Marvel came to San Diego Comic-Con 2026 at a major turning point in the company’s history.
It had some of its biggest movies ever coming in the next few years, but they arrive after a fair amount of scrambling on Marvel’s part to rework their plans in ways they never had to during the early years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Jonathan Majors got fired, and Avengers: The Kang Dynasty became Avengers: Doomsday. Meanwhile several recent Marvel films have underperformed in theaters including Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*, leading some industry experts to speculate that Marvel’s days as a dominant box-office force were coming to an end.
That’s the conception that Marvel came to San Diego to combat. And they did that with several announcements, including…
- The upcoming re-release of Avengers: Endgame as Avengers: Endgame Encore will include an exclusive look at Avengers: Doomsday.
- Ryan Gosling has been cast as Ghost Rider. Shawn Levy is directing the film, which will open in theaters in 2028.
- Hayley Atwell will reprise her role as Peggy Carter in Avengers: Doomsday.
- Marvel unveiled this new poster for Avengers: Doomsday, revealing Robert Downey Jr.’s full costume as Doctor Doom.
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The news of Ghost Rider with Gosling and a third Black Panther from Coogler were certainly surprises, and both are intriguing projects. We’ll see if they are enough to help turn around that perception that Marvel’s best days may be behind it. I think most fans were expecting, or at least hoping, that Marvel would finally confirm their first full-blown X-Men movie, or at least announce some casting for it.
With no announcement at San Diego Comic-Con, that would seem to indicate we won’t see any sort of news like that for quite some time, likely not until after Avengers: Doomsday debuts in theaters.
As for the company’s upcoming schedule, they have Spider-Man: Brand New Day opening next week, Avengers; Doomsday scheduled to open in theaters on December 18, 2026, and Avengers: Secret Wars opening on December 17, 2027.
Spider-Man Co-Creator Steve Ditko’s Run on Indiana Jones
During the 1980s, Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko contributed artwork to Marvel’s Indiana Jones comic book.