10 Dream MCU Projects Disney Will (Probably) Never Make

10. Dark Reign (Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers)

Dark Avengers
Marvel Comics

Spider-Man will no longer be in the MCU by the time he next appears on the big screen, and that brings with it a whole host of storylines that'll likely never see the light of day.

While there are certainly positives to be gleaned from Sony's decision to take their webbed-ball home and refusing to play with Marvel - not least because we may now get to see a Spidey film that isn't overshadowed by Iron Man's legacy - if rumours are to be believed it means that the fallout will prompt a major rethink for Phases Four and Five.

It was heavily speculated in the wake of and even before Avengers: Endgame that Norman Osborn would be the key overarching antagonist of Marvel's next phase. That might seem a little strange to those who consider the stripy-haired goblin a Spider-Man villain first and foremost, but it's actually the case that he's been deployed primarily as an antagonist for the Avengers over the last ten or so years.

Osborn's tenure as public enemy number one was realised best during Dark Reign, where he took over S.H.I.E.L.D., renamed it H.A.M.M.E.R., and fashioned his own group of Dark Avengers. It's easy to see how Kevin Feige et al. could've implemented such an event onscreen, and even though they probably won't be sweating too much over the change, it's still a huge shame Osborn and his cronies won't come together the way fans hoped they would - save for the possibility of Sony and Disney reconciling in the months ahead.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.