Disney’s dramatic delay to Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, announced last night, means fans will wait longer to see Earth’s mightiest heroes assemble again on screen.
Avengers: Doomsday will now arrive seven months’ later, on December 18, 2026. Secret Wars, meanwhile, will arrive a year after that, on December 17, 2027. But in among all this, fans are also talking about Spider-Man.
Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is also set to return next year, in the highly-anticipated Spider-Man: Brand New Day on 31 July, 2026
. This movie will pick up Peter’s story following the events of No Way Home, where his identity was erased from the world’s memory.
Before Disney’s delay, Spider-Man: Brand New Day would have arrived after Avengers: Doomsday, as a Tom Holland-flavoured MCU sandwich filling between Doomsday and Secret Wars. There had been reports that Disney and Sony had been exploring another story filled with multiversal shenanigans befitting of the MCU’s current era.
Now, Spider-Man: Brand New Day — which is still yet to begin filming — will arrive ahead of either Avengers movie, something fans hope gives the next Spidey story some breathing room, and potentially a more grounded narrative set at the Marvel universe’s street level.
Picture the previous situation for a moment. Avengers: Doomsday likely leaves audiences on a big cliffhanger, akin to Avengers: Infinity War, ensuring audiences turns up to see the resolution in the next film. Spider-Man, as a key member of the Avengers, is likely involved — or if not, his absence has to be explained. In this context, Brand New Day either has to pick up from this, somehow, be set beforehand, or ignore the stakes going on elsewhere.
“That completely changes things for Spider-Man 4,” one fan wrote on reddit regarding the delay, and Brand New Day now coming first. “At least in the framing of how we thought it NEEDED to be in between both films timeline-wise. Now it sounds like it won’t be.”
“If Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t [also] delayed I think that basically would confirm it isn’t a multiverse battle world movie,” a third wrote, referencing the holding location Marvel’s heroes are left at within the comics during the original Secret Wars storyline.
In general, Spider-Man fans keen to see more of the character in his own story, back swinging through the streets of New York rather than being dragged into space with the Avengers. For many, Disney’s delay is a positive.
“This is the best Spider-Man 4 news we’ve gotten,” wrote one fan.
“With [Brand New Day] coming before Doomsday this fully allows a grounded story, which lines up with the rumours and casting lately,” wrote another, referencing whispers online about villains being cast to fit a regular, New York-set episode.
Earlier this month, Liza Colón-Zayas, best known for playing Tina Marrero on FX’s The Bear, was reportedly cast in Brand New Day. Fans suspect she’s playing the mother of Miles Morales — the alternative version of Spider-Man who is hotly-tipped to appear in live-action after the character’s popularity in Sony’s Spider-Verse animated films.
As part of the changes to its release schedule announced last night, Disney also removed an untitled Marvel project from its schedule set to launch on February 13, 2026. Fans suspect this had been a placeholder for the long-delayed Blade reboot set to star Mahershala Ali, which now looks set to skip this saga of the MCU altogether, if it ever materialises.
Other Marvel film dates, for November 6, 2026 and November 5, 2027, have also been altered to now refer to “Untitled Disney” films. If these remain projects are not linked to the Marvel universe, the MCU will have a relatively light movie schedule over the coming years.
The remainder of 2025 includes The Fantastic Four: First Steps on the big screen in July, while TV series Ironheart and Wonder-Man are set to debut on Disney+.
Next year’s Disney+ shows will include Daredevil Born Again’s second season (expected in the spring), a Punisher one-off special presentation, and Vision Quest, the Paul Bettany-fronted series that has now quietly begun filming.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
