Marvel has confirmed that a Fantastic Four movie is in development, but when will it release? Ever since the announcement of Disney's purchase of Fox, MCU fans have been anticipating the arrival of Marvel's First Family, and at SDCC 2019, Kevin Feige made it official: although it's not part of the confirmed MCU Phase 4, a Fantastic Four movie is coming.
Little is known about how Marvel will take on Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing likely due to Fantastic Four being in the early days of development (Marvel couldn't make any moves on Fox properties until the purchase was fully completed). It's been rumored that Ant-Man's Peyton Reed, who was once in the running to direct what became Tim Story's 2005 version, is keen to take on the movie, and with no Pym properties on the horizon, that's not out of the question. In-universe, the only real hint has been the sale of Avengers Tower in Spider-Man: Homecoming, with it speculated this is to become the Baxter Building (a popular alternative is Oscorp).
We predict that Marvel's Fantastic Four movie will release in 2023. Assuming the studio's conventional release pattern of three movies in Feb/March, May and July or November, we'd expect it to take a July slot. Also out in that year, we expect Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and another, unknown film.
The reasoning for this is rather simple. We know Fantastic Four isn't coming in 2020 or 2021 as Marvel's SDCC 2019 announcement covered all ten movies and TV series coming in those years (and there's no way a film could be turned around that quickly). Additionally, it's well evidenced that Marvel likes to have one new property in each calendar year: Doctor Strange in 2016; Spider-Man in 2017, Black Panther in 2018, Captain Marvel in 2019, Eternals in 2020, Shang-Chi in 2021. Given that Mahershala Ali has already been cast as Blade, that all but certainly is the 2022 addition (along with by-that-point overdue sequels Black Panther 2 and Captain Marvel 2). With Fantastic Four namechecked, it's likely coming next - so 2023.
This is very much an earliest possible scenario. It's entirely possible that another, as yet unconfirmed new hero - Nova, perhaps - will take the 2023 slot, pushing Reed Richards and co. further back a year. But, going off what Kevin Feige teased at the end of the SDCC presentation, this is most likely.
The knock-on effect of this logic is that the X-Men's MCU debut quite possibly won't be until 2024 or later. Considering that, after the mature Logan, raunchy Deadpool and utterly despondent Dark Phoenix, the mutants are going to be a tough property to broach - some of Fox's films are unreachable quality-wise in the MCU, others have soured general audiences on the property - maybe that's no bad thing. Fantastic Four, Marvel's First Family, should be first, after all.
