was in negotiations to join the cast without any idea who she was playing (I included Enchantress as a possibility)
• January (4chan) claimed Jodie Comer was in talks for the role

Di Martino, who is blonde and the right size, seems like the character the stand-in is for (this doesn't negate Conrad's speculation, but he never brings up the actress in his article). She could, of course, be playing someone else (I've seen people speculation she's a female Loki, for instance).

Richard Newby from THR theorizes how Scarlett Johansson could stay in the MCU after her solo film is done (reflecting a recent Mikey Sutton idea). There are many ways this could happen, but his theory is that Taskmaster is actually a clone of Natasha based on their perceived similar size in the second trailer (reminiscent of the same logic that said it was Fagbenle in the first trailer because of his relative size to David Harbour). I'd never heard of Newby before and the only reason I'm discussing him was initially I wondered if he was planting the story for Marvel--to help pave the way for Johansson returning, but now that I've seen more of his work it appears he's just there for clickbait. This doesn't mean Johansson won't be back at some point (in flashbacks or for Secret Wars etc), just that I think Newby has no special insight on the matter.

Daniel says Hulkling is coming to the MCU. This isn't an idea unique to him, although it seems to be the first time he's said it. The next day GWW had a scoop that said he was being cast for a project filming this year (they didn't include the breakdown, sadly). They speculate he's meant for WandaVision (now filming) because in the comics he's Wiccan's boyfriend, which is plausible. I had been dismissive of the character appearing so soon because She-Hulk was coming and just how many similar characters can you have at one time, but if the Young Avengers is a Disney+ show rather than a movie there's more separation between them.

Kinda Culty summarizes the clues that Kathryn Hahn is playing Agatha Harkness and it's hard to imagine anything else given the set photos (as I've said previously, Murphy was the only holdout on this identification and he'd given in prior to this).

KC (link above) speculates that various Lovecraftian villains of Doctor Strange could appear in the film given its title--a reasonable bit of speculation and I suspect that was the original Scott Derrickson-planned film--I'm not sure if that will be the case in a more Wanda-focused film. KC's theory is that Mephisto or Chthon will be the main villain (borrowing elements from the other)--I think the former is more likely as Mephisto is a less abstract entity and has far more ties to other characters and ideas that can be carried forward. Chthon came up in a Reddit rumour back in December, where he featured prominently in WandaVision, but given their history in the comics this could easily be speculation.

Daniel says the Thunderbolts are being introduced in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. This echoes the Murphy speculation above (as well as the general sentiment that using Zemo points in that direction).

KC talks about Wolverine's advent into the MCU and I agree with him that he'll be one of (if not the) first mutant character we see. KC believes that mutants are already out there, because he thinks starting fresh leaves out too much mutant pre-history and that the multiverse solution is too convoluted (specifically the idea is a small number of mutants have existed for a long time, but the massive jump in numbers will be due to the Snaps). He thinks the MCU will skip Wolverine's origin just like they did for Spider-Man and that's probably true, although I don't like it, since my favourite version has never been on screen (Alpha Flight etc). He doesn't think we'll get a mutant-focused film until Phase Five, but that they'll be introduced in the upcoming movies/shows (my expectations for the X-Men in particular can be found here).

I never used to pay attention to upcoming comic titles or events because of the messy relationship between Marvel Studios and Marvel Entertainment. Now that Feige is the creative head of the comic division, learning that a new Werewolf by Night series is coming adds potency to the frequent rumours that the character is on his way to the MCU (eg).

Deadline says Birds of Prey is tracking to open at around 52 million, facing no competition and no real direct impact on it the rest of February. This is similar to Shazam (which opened with 53.5 in April). I don't expect the film to do as poorly as Shazam, but it is tracking to be one of the weaker comicbook films of the modern era (which, given the lackluster trailers, seems appropriate). It's still possible the film is a sleeper hit due to the lack of competition--plenty of films that have looked worse have done well.

I wanted to briefly go over what I think a lot of scoopers do to provide a steady stream of content for the sake of their patreon's/publicity. We'll exclude actual insiders (Roger Wardell) and scoopers who have avoided this approach (Murphy). This also excludes pure clickbait sites (like WGTC).

From what I can tell, all the well-known scoopers receive inside information, but it's infrequent and often vague. In order to keep the flow of information going they extrapolate and make educated guesses on what that information might mean--sometimes they get lucky and it works out, but often they don't. Murphy gets around the dead time by speculating, but he's far more careful than others to make it clear that's what he's doing. Let me give you some examples to illustrate what I mean:

• Marvel Studios/Entertainment will be connected: LotLB and others were talking about the integration of the MCU with Marvel Entertainment (TV) in the spring months before it was officially announced--it's a genuine scoop, but clearly they were unaware how it would happen and so they guessed that Loeb would remain, taking his marching orders from Feige as the TV-elements were integrated into the film universe. Instead, the actual plan was for Loeb to move on and the TV-verse to be ended and officially excised from continuity
• Conrad said that Nick Fury would call Captain Marvel at the end of Infinity War to warn her of a Skrull Invasion--he was correct that he calls her, but why was his added speculation (my guess is he knew the Skrull's were appearing in Captain Marvel and this fueled the idea)
• Sutton said Ant-Man would be moved to Disney+; in retrospect he seems to have been entirely guessing based on the information publicly available at the time (Paul Rudd asking fans to push for a third film etc)
• Daniel claimed Ben Affleck would stick around as Batman in 2018--this was something the actor was saying repeatedly at the time, but clearly Daniel had no inside information to tell him differently and was speculating

Perhaps I'm missing something in these cases--maybe there's more to it--but I've tracked enough of these scoops that I think it's unlikely. Typically the bigger named scoopers won't speculate without at least some firm data point (either actual inside information or the word of another insider they trust). It does mean, however, that you have to exercise caution, although I believe it's still worthwhile to see what's being said by whom (up until the release of Endgame virtually no one was aware of Wardell). I should point out that Conrad (and perhaps Daniel) have become more careful in how they frame information to avoid being completely wrong.

Just for fun, here are the Patreon numbers for the big scoopers:

• Daniel 226 supporters (he doesn't post the dollar amount; the number of patrons has been flat since 2016)
• Murphy 121 ($123/month; this is quite new)
• Conrad 40 (amount not listed; this number has been flat for over six months; his moribund YT seems to have prompted him to buy subscribers to avoid completely flatlining)*

*For those unfamiliar: when a YT channel is consistently gaining subs in precise quantities of ten or hundreds it's a virtual certainty that they are being purchased

Correction

Back in August I got the impression from an offhand remark from Tim (LotLB) that he owned a comicbook shop (or, at least, worked at one). Recently he came across the site (seemingly via a fan or friend) and let me know that's not the case. I'm happy to have him reading--whatever you might think of LotLB, it's an entertaining show to watch.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)