Yesterday’s Marvel Studio’s panel at SDCC was a rollicking good time—we’ve already told you that Karen Gillan showed off her shaved head, and you may have heard that Tom Hiddleston crashed the joint (don’t worry, we’re running a video for you later today). But that wasn’t all. Joss Whedon put in a surprise appearance to announce that the Avengers sequel will be called The Avengers: Age of Ultron. But what does it all meeeeean?
Unmarked possible spoilers for Age of Ultron are behind the cut… or at a least super-vague plot description of the comic series on which it’s apparently based, so, y’know, there are probably going to be some similarities. [Update: Nope. Just the titles are the same.] Read at your own risk.
Age of Ultron is a recently finished comic book arc by Brian Michael Bendis in which Ultron, an insane sentient robot created by Ant-Man, shows up, takes over Earth, and kills some superheroes. Interestingly, the final issue of Age of Ultron re-introduced the Neil Gaiman-created Spawn character Angela… so you can make of that what you will.
At the panel Whedon introduced a brief teaser for Age of Ultron, in which audio clips from The Avengers were coupled with an image of Iron Man’s helmet… which, as the camera zooms out, is shown to actually be Ultron’s helmet. Fans also learned that the movie will come out on May 1, 2015.
How similar will Age of Ultron-the-movie be to Age-of-Ultron-the-comics? Might Angela be introduced to the MCU? Ant-Man’s own movie doesn’t come out until several months after the Avengers sequel, so does Ant-Man being tied in with Ultron mean the superhero might show up in some earlier movie?
We’ll have to wait until a lot closer to May 1, 2015 to find out. Let the speculation begin.
Update: Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige has confirmed that “The title is ‘borrowed’ from the comic, but bears no relation to that arc.”
Update 2: According to Joss Whedon, Hank Pym won’t be “in the mix” of Age of Ultron. And he would know.
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