Published Aug 24, 2026, 11:55 AM EDT
Zoë Miskelly is an editor and second in command for Screen Rant's Movies team, having covered the entertainment industry for almost 10 years now. Zoë's love of superheroes and all things Marvel & DC started out in childhood, and has blossomed into a career getting to talk about some of the biggest and best movies and shows of all time, having previously focused on comics while working at WhatCulture.
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The MCU is set to repeat the move that was one of its biggest recent mistakes in history - though it's teed up to do so in a way that can hopefully have some far superior results, based on the trajectory of the franchise at this point in time. There's much to be excited about when it comes to the MCU timeline and its future, and not just because we have two Avengers movies looming ever-closer on the horizon.
Though some of the post-Avengers: Endgame era has been a complex time wherein the MCU has been in some ways a victim of its own staggering success, the franchise does appear to have learned lessons at every step along the way, as is perhaps most clear in the lineup of movies we have set to hit the big screen in the years to come.
This appears particularly true for the MCU's 2028 lineup, which ironically will break a 3-year-long trend for the franchise by mirroring an aspect of 2025 despite the prior year's mixed results. However, it's worth noting that 2028's movie roster looks as though it will do so in a way that ensures some very different results for the MCU and its overall reception, which can serve as proof it was worth delving into the same territory once more.
2028 Is Set To Repeat 2025's Release Strategy
In the past few years, the MCU's yearly number of releases have varied massively - a move that's partly the result of the pandemic altering plans and delaying some installments, but that's also down to some of the more busy years for Marvel's on-screen empire having more mixed results.
2025 is a prime example of this, as the year involved three movies - that of Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps - alongside two MCU TV shows in the form of Daredevil: Born Again and Ironheart. While some of these releases were well received, the year did mark an overall dip in results for the franchise overall, having released some of the MCU's lowest-grossing movies of all time in the franchise's almost two-decade-long history.
This result can be attributed to a fair few factors, but one of the most pressing is that this number of films combined unfavorably with the not uncommon belief that audiences would need to watch or rewatch a fair chunk of what came before to understand things properly - which isn't an entirely unfair concern, and is one that's still at least partially true even for The Fantastic Four: The First Steps, since it's best watched with an understanding of what the MCU multiverse is and how it works.
2028 is set to be the first year to delve into the same numerical territory film-wise since, as the year is also confirmed to have three movies itself, with those being X-Men, Ghost Rider, and Black Panther 3.
As it stands, though, this trio appears to be built on more solid ground in a sense, as they'll come at a point where interest in what the next era for the MCU after Avengers: Secret Wars and the end of the Multiverse Saga is rampant, and are each movies audiences have been clamoring for in no minor way over the years, meaning the MCU can repeat the movie number of 2025 to hopefully different effect.
2028's Release Roster Means The Year Can Make Three Movies Work
Though both X-Men and Ghost Rider have had some more tumultuous moments in their film past, the 2028 MCU movies appear finely tuned to eke out their optimal results financially and critically based on the current landscape for superhero movies, broadly speaking.
By 2028, it will have been 12 years since our last live-action movie with the X-Men name in the titular - through X-Men: Apocalypse - which is plenty of time for the major Marvel hero team to have regained interest with audiences, especially since there's a natural extra intrigue level for the film in terms of how it will choose to explain the absence of the team in the franchise up until now, and how it will slot the group into its wider lore.
Much the same is true for the upcoming Ghost Rider movie, since Ryan Gosling being cast in the lead role has made a popular fancasting dream reality, and brought one of the biggest actors of today into the MCU right after his majorly successful performance in Project Hail Mary.
With this roster being capped off by Black Panther 3 - a major film by itself, particularly given the staggering successes of the first two movies commercially and critically - it's easy to see how 2028 can mirror 2025's approach to releasing MCU movies while having a very different end result, so long as things land right.
Movie(s) Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, Deadpool & Wolverine, Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Avengers: Doomsday, Werewolf by Night, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, The Punisher: One Last Kill
TV Show(s) Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Inhumans, WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If...?, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Secret Invasion, Agatha All Along, Ironheart, Daredevil: Born Again, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Wonder Man, Echo, Marvel Zombies, Eyes of Wakanda
First Film Iron Man
First TV Show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Cast Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Edward Norton, Paul Rudd, Tom Holland, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Brie Larson, Chadwick Boseman, Sebastian Stan, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Pom Klementieff, Josh Brolin, Karen Gillan, Clark Gregg, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Simu Liu, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Angelina Jolie, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, Barry Keoghan, Gemma Chan, Ma Dong-seok, Brian Tyree Henry, Kumail Nanjiani, Lauren Ridloff, Lia McHugh, Jonathan Majors
Director Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon, Shane Black, Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, James Gunn, Peyton Reed, Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a long-running multimedia franchise drawn from the heroes, villains, and narratives of Marvel Comics. The MCU formally began with 2008's Iron Man, with other successes forming the basis for the contemporary path from comic page to screen, including over 30 films and 20 TV shows.
English (US) ·