Avengers: The Kang Dynasty has been retitled Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars and will be directed by the Russo brothers.
Directors Joe and Anthony Russo are teaming up with Marvel Studios once again to direct the next superhero team-up film, and on Saturday night, they officially announced their return by taking the stage in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con to a standing ovation.
“When we made Avengers: Endgame, we really thought it was the end for us in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” Joe Russo told the crowd. “That four-film run was incredible, and it left us creatively exhausted.” Yet in the time since, the duo has found “a very special story” that has convinced them to return. In fact, “It’s the biggest story Marvel Comics has ever told. That’s why Anthony and I are standing here.” That film is Avengers: Secret Wars.
But in order to build toward the epic battle known as “Secret Wars,” the story will need the kind of very important character “needed” to do “Secret Wars” justice. So, enter Doomsday, played by Robert Downey Jr., the man who helped put the MCU on the map with his diabolical transformation as Iron Man/Tony Stark. The first film is titled “Avengers: Doomsday” and will premiere in May 2026 with “Avengers: Secret Wars” following in May 2027.
The Russo brothers take over for Destin Daniel Cretton, who left the film in November 2023 to focus on other Marvel projects on his schedule, including a potential sequel to his 2021 film “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” Michael Waldron, who created Marvel’s Disney+ series “Loki,” is writing the script for this “Avengers” film and the follow-up “Avengers: Secret Wars,” which is supposed to be an “Endgame”-style conclusion to what studio chief Kevin Feige has called the multiverse saga in 2022.
The Russo brothers are no strangers to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They previously directed the most recent Avengers films, Infinity War and Endgame, and two Captain America films, The Winter Soldier and Civil War. After directing the two Avengers films, which grossed over $2 billion at the box office, the Russo brothers left Marvel to direct Cherry, a gritty crime drama starring Tom Holland; Netflix’s The Gray Man, an action thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans; and Netflix’s upcoming The Electric State.
Many observers felt the decision to rename “Kang Dynasty” was inevitable after Jonathan Majors — the actor who played Marvel’s supervillain Kang for two years — was convicted in December of assaulting and molesting his ex-girlfriend. The studio parted ways with the actor less than two hours after the verdict was announced, capping off nearly a year of uncertainty over Majors’ future with Marvel following his arrest in March. But the studio has remained tight-lipped on whether the loss of Majors also means a farewell to the character of Kang.
There’s precedent for Marvel recasting a prominent role: Don Cheadle replaced Terrence Howard as James “Rhodey” Rhodes in “Iron Man 2” and Mark Ruffalo replaced Edward Norton as Bruce Banner in “The Avengers.” But that was after the original actor had only played the role once; Majors has portrayed Kang multiple times, including in seasons one and two of “Loki,” and as the main villain in 2023’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” In that film’s mid-credits scene, Majors even appears as an army of Kang variants; capturing all of those performances would be a tall order for any new actor.
More importantly, audiences haven’t embraced Kang as a character, or the multiverse as a storytelling engine, in the same way that Thanos and the Infinity Saga served as a strong narrative backbone in the 2000s. The final episode of Loki season 2 tied up Kang’s story so Marvel could move forward without unduly disrupting its broader plans for the multiverse saga. And that seems to be exactly what the studio is doing with this new title.
