Kevin Feige has suggested that the name of the currently untitled Avengers 4 isn't as big a deal as the secrecy suggests. When Marvel announced their Phase 3 slate in 2014, it was set to culminate with the two-part Avengers: Infinity War event, with Part 1 in 2018 and Part 2 a year later in 2019. There have been several changes to the line-up since then (the addition of Spider-Man: Homecoming after the deal with Sony and removal of Inhumans) but by far the most mysterious was the removal of the duology nomenclature: Avengers 3 alone is now Infinity War, with the fourth currently untitled.
This has naturally led to speculation over what Avengers 4 will wind up being called, and further what the continued secrecy around it means. Feige said back in April that the project was currently untitled because it was a spoiler for Infinity War, although that may not be the full story.
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Screen Rant recently sat down with Feige at the Thor: Ragnarok junket and, after he alluded to the film, asked about the real nature of the title, to which the producer revealed that the secrecy was more around keeping focus on Infinity War than it was protecting spoilers:
Screen Rant: You kind of brought up the Avengers coming out in 2019. Avengers 4 still doesn’t have a title. Is title still spoiler-ish? Do we have to get through Infinity War to get that title?
Kevin Feige: Yeah, I think some of that has been blown out of proportion. We do want the focus to be on Infinity War for now.
Focus is an important factor for Marvel at the moment. They've recently upped their output to three movies a year, which means a lot of productions in all manner of development at once. As a result, people are always talking about something related to the MCU, but it's trickier for Feige to make sure it's what he wants (this is likely why the Infinity War trailer situation is so delicate). At the moment, Avengers 4 is shooting, which risks the hype machine bypassing Infinity War to the end of the MCU as we know it. Keeping the title away stops it feeling as tangible and all eyes on Avengers 3 (and Thor and Black Panther before it)
It may still be that there is also a spoiler element - he didn't clarify when it was going to be revealed - but Feige seems keen to point out that isn't the driving reason. Indeed, if you go back to the original quote about the title being a spoiler, it was an affirmative response to an interviewer's question and thus wildly open to interpretation.
Earlier this year Zoe Saldana seemed to hint it was known as Infinity Gauntlet and, while that has since been disproved, it's probably not too far off. Despite losing the Part 1 moniker, Avengers 4 is still being shot back-to-back with Infinity War and shares many of the cast (including, crucially, main villain Thanos), so will still be a continuation of that story rather than an isolated adventure such as Secret Invasion.
