In an announcement that carries with it huge implications for the future of the Marvel Universe, Variety laid out new details for Captain America 3, most notably revealing that the film would be based off Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s comic mini-series Civil War. The possible plot would inevitably find Robert Downey Jr. reprising his role as Iron Man, but within the Civil War storyline, this means that movie fans will have to get used to the idea of Tony Stark: villain.
The seven-comic-long limited series, written by Mark Millar and penciled by Steve McNiven, covers a major conflict between two sides of the superhero community in response to the Superhero Registration Act, which forces those with superhuman powers to reveal their identities and serve in a quasi-police force for the US Government. Some, like Iron Man, support the Act. Others, like Captain America, fight against it. Hence: “Civil War.”
The new film will be written and directed by the same team as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but the repercussions of its release will ripple across the expansive (and expensive) Marvel movie franchise. According to Variety, there are currently eleven Marvel film releases scheduled over the next seven years (Guardians of the Galaxy being the latest, and Ant-Man coming up next, to be released summer 2015).
So stand by until Captain America 3’s release in the summer of 2016, and perhaps expect to be seeing Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., and the rest of the Avengers gang rolling with the punches until much further notice.
