No movie, in the entire history of Marvel Cinematic Universe films past, present, and future, has given off more “Completely Cursed” vibes than Mahershala Ali’s . Formally announced nearly ago at this point—with Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige bringing Marvel TV alum Ali out at Comic-Con 2019 as proof of the studio’s commitment—the filming process has produced exactly one line of dialogue in the half-decade since, an off-screen line from Ali that arrived just before the so-far blatantly false promise “The will return” in the mid-credits sequence of . Now, that has suffered yet another setback in its long, incredibly arduous trek to the screen, with news breaking today, not long before filming was supposedly expected to begin, that director Yann Demange had departed the project.
And while the split is being reported as amicable—with Demange having apparently quietly stepped away from the project some time ago—it still leaves with no director and a November 2025 release date just a year-and-a-half away. It doesn’t help that Demange is the second director to have departed the film, after Bassam Tariq —or that the movie has missed multiple reported “We’re starting filming soon, we swear!” dates due to things like . The reporting frames the whole thing as Marvel being insanely careful not to produce another flop after a disappointing couple of years, but we can’t help but think that the appeal of a movie is pretty goddamn simple: Get the coolest guy y.