Phase four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is upon us, with the mega studio releasing an enticing new trailer to give us a hint of what’s to come, including the long-awaited title of the Black Panther sequel.
After a tough twelve months for the movie industry, Marvel’s teaser trailer — complete with a voiceover from the late Stan Lee — acts as a love letter not just to the future, but to the good old days of sitting in a cinema to enjoy a new title.
Thankfully, those days are all but back and we have some seriously exciting content to look forward to as the studio has ten tentpoles on its release slate through 2023, picking up after the events of 2019’s Avengers Endgame.
The trailer, titled Marvel Celebrates the Movies, includes never-before-seen footage from the upcoming Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings which stars Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, alongside Awkwafina, Tony Leung, Michelle Yeoh, Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu and Ronny Chieng. The blockbuster, which lands in cinemas in September, will be a milestone in Marvel history, signalling the first time the studio has delivered a superhero flick with an Asian lead.
Making its debut on July 9, Black Widow starring Scarlett Johansson marks the first theatrical release from Marvel since 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home and will debut both in cinemas and on Disney Plus for the first time, due to the pandemic.
Also in the super trailer, we get to see that Captain Marvel 2 — starring Brie Larson — has a fresh new title, The Marvels, and will land in cinemas on November 11, 2022. We are also given a sneak peek at the Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao’s foray into the MCU with a snippet from The Eternals, starring Angelina Jolie, which is set to hit theatres on November 5, 2021.
Meanwhile, Thor: Love and Thunder, which is currently being filmed here in Australia with an all-star cast, has been given a US release date of May 6, 2022.
Toward the end of the epic trailer, the studio reveals the title for the hotly anticipated follow-up to 2018’s Black Panther which will drop in cinemas in July 2022. As previously confirmed, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, will not feature a recast version of T’Challa — the character brought to life by the late Chadwick Boseman who passed away in August 2020.
In an April interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Boseman’s co-star Lupita Nyong’o spoke about returning to the Black Panther set without the late actor and praised director Ryan Coogler for handling his absence.
“The way which he has reshaped the second movie is so respectful of the loss we’ve all experienced as a cast and as a world,” she said. “So it feels spiritually and emotionally correct to do this.”
Prior to his passing, Boseman was due to reprise his role as T’Challa in the next Black Panther instalment. After his death, the idea of having the actor appear in a CGI cameo in the follow-up, similar to what Disney did in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker after Carrie Fisher passed away, was shut down by Marvel Studios executive producer Victoria Alonso.
“No. There’s only one Chadwick, and he’s not with us,” Alonso said.
“Our king, unfortunately, has died in real life, not just in fiction, and we are taking a little time to see how we return to history and what we do to honour this chapter of what has happened to us that was so unexpected, so painful, so terrible, really.”
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