Avengers: Secret Wars Reportedly Delayed Again, With Filming Now Pushed to November

Avengers: Secret Wars has reportedly been delayed again and won't start filming until November, according to industry insider Daniel RPK. Even if production starts on time under this latest update, it will still give Marvel far less time to make Secret Wars than it had for Avengers: Doomsday.

Just months ago we got a very similar update. Apparently the originally scheduled Avengers: Doomsday pickup shots and reshoots had run over a bit, which pushed the start of Avengers: Secret Wars back by a month, to September. There was hardly any sense of urgency or panic around that first delay. Now we're into October, and this time I think you can hit the panic button. Let's all be fair and reasonable about the timetable for making these movies: "It simply takes more than a year."

Daniel RPK reports Secret Wars filming has slipped to November

This latest update comes from industry insider Daniel RPK, who posts on Twitter under RPK News. He has been one of the best and most trusted sources in the Marvel scoop game for over a decade. No scooper gets everything right, but this is exactly the kind of update he has insider knowledge on.

According to Daniel RPK, Avengers: Secret Wars has been delayed again and now won't start filming until November. That follows the earlier slip from the original start date into September, which itself came about because the Doomsday pickups and reshoots ran long.

Secret Wars would get seven fewer months than Avengers: Doomsday

For some comparison, I asked myself the same question many of you probably are: when did they start on Doomsday? Marvel officially started on Avengers: Doomsday in April of 2025 for a December 2026 release date. Starting Secret Wars in November would essentially give them seven fewer months to finish it.

That window still has to allow for all the pickup shots and reshoots we know they'll do, because they're rewriting the script, plus all of the post production VFX work they're currently doing and trying to finish for Doomsday. "Seven less months. That is a lot of time." When the first delay came, the conjecture wasn't as panicked or concerned, and that was probably for good reason. Now it starts to seem like it may be impossible for them to hit that release date.

Why Avengers: Doomsday post production is stretching everyone thin

The reasons this may be happening are pretty clear to see. Avengers: Doomsday is deep in post production, and the Russo brothers, who would normally be on set directing Avengers: Secret Wars, are probably needed in post production just as much as in the new production. That means everyone involved with both movies, all the way up to the producers, is spread thin.

It's pretty much only the actors who have done their job, and in some cases they've spent the last couple of months doing reshoots rather than working on Secret Wars. Their attention is needed to finish Doomsday, and that won't be the case once it's done. Still, seven fewer months to shoot a movie as big as Secret Wars should be, with the stakes it should have, just seems like almost an impossible task.

Could Secret Wars move to the May 2028 X-Men date?

That's why, if you read the immediate comments almost anywhere this has been posted online, a lot of people are wondering out loud whether Marvel will just push it back to May of 2028, where the X-Men reboot is slated right now. There was a time when I would have said that's impossible, that there's no way they would move a huge Avengers film off its release date.

Then the last five years came and went for Marvel Studios. Not only did they announce projects and end up retitling them and moving them years off, they also announced projects they never even made. To me, that's really the benchmark of basically saying they didn't know what they were doing and planned way too far ahead.

Marvel has its dates in 2028 and 2029 locked, and just weeks ago we covered that they added a third mystery date to 2029. That struck me as a little odd, because Marvel had said it wasn't going to do three movies a year, and yet 2028 and 2029 have six dates between them. Could they have added that date because they know they may be pushing movies back? I don't have any insider knowledge of that. This is purely conjecture, but it might make sense.

Moving a huge date like this is usually a really big deal for Marvel Studios, but with those dates already locked on the calendar, Hollywood plans around them. So if they have to slide Secret Wars back into the May 2028 date, it will not be a problem. They can absolutely do that. It will be a problem for their bottom line in 2027, when Marvel Studios will have no releases. But Secret Wars is too important, and if they don't have the time to shoot the film, they'll do it. They've done it multiple times throughout the Multiverse Saga with these exact films. What's one more delay in order to nail it?

My take: Marvel will fight to keep Secret Wars in December 2027

If they are going to do this, the earlier they announce it, the better and the more planned it seems. But they won't do that before Avengers: Doomsday. I would expect any announcement right after it, when everyone's feeling great about Doomsday and we'll give them a pass. That would likely be sometime early next year, after the first couple of months of filming through the holiday season show what's really going on.

My honest take, though, is that they will not delay Secret Wars from December 2027 unless they absolutely have to. They will do everything in their power, won't announce any delays, and will go forward at all costs to try to hit that deadline. Doomsday will be done, so they won't be splitting their attention, and they've probably been working on the Secret Wars plot and script while building Doomsday. One informs the other, and if they've come to a great place in Doomsday, it has probably meant they finished the story for Secret Wars as well. A lot of the growing pains on Doomsday won't be there, or shouldn't be there, for Secret Wars.

That's in a perfect world. Given Kevin Feige's latest descriptions of how they're making these movies, going in without a finished script, letting the characters improvise and changing the movies on the fly is part of their plussing system. And "there are things you simply cannot speed up if the movies take a drastic change." Even if a single scene changes drastically, that's VFX work in post.

So say they start in November, wrap principal photography in March, then come back for pickups and reshoots in the fall like they are now. I think they're going to go for the December 2027 date at all costs. But if the movie isn't ready, if the reshoots run longer or the VFX simply cannot be done, Marvel Studios is not going to rush Secret Wars out either. After the pandemic, the actor strike, and everything else in the Multiverse Saga, from changing the villain to changing writers and directors, who's to say moving it three or four months off December to April or May wouldn't be the right move? It would even land on the 20th anniversary of Marvel Studios and Iron Man, though that's not a silver lining for moving an Avengers movie, and it doesn't make up for a zero bottom line for Marvel Studios in 2027, something the executives who worry about the money surely don't want to see. Then again, they may be locked in, know exactly what they need to do, have minimal reshoots, and already have a head start on VFX from the work done for Doomsday.

A November start that may just pause for the holidays

It's also a shocker to me that they're going to start in November. As part of a lot of contracts, Hollywood, and really the whole entertainment industry, goes dead for a couple of weeks between Christmas and New Year's. I would be surprised if they pick up in November and don't stop through the holiday season, because a lot of these big actors won't be working during those weeks.

So it seems like they would start up in November only to pause again and then restart in January. Why not just wait? They're under the gun on this for sure, and hopefully they can get it done. If they had to, I'd hope we'd all prefer them to get the movie right rather than rush it out. As I've often said, you can't have it both ways, and we've seen rushed releases too many times in Hollywood. It always makes for a worse release. Here's looking at you, Warner Brothers.

Would you rather Marvel delay Avengers: Secret Wars to get it right, or push hard to hit December 2027?