Avengers: Doomsday Gets a Troubling Update

Marvel’s next Avengers film is poised to save its cinematic universe — but it won’t have a lot of time to do it.

It’s been a few months since Marvel officially rebranded Avengers 5 to Avengers: Doomsday at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, setting a new focal point for the MCU. The project is seemingly in good hands with directors Joe and Anthony Russo set to return to the Marvel fold. Stephen McFeely — who co-wrote Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame — will also pen the Doomsday script. If all goes to plan, the film could retroactively fix Marvel’s dismal track record of late; ideally, it’ll also set the tone for Avengers: Secret Wars, the film that’s set to end Marvel’s Multiverse Saga with a bang.

Marvel has pulled out all the stops to set the project up for success, but one major question remains: will the Doomsday team have the time to make this film the best that it can be? Given that the Russos will only have a year to shoot, edit, and finalize visual effects, Doomsday might very well be doomed.

In an interview with Collider, the Russos confirmed that Doomsday will begin shooting in spring 2025. Their comments reflect earlier reports from trades like Variety, who speculated that the Avengers film would kick off production “in the second quarter of 2025.” While the official start date has yet to be confirmed, Marvel is definitely cutting it close. Doomsday has long been set for a May 2026 release, which means that the team will have just a year to completely finalize the film. Compared to other superhero projects — like DC’s Superman, which will spend a year on post-production alone — it just doesn’t seem like Marvel is taking this very seriously.

Doomsday is the franchise’s most important film moving forward, one meant to represent a long-overdue shift in priorities. But the studio hasn’t changed the production timeline it’s used for other projects, and that just doesn’t bode well for Doomsday’s chances of success.

The MCU has long been synonymous with tight turnarounds, especially where post-production is concerned. It’s a habit that’s put major strain on the visual effects teams that Marvel recruits, and it’s contributed to a major decline in quality for Marvel films. The studio has been entrenched in a “quiet retooling” for the past year, and many assumed that it would emerge with a new strategy for films like Doomsday. That the Avengers film will face the same production crunch as its predecessors is definitely cause for concern. The Russos are pros, so maybe they’ll be able to shoot the film quickly. That said, they shouldn’t have to — and the fact that Marvel has yet to learn this lesson could spell big trouble for Doomsday.