After Sony last week positioned it's sequel to the itself still one year away from being released The Amazing Spider-Man for May 2nd, 2014 - rivals Marvel Studios/Disney are making sure they aren't getting left behind and are themselves getting in on the act - today announcing that they will release two mysterious films that very year; Mystery Project A) will be released May 16th, 2014 Mystery Project B) will come out June 27th, 2014. The identity of the films are being kept secret for now but we can certainly make some educated guesses giving the events of recent weeks and beyond, and also the fact there are some projects we can quickly cross-off. Firstly we know it definitely can't be an Iron Man or Thor picture as they are both already secured as Marvel's 2013 offerings. We can also presume it won't be a sequel to The Avengers that opens next May as getting all those actors schedules to mesh together so soon seems unlikely given that it takes considerable time and planning and they will likely want to build up to that movie as a special event with a fair few more films to come first. 2015 or 2016 seems more likely but I could be wrong however. So what could they be? We've been chatting around the WhatCulture! water colour and here's what we came up with;
Doctor Strange
There seems to be some momentum building recently at Marvel for a Doctor Strange movie. For such a long time now a character they have been very close to pulling the trigger on for a tentpole picture, and once (painstakingly chronicled in "the vault of awesome projects that never happened") Hellboy director Guillermo Del Toro was to helm a Neil Gaiman scripted movie based on the Sorcerer Supreme - the character would now appear to be just a few years away from making his big screen debut. Recently Conan the Barbarian screenwriters Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer turned in a screenplay for a Doctor Strange origins movie for what is expected to be a slightly lesser scale budgeted film than it's recent superhero efforts Thor and Captain America and one that introduces the magical character to the Marvel film universe. An important player in the comics, Doctor Stephen Strange would push audiences further into the more fantastical aspects of the Marvel comic book universe in much the same way Thor did and so, the right actor and tone is essential to ground the human drama. Until an accident cripples his hands, Strange is an arrogant and self-centered surgeon a talented man of medicine who then turns to magic and mysticism in an effort to regain what hes lost. There's a big possibility one of those dates belongs to Doctor Strange and we recently named our top 8 Choices To Play Doctor Strange and our 8 Directors to Helm but what we have to remember is Marvel have already said this project won't be epic scale. It's a B-movie Marvel picture, essentially... and Marvel won't give it such a big mysterious tentpole date, I don't think. But we can hope that maybe Donnelly and Oppenheimer have turned in something that is just too spectacular for the company not to turn in an epic movie. And if they can court a Tom Cruise or a Johnny Depp to star... it won't really matter in audiences eyes that it's based on an obscure comic.
Ant-Man
If I was a betting man, I would say one of these tentpole dates was for an Ant-Man movie. Again forever touted as a project that Marvel wanted to make, Ant-Man came very close to being included in The Avengers before they went in the direction of Hawkeye and decided Ant-Man would be more suited for a full stand-alone film. For YEARS... British director Edgar Wright has been working on a screenplay for an origins movie and has been re-drafting and re-drafting and re-drafting it during the makings of Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and beyond to turn in a draft that pleases Marvel brass. Now as the studio are planning for their future tentpoles, Wright and Attack the Block's Joe Cornish recently turned in their script to Marvel at the same time as the Dr Strange writers. It may well come down to a situation of which screenplay do they like most (Or... of course, which one is more marketable?). After discovering a size-altering chemical substance, biophysicist and nanotechnology expert Dr. Henry Hank Pym decides to become a superhero. Armed with a helmet that could control ants, Pym would shrink down to the size of an insect to become the mystery-solving Ant-Man. He soon shared his discovery with his girlfriend Janet Van Dyke who became his crime-fighting partner The Wasp. Whether or not Marvel see Ant-Man as an A-list character worthy of such summer blockbuster dates is another question but it is now looking more and more likely this will be Wright's next motion picture. Do Marvel see it as big tentpole that they can release it May or June summer months and bring in $100's of millions of revenue? Guess we will find out soon.
Captain America 2
With $143 million from a $140 million budget and $246 million worldwide take and counting for Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel now know they have a property here they can trust in giving a stand-alone project too and retain their cash. There was always a doubt over Cap because of his costume, his realistic but unspectacular abilities, cartoonish main villain and the fact he is a World War II character but all those doubts have gone away with what is a fantastic summer blockbuster that is in cinema's now. I'm sure Marvel will want to do a sequel but the problem of course that Marvel have left themselves is that the Captain America film ends with the character in the modern day setting and it would be extremely difficult for them to ever go back and do a movie in a World War II period again. They have pigeon holed themselves into including the character in the future and perhaps the picture might not have the charm that worked so well in a period setting. Would a stand-alone Captain America movie work so well in the modern day environment? Though out of all the picks on this list... this one probably seems the most likely.
The Runaways
This one is probably a huge outsider but you just never know. Once deemed to be the first-post Avengers movie, Marvel put the sword to Peter Sollet's (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn's brilliant youth-hero series The Runaways last year after acquiring the rights from Paramount. Keke Palmer and Lucas Cruickshank were said to star in the film that would have been just about on it's last few weeks of filming by now, if not already complete (March 2011 was the start date) but possibly because Marvel want to focus exclusively on films that deal in their wider scoped universe, they didn't greenlight it. Another excellent original concept, teaming up the children of a Supervillain group to vanquish their parents and atone for their sins by continuing to fight crime. The first story-arc in which the children learn the secret of their parents malevolence, and then subsequently each discover that they have inherited powers of their own would work particularly well as a movie, given the character genesis involved, and the great potential it would offer as a compelling ensemble project. But we think Marvel have set aside two dates for the Avengers universe movies and it won't include The Runaways.
Iron First
It was reported back in August that Iron Fist (basically Bruce Lee as a superhero but with mystical powers) had won the 500 character Marvel lottery to be the next C-lister to make the transition from comics-to-film as the first post-Avengers film. Rich Wilkes, screenwriter of xxx (jeez) had been hired to scribe the movie and Roy Thomas and Gill Kanes creation was the second new character under Disneys reign to hit the development slate after they bought the company for $4 billion last year. It will have a modest budget (certainly no more than $40 million) and will be a fairly low-risk adaptation with third tier action talent attached, as Disney/Marvel test the waters of their new found partnership.... so again it just doesn't seem likely that this would be thought of as a big tentpole picture. Out of Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and the film directly below, this one seems the least likely. Can a film like this really bring in $200 million audience? Sadly, martial arts expert and long-time Iron Fist fan Ray Park (Darth Maul), who a decade ago was being setup to play the character in a big screen tentpole under Ari Arad - is so far off the radar these days hes unlikely to be considered.
Luke Cage
Isn't it about time we got an African-American hero? Luke Cage of course wouldn't be a hard movie to greenlit. All they would need to do is go out and hire self-confessed Cage fan Idris Elba and let him runaway with the character who obtained his powers in an accident that left him with near impervious skin and superhuman strength. But Marvel have been trying to make this movie for almost ten years. Almost like clockwork annually we hear faint rumblings of Marvel pushing ahead with a Luke Cage film only for no talent to be brought on board. The last time we heard something on Luke Cage was last June where a modestly budgeted film in the $20-30 million mark was promised and I imagine we are probably due a further update soon. But I don't think it's one of these pictures.
Hulk 3?
Would Marvel really go their a third time? We have already had two disappointing and less than stellar box office events from Ang Lee/Eric Bana and Louis Leterrier/Ed Norton and all it's told us is that A) The Hulk is a difficult character to adapt on film and B) Audiences just aren't THAT interested in him. Though we do know Bruce Banner is a character Marvel are interested in keeping around, last year choosing Mark Ruffalo to play The Incredible Hulk in The Avengers that opens next May. Of course he is an A-List hero but we just haven't seen an A* star quality film out of the character yet. Hulk 3 should be the movie they are working on for 2014 but they've made too many mistakes in the past for it to be.
Nick Fury
When Samuel L. Jackson signed his lucrative 9 movie contract with Marvel to appear in every Avengers-universe film, it was said that at the back of the studio's mind they had considered making a spin-off film based on the one-eyed superhero and his team members of S.H.I.E.L.D. This movie would give Marvel an awful lot of scope for story building, it would presumably also feature Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow too (less risky than giving her a movie all to herself) and then they can bring in any cameo's from their universe they desire. Samuel L. Jackson is of course a big enough name to lead the movie by himself and wouldn't it be fun to see him on screen as the character for longer than five minutes? He is the constant after all, the character that seems to bring everyone together.
The Guardians of Galaxy
Reports emerged last week that Marvel had begun early development on a Guardians of the Galaxy project, based on the comic where a bunch of superheroes protect Earth from an alien race named Badoon. In classic canon, the saga was set in an alternative 31st century Marvel universe but a few years ago the comic was rebooted with a team consisting of Star-Lord, Adam Warlock, Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, Phyla-Vell, Rocket Raccoon, Groot and Mantis. Not a great deal is really known of the Guardians, and in truth they aren't a hugely popular property - but what is crucial here is which version Marvel would seek to focus on. Presumably they would plump for the newest team, given the recent attempt to reinvigorate interest in them, though the problem there is that that team is formed in direct response to the events of Annihilation: Conquest as a deterrent to that sort of mass devastation happening again. If they choose the original team - the other-dimensional 31st century team of "last-of-their-kind" aliens - the problem there is creating a stand-alone property in the context of their Marvel's other works, which seem to point to a manifesto of linked properties. Either way both versions of the property would require a good deal of suspension of belief and a commitment to CGI that might ultimately send the film on the same unfortunate track as the recent Green Lantern adaptation. So that's all we can think of for Marvel's two mysterious 2014 projects.... let us know which one you would most like to see in the comments section below. And if we have forgotten anything, suggest below.