Coming Soon has the news I’ve been waiting to hear all weekend. Not only did Marvel Entertainment spend the weekend revelling the amazing success ($205 million worldwide) of Iron Man, but they let us in on a little bit of news: The release dates of four highly-anticipated upcoming projects.
First on the slate is the much-rumored but now-obvious Iron Man 2 on April 30, 2010, which will be used to introduce Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughan’s Thor, set for June 4, 2010. Then on May 6, 2011, we will see the tentatively titled The First Avenger: Captain America, and The Avengers two months later.
This is of note, of course, because it will continue to build on the Marvel movie “universe,” sort of parallel to the Marvel Comics universe (also known as the 616 universe… to dorks —gm) or the Ultimates universe. Aside from the Thor tie-in with Iron Man 2, Robert Downey Jr. is slated to appear briefly as Tony Stark in the upcoming The Incredible Hulk. Then Captain America will debut (likely in a 1940′s-set origin), leading directly into the Avengers movie.
It was also mentioned that Spider-Man 4 and Ant-Man are both in development.
UPDATE (5/6): Entertainment Weekly cornered with Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau with questions about the Iron Man sequel. From the Robert Downey Jr. interview:
When you were brainstorming with Jon Favreau, what were the elements that you wanted to bring to the next Iron Man movie?
There’s this idea of Terrence [Howard] putting on a suit and coming back as War Machine, who is pretty iconic in the Iron Man and Marvel universe. Just seeing where it can all go, but grounding it in a very modern mythology. I see it as greatest dysfunctional family story ever told…. In the New York Post a couple days ago, [there was a cartoon] of Iron Man suited up, and he’s telling the governor even his super-powers can’t get him out of the budget problem. That was what Jon was hoping for and excited to see the most, the idea that Tony Stark and Iron Man can become part of the cultural fabric. When we heard posters were being defaced to promote political or social ideas, he just got such a hoot out of that.
And from the Jon Favreau interview:
Will you be involved with the sequel?
We’ve been speaking informally about it, and in concept we would all love to work together again. But I found out about the announcement last night, so it’s not something that — we would definitely love to collaborate more with the sequel. There’s no formal arrangement yet, but in theory we would all love to see it happen…. There’s definitely a lot of ideas that we all have now. This type of movie is based on serialized materials, so it lends itself very easily to [many different possibilities]. There’s definitely a level of enthusiasm from myself and the cast to tell more stories.
Related post: Trailer Watch: The Incredible Hulk full trailer; Trailer Watch: The Incredible Hulk teaser (updated)