So one or two of you saw Iron Man. With $100.75M domestic (the 10th biggest opening weekend ever) and $201M worldwide, making this the second-biggest non-sequel opening after Spider-Man, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige is now shitting into a platinum toilet and wiping with the skin of fallen presidential candidates.
But success hasn’t changed him — it’s time to make some movies! This morning, as expected, Marvel made some earnings announcements. Part of that release was the company’s planned feature slate, which looks like this:
Iron Man 2
April 30, 2010
Thor
June 4, 2010
The First Avenger: Captain America (working title)
May 6, 2011
The Avengers
July 2011
(EDIT: Also noted is that a writer/director is ‘engaged’ for Ant Man, with no release date specified, but with a 2 film per year plan, that likely wouldn’t go until 2012 at least.)
Looks like Iron Man‘s worldwide take suggests that another couple of very American heroes aren’t going to pose any problems for box office abroad. No directors or other details are attached, but based on what we know you can do some math. Jon Favreau will be going to work on his sequel in about 20 minutes and we should hear final confirmation about Matthew Vaughn on Thor shortly.
But with that ballsy pair of Avengers movies going in 2011 the only way that Jon Favreau could follow through (or be allowed to) on his stated interest to direct the team picture would be to make it concurrently with Iron Man 2. Is working Peter Jackson (or Robert Zemeckis) style a possibility for him? Who’s going to handle those flicks for 2011? Leterrier? Let’s see if Marvel is still this giddy after The Incredible Hulk opens.