Marvel Finally Changed Its Sunday Promo, and the New Fantastic Four Lines May Come From Avengers: Doomsday

Marvel Studios finally changed the short promo reel it had run on social media every Sunday at 7 p.m. since before Fantastic Four was released. The new version adds two lines that I could not find anywhere in Fantastic Four, which made me think they may be the first official dialogue from Avengers: Doomsday outside of the preview trailers.

The change landed the night before tickets for Avengers: Doomsday were due to go on sale at 9 a.m. Eastern, and with the film's marketing push looking close.

Marvel's Sunday reel changed for the first time in over a year

If you had not been keeping up with Marvel Studios on social media, the studio had been posting the exact same short promo reel at 7 p.m. every Sunday since before Fantastic Four dropped. That night, after over a year, it finally changed. The new clip opens with the line: "We make a point to do family dinner every week. Sunday at 7:00 on the dot, no matter what."

Then the transmission is interrupted. You can hear very clearly Vanessa Kirby's voice ask, "How long do we have?" and Pedro Pascal's voice answer, "Not long."

I could not find the new Kirby and Pascal lines in Fantastic Four

This piece took me a while to put together, because I went back through Fantastic Four on Disney Plus and tried to scrub through all the moments where this dialogue might have come from. I assumed it must just be repurposed dialogue from that film. I could not find these lines, which made me think this may be the first official dialogue we were hearing from Doomsday outside of the preview trailers.

I did not want to say that with 100% certainty. I did not have time to sit down with Fantastic Four again in full that night and planned to do it the next day, because my first instinct really was that they must have just grabbed those lines from there and that it was not from Avengers: Doomsday at all.

But if it is from Doomsday, it is very clear what they are talking about: an impending incursion. In my reading, that is Sue Storm asking how long they have until their worlds collide, and him answering, "Not long."

The timing pointed at Doomsday tickets, with no trailer yet

This went live the night before tickets went on sale for Avengers: Doomsday, so I saw a double meaning in it. How long do we have? Not long, until tickets go on sale, but also a way of drumming up hype in the absence of what should have been the first trailer, released to coincide with tickets.

Over that weekend I saw a lot of discourse on social media, with many people rightly pointing out that it was a little odd to ask fans to buy tickets to Avengers: Doomsday when the first trailer had not even dropped. There was some discussion earlier that weekend that Marvel might go ahead and release the trailer alongside the ticket sales.

My view was that there was no need to stack things. With San Diego Comic-Con that Saturday, it seemed very clear to me that Marvel would save the trailer for behind closed doors, give everybody there an exclusive, and then put it online afterwards.

Marvel's first public marketing since December, timed around Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Still, this was the very first official bit of marketing Marvel Studios had done publicly, on any of its accounts and in any way, since the preview trailers dropped six months earlier in December. I thought it might hint that the studio was kicking into full gear, timing this first push to coincide with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which was two weeks from hitting theaters at the time.

Whatever that first trailer turned out to be, and whenever it was put online, my hope was for that Saturday, and I expected it to be attached to Spider-Man: Brand New Day the following weekend. There was always some synchronicity in the way Marvel was timing all of this, with San Diego Comic-Con falling the week right before Spider-Man reached theaters.

I did not expect Marvel to cover Spider-Man: Brand New Day at its Comic-Con presentation. My expectation was a lot of new MCU material, with the focus primarily on Doomsday.

The Avengers: Doomsday synopsis was not new

Some other news going around that day concerned the official synopsis for Avengers: Doomsday. It reads: "Universes collide and the multiverse saga begins its final chapter in Marvel Studios' Avengers: Doomsday. Beloved heroes from three distinct universes will be set on a deadly collision course and ultimately face an existential threat unlike anything they've ever encountered. This epic film will lay the foundation for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe."

I was not sure why that prompted a lot of people to report it as breaking news. We had had that official synopsis for at least a month. I remember people reporting on it in June, and I think I covered something very close to it around two months earlier. On top of that, The Hollywood Reporter had revealed the film's runtime the weekend before. In my view, we had pretty much gotten as much about the film as possible without a trailer before tickets went on sale.

Marvel was more worried about Doomsday's reception than its box office

As I said earlier that day, and as I think is very clearly the case, Marvel Studios was not worried about the box office for Avengers: Doomsday. Tracking for the film had already been insane, putting it at the biggest of the year. What Marvel was more worried about, in my view, was sticking the landing: making sure Doomsday is received by both fans and critics in a way that lets the studio build hype for Avengers: Secret Wars.

If Doomsday happens to be a major misfire, especially with fans, I said the following year is going to feel bad, ultra bad, as Marvel tries to build excitement for Avengers: Secret Wars without the springboard of Doomsday.

Tracking is only tracking, though. We have seen it call for movies to do really well and then watched them underperform, and we have seen the reverse, where something was supposed to flop and word of mouth saved it weeks in. Most of the time it is pretty close to spot on. With the first day and first week of ticket sales due in, I expected some empirical data and a true box office tracking number, and a clearer sense of whether Marvel had any real need to worry.

Were the Kirby and Pascal lines really the first official dialogue from Avengers: Doomsday, or had they come from Fantastic Four all along?