Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is no more

A new report claims that with the recent firing of Jonathan Majors, the actor who had played the villainous Kang the Conqueror in Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Marvel has quietly refocused the film — and changed its title. When it opens in theaters in a few years it will no longer be Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. At this point, you might as well just refer to it as Avengers 5.

This is a massive change of direction for Marvel, a studio whose whole thing is the epic storylines they weave between movies and shows for years at a time. They teased Thanos at the very end of The Avengers in 2012, and didn’t pay him off fully until Avengers: Infinity War in 2018.

Marvel had similar plans in mind for Majors and Kang, a time-traveling warlord from the future who has long been one of the comic book Avengers’ most dangerous foes. After his introduction in Loki and Quantumania, Kang would have gotten his own headline film — The Kang Dynasty — which would have also led into a sequel: Avengers: Secret Wars. 

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Majors’ conviction last year completely changed those plans. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel is now “rewriting those movies, which will now either minimize the character or excise him entirely.”

They added...

The first of the new Avengers movies, due out in 2026, was initially titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty but will be getting a new title to remove the character’s name, though sources say that even before Majors’ conviction, the studio was making moves to minimize the character after Quantumania underperformed, grossing $476 million.

In hindsight, it’s possible we could look back on all of these changes as a blessing in disguise. Quantumania wasn’t great, and it certainly didn’t make anyone think that Majors’ Kang was the guy they wanted to follow through at least two more blockbusters. This reset gives them the chance to go in a different and potentially better direction, and to refocus on films like The Fantastic Four, with that great cast of Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

Avengers 5 — whatever it’s finally called — is currently scheduled to open in theaters on May 1, 2026. The only film Marvel currently has on its 2024 release calendar is Deadpool & Wolverine, which is due in theaters at the end of July.

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