The superhero movie may be the dominant genre in theaters today. In addition to the MCU, the DC series, the Fox Marvel universe and the Sony Marvel Spider-verse, we've had original one-offs or mini-franchises like Pixar's The Incredibles (2004) and its 2018 sequel; Hellboy (2004) and its sequel, Hellboy: The Golden Army (2008); plus superhero satires and deconstructions like Unbreakable (2000) and its Split/Glass sequels, Hancock (2008), Watchmen (2009) and Kick-Ass (2010). Other comic book publishers continue to attempt their own film franchises, as Valiant Comics did in 2020 with Bloodshot.
After retooling the Marvel mutants with X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and Logan (2017), as well as the raunchy R-rated hijinks of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool (2016), Fox's Marvel machine ran out of gas on the turgid X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and Dark Phoenix (2019). But now that Disney owns Fox, look for the X-Men and Fantastic Four to be integrated into the MCU.
Meanwhile, with the success of Spider-Man spinoff Venom (2018) and the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Sony plans to build its own universe around Spidey's rogues gallery with movies like Morbius and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. A third Sony/MCU Spider-Man movie is on the way as well, and we're sure to see the wallcrawler in at least one more MCU team-up.
As for the MCU itself, the launch of its next phase — which will include shows on Disney+ like WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — was put on hold by the coronavirus. But movies like Black Widow, Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings are all on tap, along with a rebooted Blade. Both DC and Marvel plan to introduce the "multi-verse" to their franchises, so watch for even more interesting crossovers in the days ahead. Clearly, the history of the superhero movie is still being written.
