Robert Downey Jr. will be Doctor Doom and the Russo Brothers return to direct Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars

Some big Marvel announcements at San Diego Comic-Con saw new details about Phase 6.

• The Fantastic Four: First Steps is out on 25th July 2025.
• Blade on 7th November 2025
• Avengers: Doomsday 1st May 2026
• Avengers: Secret Wars on 7th May 2027

The Russo Brothers, who directed Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame are returning to direct the Avengers movies. It also looks like they are moving away from Kang (after what happened with Jonathan Majors) and turning to Doctor Doom…who is going to be played by Robert Downey Jr.

The Russo Brothers surprised everyone by having Doom appear on stage and unmask to show the former Iron Man is going to play Victor Von Doom.

“I like playing complicated characters,” he said as fans began to chant his name.

While it is always good to see RDJ, part of me does feel a little disappointed. I had never really thought of him as playing someone like Doom – in my head it had been someone like CIllian Murphy, Mads Mikkelsen, Sam Witwer or Ralph Fiennes – and it smacks a little of desperation from Marvel to bring him back as he was so successful as Iron Man. However, he is a great actor and I am sure he will do a great job. The Infamous Iron Man story line did see Von Doom become Iron Man!

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Hopefully, it will have some of the magic of the previous films they all did together. Plus, if they stick to the comics then we will only see Doom’s face in flashbacks. This also makes the return of RDJ’s Tony Stark in Secret Wars a lot easier to happen.

I wonder if we will first see him in The Fantastic Four film as Victor Von Doom. That film sees “Galactus and Silver Surfer target Earth for destruction!”

Oh, I hope he is actually going to be Victor Von Doom and not just going to be an evil Tony Stark.

“When we directed Avengers: Endgame, Joe and I truly believed that it was the end of the road for us in the Marvel Cinematic Universe because we had put all of our passion, our love, our imagination into The Winter Soldier, into Civil War, into Infinity War, climaxing all of it with Avengers: Endgame,” Anthony Russo said. “That four movie run was incredible and it left us creatively spent with all of our emotions on the film. In the time since, through a very special story, Joe and I have come to potentially see a road forward with you.”

They called Secret Wars the “biggest story that Marvel Comics ever told,” and Joe said it was the first comic book run he read as a child that made him “fall in love with comics.”