Marvel isn’t exactly known for exercising restraint, especially when it comes to Avengers: Infinity War, the follow-up to Age Of Ultron. Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the two-part movie event is so big it requires two directors, Joe and Anthony Russo, to get the job done. Both movies are being shot entirely in IMAX, and according to Chris Evans, he and the rest of the main cast will be held hostage by Marvel for nine months as the films shoot back-to-back. As the title suggests, Infinity War will rely on the mythology of the infinity stones, at this point still a somewhat hazy aspect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Basically, the crossovers between Marvel’s films and television shows (there are so many now) are becoming increasingly complicated.
And now, to make it even more clear just how supersized Infinity War will be, the Russos have revealed how many Marvel characters are set to appear in the films. “We have so many characters we’re dealing with. We’re breaking ground on Avengers: Infinity War. We have a board with 67 characters on it,” they announced at Wizard World New Orleans.
Sixty. Seven. Characters. Tallying up the main characters from the MCU, including those from the Netflix shows, only results in about three dozen names. So where exactly are these 30 extra characters coming from? The Marvel roster runs deep, but pulling 67 players into Infinity War seems ambitious, to say the least. Will some characters return from the dead to help reach that total? Can the Russos really wrangle 67 characters without losing control of the plot? Can 67 characters even fit on a movie poster?
Avengers: Infinity War–Part 1 and Avengers: Infinity War–Part 2, are scheduled to come out on May 4, 2018, and May 3, 2019, respectively.