Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, has said that Avengers: Endgame will be "the final Avengers movie".
Feige, who has worked for Marvel since 2000 and is widely credited with establishing the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has signalled that the hugely popular and hugely lucrative team-ups are a thing of the past.
Thus far there have been four Avengers movies, bringing together all of Marvel's heroes to take on a series of almighty foes. They began with 2012's The Avengers, 2015's Avengers: Age Of Ultron and 2018 and 2019's double header, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
Box office for each Avengers movie has passed a billion dollars, with Avengers: Endgame taking almost $2.8 billion. It seems a strange idea to break with that incredibly lucrative tradition, but it seems like that's the plan...
So what did Kevin Feige say?
Feige was speaking as part of new documentary Assembled: The Making of Eternals, which has just been released on Disney Plus to celebrate the arrival of Eternals on the streamer.
Addressing Marvel's plans for the future, Feige said: "Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now past their 10th anniversary, and with the release of the final Avengers movie, we finally completed a 22-movie Infinity Saga."
He went on: "Where do we go from there? Where do we start? And what we really wanted to do was two things: start fresh, with whole new characters, new storylines, but actually go back to some of the deepest, richest mythology in all of Marvel comics."
It seems like he's ruling out more Avengers movies, certainly for now.
A change of tack for Marvel?
This isn't actually the first time that Feige has intimated that the studio may not return to the formula it has established in its first 10 years.
Speaking to Collider back in 2021, Feige was quoted as saying: "I think we want there to be a reasonable amount of time from the Endgame to start a new saga, which is already underway and already started. And then you need time, as you did in Phase 1, to build that saga before you start bringing everyone together."
So what next?
Marvel and Feige have got plenty going on. They're expanding their TV offering, with Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk and Secret Invasion all due in 2022, as well as a slate of high-profile sequels in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, all coming this year.
So we may never see a team-up like Avengers: Endgame again, but there's still an awful lot of Marvel coming our way...
