Another day, another snippet of likely baseless speculation about the inevitable sequel to Joss Whedon’s blockbuster The Avengers. As usual we recommend that you down half a shaker of salt before putting too much stock in what we’re about to relay.
With that disclaimer out of the way, we’ve got great news: Apparently The Avengers 2 is going to hit theaters on May 1, 2015! At least, that’s the claim made by MTV. Have a look:
In speaking with several industry insiders, all signs lead us to believe that May 1, 2015 is the magic date for when we’ll see “Avengers 2.”
Why May 1, 2015? What, you thought that a company known primarily for its inability to play music videos (despite the word “music” being right there in its acronym) would drop that heavy dose of speculation without ample supporting information? For shame! MTV offers the following justification for its seemingly plucked-from-the-ether claim:
First off, there is Marvel’s jam-packed sequel slate to consider. Several of our favorite Avengers won’t be available to assemble until after they finish filming their own standalone films and Marvel already has releases planned for those titles through 2014. Robert Downey Jr. is booked for “Iron Man 3,” Chris Evans for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” and Chris Hemsworth for “Thor: The Dark World”, not to mention Samuel L. Jackson’s involvement in all three given his fancy nine-picture deal and the cameo potential for Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner as Jackson’s fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.
Likewise, MTV believes that the recent announcement of Joss Whedon officially signing a deal to write and direct the sequel implies that the film is further ahead in development than any of us might suspect. It highlights a quote from an anonymous, supposedly insider source for corroboration. “Marvel has a very set agenda of what they want to do, they are already kind of ahead of the game [on the sequel] because they’ve got the guy that did it before doing it again and something tells me Joss already has the template [for the film],” this mystery person states. “In terms of the time frame, I think that it is well in the works. … It looks like the release date might be May 1, 2015, but that can change depending on people’s schedules. The beauty of The Avengers is that you’ve got so many people in this that even during the shoot if someone has to do another film they can just focus on [other characters].”
Okay, granted, MTV’s argument makes a lot of sense. The Avengers 2 could very well appear in theaters on May 1, 2015 for all of the above reasons. That said, we’ve got a sneaking suspicion that MTV and/or its inside source simply did the math on which movies Marvel plans to release over the next few years, cross-referenced that with the story points the studio needs to establish as canon before launching a second Avengers film and came up with that May 1, 2015 release date. Again, it makes sense to us, but we don’t recommend you rush out and pre-order tickets from Fandango just yet.
Then again, if MTV is correct, we will humbly offer its entire staff high-fives for being way ahead of the game with their sleuthing and/or educated guesswork. Actually, scratch that. We’re all in our 20s and 30s and have no idea who is actually on MTV anymore. We’ll probably send a nice card to Matt Pinfield, but anything beyond that seems like an exhausting amount of work.
