Two Upcoming Marvel Movies Swap Release Dates

Bad news: Marvel has reshuffled their Phase Four movie lineup yet again.

Good news: While one movie is coming out later than expected, another is coming out sooner than expected. So it’s sort of a wash.

Basically, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels — the sequel to Captain Marvel that also features the title character from the upcoming Ms. Marvel TV show — are flipping their release dates. Previously, The Marvels was supposed to open in theaters on February 17, 2023 while Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania would follow on July 28, 2023. In the words of Willy Wonka you can now strike that, reverse it: Quantumania will debut in February and The Marvels will arrive in July.

According to Deadline, both movies “are moving along very nicely … but the Ant-Man sequel is further along in the production process, and it was a simple decision by the studio to swap the release dates.”

With that change implemented, Marvel’s full upcoming release calendar looks like this:

Interestingly, there is a Marvel coming out between the two films — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — that Marvel chose not to move. That could mean Quantumania is moving along even faster than Guardians, or it could mean Guardians is perceived as the film with the greater box-office potential, and so keeping it in its prime start of summer release date made sense.a

Logistically, moving Quantumania up also means that the film will introduce the next major Marvel villain, Kang the Conqueror (played by Jonathan Majors), a bit earlier. The character, who was teased on last year’s Loki, will appear in Quantumania and will almost certainly become the Thanos-level threat in a whole bunch of Marvel movies after that. So that movie coming out a little earlier than anticipated is interesting for that reason as well.

The next MCU movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, opens in theaters on May 6.