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In the latest edition of his newsletter, industry insider Jeff Sneider fielded a reader question about the possibility of Secret Wars becoming a two-parter. “No. As of right now, Marvel is not planning to split Avengers: Secret Wars into two films,” he wrote. “That may have been mentioned by someone, somewhere along the chain of power, but it’s not being seriously discussed in Burbank due to the difficulty of scheduling the enormous cast — not to mention the prospect of having to pay Robert Downey Jr.’s even more enormous salary again. This is for the best, as I feel that such a move would bite them in the ass with audiences, who would smell the corporate greed from a mile away.”
Splitting Avengers: Secret Wars Into Two Movies Would Be a Bad Decision
At first glance, it’s somewhat understandable why splitting Secret Wars into two might have been on the table at one point. It would give the filmmakers extra real estate to work with, giving them additional breathing room to properly flesh out character dynamics and storylines. Even if Doomsday and Secret Wars sport protracted run times (which seems like a reasonable assumption), there’s only so much screen time to go around, and odds are, some characters will draw the short straw (especially since so much of Doomsday will have to be dedicated to building up Downey’s Doctor Doom). That said, going this route could prove to be problematic for a variety of reasons.
As Sneider alludes to, a third new Avengers movie would be a logistical nightmare for Marvel Studios. Anyone who’s been following the development of Doomsday knows these movies are not easy to put together. With so many moving parts, figuring out scheduling becomes a headache; some members of the Doomsday cast weren’t even sure who they were acting with. Alan Cumming shared that he did “the entire film in isolation” and his scenes involved “lots of green screen” and face replacement. There’s also the fact that Avengers movies aren’t cheap, so Disney would have to sign a very large check for the production budget. After making such a hefty investment in Doomsday and Secret Wars (which are ending the most mixed era of MCU history), the studio would find that a bitter pill to swallow amidst a changing box office landscape.
