Kevin Feige says Marvel has a 'five-year plan' for what comes after Endgame

We know the movies are coming, and we even know a generous handful of the current MCU stars who’ll be in them. But on this side of Avengers: Endgame, fans are mostly blissfully unaware of where Marvel Studios will steer the overarching story beats that run through its next phase of movies. 

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige says the shroud of secrecy that surrounds the upcoming Phase 4 of the MCU won’t be entirely lifted by Endgame’s presumably cathartic finale. In fact, he recently told IGN, the studio already has a five-year plan in place to tie its upcoming movies together — but we’ll have to wait until Spider-Man: Far from Home slings into theaters this summer before we hear even a whiff of what’s in store.

“I will say all of the post [San Diego] Comic-Con, post Spider-Man: Far From Home stuff, we ... Here's an exclusive. We're gonna keep making movies,” he joked while referencing all the pre-Endgame hype. “We’re gonna still keep making movies after these two. And we will talk about them soon after Spider-Man: Far From Home comes out.”

If Feige’s mention of this year’s Comic-Con is a head-turner in its own right, well, even that comes with an air of mystery. Merely announcing whether Marvel will return to SDCC after sitting out last year’s event, he suggested, could spoil something — though aside from the fact that Far from Home will still be fresh in theaters when Comic-Con rolls around, it’s hard to know what he has in mind. “I don't wanna be annoying, but I think it ... In a certain way, that is also sort of a post-Endgame spoiler,” he said.

Marvel’s stayed plenty busy locking down its plans for a new Black Widow movie, a Doctor Strange sequel, the third Guardians of the Galaxy installment, and a movie that’ll introduce a new generation of fans to The Eternals. But Disney’s been equally busy behind the scenes, securing the rights to long-orphaned Marvel favorites like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. How those newly-acquired characters might factor into the next phase of the MCU, though, is just as much a short-term mystery as the rest of the big crossover themes the studio already has mapped out. 

Feige said Marvel and Disney are still “probably” years away from properly incorporating the X-Men and other Fox pickups into the MCU. But he also made it clear that the studio does have a plan in place, and it’s one that’s already positioned to carry fans through the next half-decade of MCU movies. 

“[W]e have built and fleshed out our five-year plan of where we're heading, the first few years of which we'll be announcing, as I said, relatively soon, after these next two movies,” he teased.

At least the long wait will be generously peppered with actual MCU movies; films that’ll undoubtedly introduce — or at least hint at — some of the Thanos-sized stakes that’ll dominate the next phase. After Endgame puts a bittersweet bow on the Infinity Saga later this month, it’ll be Peter Parker’s turn to usher in the next Marvel Movie era. Spider-Man: Far From Home arrives in theaters on July 5.