Recent developments point to a significant shift for Marvel Studios, as actor Jonathan Majors, who portrayed the notorious Kang the Conqueror in the series Loki and the film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, has been let go. This major personnel change has led Marvel to recalibrate the movie’s focus and rename it. When the movie hits the silver screen in the next couple of years, it won’t be known as Avengers: The Kang Dynasty—instead, you can temporarily dub it Avengers 5.
This alteration marks a significant pivot from the studio’s longstanding practice of building sprawling narrative arcs across their cinematic and television properties over many years. The saga of Thanos, for example, was first hinted at in 2012’s The Avengers and didn’t reach its apex until Avengers: Infinity War in 2018.
Kang, a time-hopping despot from the future, who is regarded as one of the Avengers’ outstanding adversaries in the comics, was set to be at the center of a major Marvel saga. With his role in both Loki and Quantumania, Majors’ Kang was expected to take a leading role in his own feature film—The Kang Dynasty—which would have been the precursor to another sequel, Avengers: Secret Wars.
Following Majors’ legal troubles last year, Marvel’s plan has undergone considerable revisions. Reports from The Hollywood Reporter suggest that the studio is rewriting these movies to either downsize or entirely remove the character from the narrative.
The future installment of the Avengers series, set to premiere in 2026, originally bore the title Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. However, this title will be changed to omit the titular character, and sources indicate that even prior to Majors’ legal issues, there was an inclination to reduce Kang’s role due to the lackluster performance of Quantumania, which earned $476 million.
Looking back, these shifts could eventually be perceived as a fortunate deviation. Quantumania fell short of impressing audiences, and there wasn’t a widespread clamor to see Majors’ Kang spearhead another duo of blockbuster hits. This change enables Marvel to explore fresh and potentially more compelling creative directions, spotlighting properties like The Fantastic Four and its stellar lineup comprising Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.
Avengers 5—whatever its final title may be—is currently set for a theatrical release on May 1, 2026. At the moment, the only Marvel movie slated for a 2024 release is Deadpool & Wolverine, which will arrive in cinemas at the end of July.
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