Marvel Announces Director for “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty”

At San Diego Comic Con 2022, Marvel made a triumphant return after years away due to COVID restrictions. They finally announced what the next few years will look like, including that Phase Four will end with November's Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Beyond that, we had some vague dates and titles, but producer/overlord Kevin Feige gave us a glimpse of Phases Five and Six of the MCU.

While Phase Five will burn through quickly - with four movies in 2023 and two more the following year - Phase Six is a little less defined. It kicks off with a Fantastic Four movie, followed by not one but two Avengers movies in 2025. The first is subtitled The Kang Dynasty, and will feature Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), who's already popped up on Loki and will next appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. He's clearly the big bad of this era of the MCU, dubbed the Multiverse Saga.

So who's tasked with this first mega-blockbuster? It's someone already familiar to fans: Daniel Destin Cretton, who directed last year's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The film was one of the most purely enjoyable entries in this behemoth of a series, though it was plagued by now-standard lousy CGI in the third act. Stars Simu Liu, Awkafina, Michelle Yeoh and Tony Leung all crushed their roles. No cast has been announced, but it's a safe bet Shang-Chi will become a new Avenger.

Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is currently scheduled to hit theaters in May 2025.

About Kip Mooney

Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.