Ryan Coogler would be an excellent pick to direct Avengers: Secret Wars for the MCU.
It takes a special type of director to do these Marvel team-up movies. The Russos were great at it. I’d say they are better at team-up films than individual projects. Coogler did a fantastic job with Black Panther, so it would sense they would want to keep things in-house.
Considering how big Infinity War and End Game were, these would be massive shoes to fill, but I think Coogler is up for the challenge.
Indeed, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars are both set to drop in 2025. Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton is confirmed to be helming Kang Dynasty but the latter film’s director has yet to be indicated. Now, a new rumor potentially sheds some light.
During the latest episode of The Weekly Planet Podcast, host James Clement relayed some rumored information on Avengers: Secret Wars. The intel in question claimed that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever‘s Ryan Coogler is in the running to direct the forthcoming sixth Avengers film.
“And Ryan Coogler, here’s another scoop, Mason, is at the very least one of the directors, is currently in talks for Secret Wars. Which makes a lot of sense and yeah, the source here says, this is a reliable source, this person says ‘a fairly obvious choice.’ And it is. That makes sense.”
Of course, Ryan Coogler directed Black Panther for Marvel Studios and it was a groundbreaking success that made over a billion dollars and became something of a cultural touchstone. Kevin Feige and the team at Marvel are likely very impressed by the work that Coogler has turned in on Wakanda Forever to be considering him for Secret Wars.
Additionally, the director is involved with Ironheart on Disney+ and is also said to be in development on another MCU series set in Wakanda itself.
Marvel Studios generally likes to keep things “all in the family“ for their Avengers movies. This is to say that they hire directors for them who have done good things for them in the past. The success of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and its sequel landed the Russo Bros. The job of making Avengers 3 and 4.
The guys from the Weekly Planet are legit, so they wouldn’t put this out there if it wasn’t true.
The MCU version of Secret Wars will likely vary greatly from the comics; flip the page to get an idea of how the story might end up in the MCU.