Where Does Marvel Go After Spider-Man: Far From Home?

Spider-Man: Far From Home brought in an estimated $185 million at the North American box office during the six day holiday opening, blowing away industry predictions of $125 million.

Globally, Far From Home made $580 million in its first 10 days of release, giving the box office a much needed injection. “Spider-Man gave this summer the jolt it needed,” Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice.com, told CNN Business. “Far From Home’s ability to win over audiences is further proof that audiences are just looking for good movies, sequels or otherwise.”

“Moviegoers aren’t burnt out on Spider-Man or superhero movies, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe clearly has promising life beyond the end of their first era in ‘Endgame,'” he went on to say.

So what’s next for the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

“The emotional journey [of this film] is so closely tied to Endgame,” said Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. “Really, it feels like this was the finale of that saga, because of how it connects very directly to the first Iron Man at the beginning. Early on we decided that this was the capper on a deep, personal, emotional level after the big, galactic events of Endgame.”

“Over the course of all 23 movies that we’ve made so far — every single one of them starting with ‘Iron Man’ — we’ve put this pressure on ourselves to do something unique and different and exceed expectations,” he said. “That’s certainly the same going forward.”

After Endgame and now Far From Home, we may not know exactly what’s coming next but we have some intriguing possibilities.

Without spoiling anything, Far From Home’s post credits gave us some crumbs to follow on what Marvel may be setting up as there next big event. Of course they might do something completely different but Feige has done enough interviews where he hints at what future plans may be.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Feige was asked how long it took to develop each phase in the MCU. He responded, “About five years. There’s always changes to it, we always alter a little bit from the course, but setting a five-year path has been very beneficial to us since the beginning.

We’ve been working on [Phase 4] for the last four years. As we’ve been producing these films, we’ve been developing and planning the next group of films and looking to continue to surprise [fans] and bring characters to the screen that are very different from any characters before and that people, unless they’re really hard-core comic fans, may not have heard of.”

Phase 4 has already been in the planning stages so it makes sense that some hints at its direction would be coming out. We have a calendar full of dates and a list of upcoming Marvel projects that we can guess at but you can make a safe bet that the Avengers will be front and center in Phase 4.

While they said they wouldn’t be pulling the trigger on the X-Men and Fantastic Four just yet, it’s safe to assume that they’ll figure into Phase 5. Given that Feige says they take about 5 years to plan it out, it makes sense that they wouldn’t disrupt what they already have on the books.

What would you like to see in Phase 4?