Marvel Studios has dropped The Inhumans from its Phase Three release schedule.
The film, which was expected to focus on a group of people with superpowers granted them by alien DNA, was originally due to be released on 12 July 2019, but as other properties have been squeezed into the studio’s increasingly busy slate, it seems as though this project has slipped through the cracks.
Kevin Feige, the man ultimately in charge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, insisted that the film had not been cancelled, so much as put on the backburner.
“It’ll definitely happen; I think it’s a great story, with a great family of characters,” he told The New York Daily News. “When that is, in Phase Three or in Phase Four, I’m not sure yet.”
PressThe release date was announced several years ago, both before Marvel Studios reacquired from Sony the rights to Spider-man, and before last year’s Ant Man, starring Paul Rudd, proved to be such a surprise hit. The studio has now had to make time both for the new Spider-man movie, subtitled Homecoming, and for Ant Man and The Wasp. All of this means that the Inhumans, who are rather less recognisable than their replacements, have had to be bumped.
This is very definitely a setback for the project, especially as Vin Diesel, who already voices Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy was at one point in the frame to play Blackbolt, a character with a very loud voice.
Inhuman characters have already made appearances on Marvel’s main TV show, Agents of SHIELD, and it was expected that there would be some cast crossover between the series and the film. However, now Marvel’s film arm and TV arm are more separate entities, this is being seen as another impediment to the production.
Marvel’s next film, Captain America: Civil War, is out this week, on 29 April, and a week later in the US.