The Avengers 5 that fans are going to get later this year, with Avengers: Doomsday, is not the one that was originally pitched all the way back in 2022. Doomsday is set to come to theaters on December 18, 2026, marking the fifth on-screen adventure for the MCU's take on Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
The Marvel mega-movie was originally announced as Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. This Multiversal epic would have featured Jonathan Majors' Kang the Conqueror as its central villain and set up a sequel, Avengers: Secret Wars. However, Marvel Studios had to quickly pivot away from the Kang Dynasty plan, opting for Doomsday instead.
This decision came after Majors was convicted and charged with reckless assault and second-degree harassment. The Kang actor's legal troubles prompted the actor to be fired from the MCU, and a complete retooling of the franchise's next Avengers film.
Because of this decision, a completely lost-to-time version of Avengers 5 exists somewhere out there, a version of the movie that will never see the light of day, yet was seemingly deep in development by the time it was kicked to the curb.
Breaking Down The Changing Avenger 5 Plan
Release Shift & New Filmmakers
Even before the Jonathan Majors shake-up, some major moves were being made behind the scenes on Avengers 5. Mere days after the movie's initial announcement at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, it was revealed that Destin Daniel Cretton would helm the project, with a release in May 2025.
Cretton had just come off the much-celebrated Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings a year prior, making his hiring an exciting one among fans. This first version of the movie was later confirmed to have Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania screenwriter Jeff Loveness penning the script.
However, things were quickly flipped on their head not too long after that. The first domino to fall was the movie's release date. It was pushed a whole year in a massive Phase 6 shake-up, now set to arrive in May 2026. The movie would get one more delay, moving it to December 2026 (where it sits now), but this initial movie was only the beginning.
In November 2023 (just months after Majors' very public arrest), Cretton announced he would step down as director of The Kang Dynasty to focus on other projects at Marvel. These would take the form of the upcoming Wonder Man series, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the still-to-be-announced Shang-Chi 2.
As for Loveness, just 12 days after Cretton left the project, the Avengers 5 writer was replaced by Loki writer Michael Waldron. Then, a little over a month later, Majors was found guilty of reckless assault and second-degree harassment by a New York City court, prompting the actor to be fired, and reports of Marvel Studios overhauling the movie entirely.
The studio would go silent on the movie for several months after this news, returning almost a year later with its new plan. At Comic-Con 2024, Marvel Studios came back out on stage, announcing what had been going on with Avengers 5. The Kang Dynasty title had been scrapped in favor of Avengers: Doomsday.
Not only that, but it was also revealed that returning Avengers filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo (The Russo Brothers) would oversee the movie and its sequel. It was also revealed that Robert Downey Jr. was coming back to the MCU, only this time he would trade in the Iron Man armor to play the film's central villain, Doctor Doom.
A Very Different Avengers Cast
Of course, the most significant difference (that we know of) between The Kang Dynasty and Doomsday is the characters who would have made up its super-powered cast, specifically the movie's villain.
Jonathan Majors was finally set to get his Thanos moment as Kang in the now-scrapped version of Avengers 5. According to former writer on the project Jeff Loveness, Kang would have been the main character of the films. In March 2023, Loveness revealed, "Secretly, it is a Kang movie," adding that the Multiversal villain was going to be "on a crusade" across multiple realities:
"That's at least how I'm trying to write him. And, you know, we'll see how the structure changes and how the flow works, but like, he's got to be his own hero, and especially Kang the Conqueror and Ant-Man thought he was. Or, maybe he wouldn't use the word 'hero,' but he's on a crusade and he's doing it for a reason. So secretly, it is a Kang movie, but, of course, you have to keep the forward gas going with the Avengers. But yeah, in the back of my mind it's a Kang movie."
Sound similar? Well, that's because fans have heard very similar comments about Doctor Doom's role in Avengers: Doomsday. Insider Alex Perez told fans in September 2025 that Doctor Doom is "the main character or 'hero' for Avengers: Doomsday," likening it to "the same way Josh Brolin's Thanos was the main character of Avengers: Infinity War."
Standing opposite Majors' Kang would have also been a vastly different-looking Avengers team. One of the most significant selling points for Avengers: Doomsday has been its Multiversal cast. This includes the newly introduced Fantastic Four (Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and classic X-Men characters from the Fox era of the franchise. As far as we know, this would not have been the case with the original vision for the Avengers film.
During a March 2023 interview, writer Jeff Loveness revealed that the Fantastic Four were not part of his Avengers film. "[We] probably won’t even be using“ the Fantastic Four in the movie, he posited at the time.
And as for the X-Men, their prospects were not much better. On the X-Men's potential role in his Avengers script, Loveness had been quoted as saying, "I think all that stuff is pretty far away...I think that’s being saved for a bit:"
"No, I think all that stuff is pretty far away. I mean, I know they’re making Fantastic Four, but that’s its own thing. So, no, I mean, look, I’m the biggest X-Men guy in the world… No, no, no. I think that’s being saved for a bit. But, you know, these Avengers are in trouble. They got a lot going on with Kang. They got more than enough to handle."
This has all changed with the switch over to Doomsday, making these iconic Marvel teams pillars of the new Avengers 5. Cast members of the two versions of the tentpole blockbuster include Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova, Simu Liu's Chang-Chi, and Anthony Mackie's Captain America.
Plot Details and Tonal Tidbits
Avengers: Doomsday has seemingly retained some of the Multiversal skin of The Kang Dynasty, but almost everything else, from a tonal/narrative perspective, has been swapped out.
While much of the original Avengers 5 plot has been kept under wraps, there have been a few tidbits that have made their way out over the years. According to the movie's original director, Destin Daniel Cretton, Kang Dynasty was looking to be a "grounded" Avengers story, outside of the Multiversal trappings, of course:
"Well, we just had a few chats. We spoke for a very long time. He's an open mind, he's an open heart, and he’s grounded.The work that he does is grounded."
It would have reportedly followed Earth's Mightiest Heroes as they find Kang "conquering worlds across the entire Multiverse." Names like Captain Marvel, Yelena Belova, and the Ant-Man team would all be part of this super-powered squad, taking on various versions of the villain from across multiple realities.
That all sounds very dark, which it very well could have been, but it also could have been funnier than any other MCU movie to date. Before his work under the Marvel umbrella, Jeff Loveness was a writer on the beloved Rick and Morty series. Loveness could have injected some of that humor into his Avengers script, making it more of a laugh-fest than previous takes on the superhero team.
It could only have been so funny, though, as it had also been teased that the movie would have seen the death of a central character or two, with Paul Rudd's Scott Lang being a name that had been thrown around.
From what fans have seen of Avengers: Doomsday so far, the upcoming film will maintain some of that darker tone teased for The Kang Dynasty. The 2026 blockbuster has set the stage for this level of bleakness in its four trailers released to date, with Doom's arrival seemingly bringing dire circumstances to several realities across the Marvel Multiverse.
