Marvel Studios bumps all 2022 releases including Doctor Strange and Thor sequels

Marvel Studios has made an unexpected change to its 2022 movie releases, which has a domino effect into the following year.

In triggering bout of deja vu, Marvel Studios has pushed back its slate of 2022 movies, including Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

But rather than it being a direct pandemic-related move, according to Deadline the scheduling delays seem to be driven by production challenges.

What it means is that every Marvel movie due for release in 2022 is being pushed back a couple of months, with a domino effect that starts with the Doctor Strange sequel.

The new release dates are as follows:

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness – May 6

Thor: Love and Thunder – July 8

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – November 11

The Marvels – February 17, 2023

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – July 28, 2023

The Doctor Strange sequel has been delayed until May.

The revised timetable will mean a bit of a lull between Marvel movie projects between Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is due to land in mid-December, and the Doctor Strange sequel in May.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness will star Benedict Cumberbatch as Steven Strange with Elizabeth Olsen reprising her role as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlett Witch.

The story will pick-up after the events of the WandaVision and Loki series, as well as the upcoming Spider-Man movie which Cumberbatch will also appear. Tom Hiddleston is also slated to be in the Doctor Strange sequel as Loki.

The film is expected to be a pivotal piece of Marvel Studios’ Phase Four, which has prised open the multiverse and the storytelling and character possibilities such a narrative device offers.

Thor: Love and Thunder, which was filmed in Sydney earlier this year, follows the Asgardian god and Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster who is set to take on the powers of Thor. The Taika Waititi-directed movie has an all-star cast including Portman, Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Christian Bale, Jeff Goldblum, Karen Gillan and Dave Bautista.

Eternals will be out this year on November 4. Picture: Marvel Studios

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is currently filming in Atlanta and will star Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke and Angela Bassett reprises their roles from the first movie. Dominique Thorne will debut the character of Ironheart in the film while Micaela Coel has been cast as an unnamed character.

The Marvels is a sequel to Captain Marvel, the upcoming Disney+ series Ms Marvel, which introduces a Pakistani-American teen superhero, and WandaVision. It’s directed by Nia DaCosta and stars Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris. It’s currently filming in the UK and Europe.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania sees Paul Rudd, Evangelline Lilly, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer will reprise their roles in this third film while Jonathan Majors will play another version of the Kang the Conqueror villain he introduced in the Loki series. The movie was filming in the UK and is expected to continue into next year.

Marvel’s Eternals, starring Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan and Kumail Nanjiani, is due out this year on November 4 while Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is currently in cinemas. The Hawkeye series will land on Disney+ on November 24.

Additionally, the fifth Indiana Jones movie has been bumped a year from July 29, 2022 to June 30, 2023.

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