No Thanos In Age Of Ultron (Probably), Avengers 3 In 2018?

Don’t expect to see Thanos show up in Avengers: Age of Ultron. And don’t look for another Comic-Con that features the assembled Avengers cast until 2017, because a third team movie probably isn’t on the cards until 2018.

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That’s the word from Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios and one of the chief architects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In a recent interview with Comic Book Resources and a small group of other journalists at Comic-Con International, he said that while Age of Ultron is still in production, moviegoers shouldn’t be looking for Thanos to show up next May.

"That’s the idea. He’s not a part of Avengers 2."

Of course, the thinking from many fans is that Thanos would be the featured villain in a third Avengers movie, bringing whatever plans he’s had running throughout Marvel’s super hero films to an undoubtedly evil conclusion. And that still might be the case, but if it is, Fiege isn’t expecting that showdown to occur until 2018.

"Well, we haven’t really talked about what we’d see “Avengers 3.” I presume we’d like to stick to three years between Avengers movies like we did [between the first and second]. So it will probably be three years between “Avengers 2” and “Avengers 3.”"

Fiege specifically shot down the idea that the May 4, 2018 release date that was added to the Marvel Studios schedule right before SDCC was done with Avengers 3 in mind, saying it had more to do with what other studios were doing that shuffled things around and opened up certain weekends. Still, since the first Avengers flick opened around that time in May 2012 and Age of Ultron is set for the same weekend next year, fans are going to go beyond speculating to assuming we’ll be seeing Avengers 3 in that spot.

The entire interview is worth reading for more of Feige’s thoughts on a wide variety of topics, including how Doctor Strange’s powers might be explained in the context of the MCU, what famous Hank Pym story we won’t be seeing on the big screen and how he sees the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise as a potential springboard for even more characters.