The Complicated Marketing of Avengers: Doomsday

Avengers: Cash Grab Doomsday is definitely a movie that you’ve heard of, thanks to Marvel Studios’ ambitious marketing. Robert Downey Jr. was unmasked as Doctor Doom on stage, but who knows how they’ll explain why one of Marvel’s most famous Romani characters looks like Iron Man? We know the cast of the film from a five and a half hour livestream of…chairs, and also that (sigh) Chris Evans will return as Steve Rogers from a theatrically exclusive trailer. The marketing for Doomsday is like nothing we’ve seen before from Marvel Studios. The real question is if the whole marketing shtick is for their best movie yet, or for a soulless cash grab filled with nostalgia bait.

Doomsday was first announced at San Diego Comic-Con in 2024 as the new fifth Avengers movie after the previously announced The Kang Dynasty was canceled and reworked. Between the negative reception to Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and subsequent assault charges against Kang actor Jonathan Majors, Kang was dropped entirely, which led Marvel Studios to Doom (only, with a PhD.)

The first stunt Marvel Studios pulled for Doomsday’s marketing was a five and a half hour live stream on YouTube, announcing the (very large) main cast of the film — with set chairs. Over the course of the stream, the camera moved every 10-12 minutes, showing the name of an actor in the movie. The chairs confirmed that Doomsday would feature a massive ensemble, starring MCU veterans such as Anthony Mackie and Letitia Wright, the casts of the then-upcoming Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and actors from the Fox X-Men movies. 

The biggest news to come out of the chair announcement was the return of the X-Men. Unfortunately, they took “bringing back the X-Men” too literally, with Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique being the only woman from the X-Men cast to appear in the stream. Hopefully, Famke Jasen and Halle Berry, among others, are lying to keep their roles secret for a surprise in the film itself. After all, there’s no point in Jean Grey’s situationship/boyfriend/husband without Jean Grey.

Despite not being a full cast announcement, the names which make up the 27 chairs paint an interesting picture. In the first cast announcement, Marvel Studios only included five women, namely Letitia Wright (Black Panther), Vanessa Kirby (Invisible Woman), Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova), Hannah John-Kamen (Ghost), and Rebecca Romijn (Mystique).

Given that Kelsey Grammar’s Beast is confirmed to return in the movie after being last seen in 2023’s The Marvels, it would make complete sense for at least Brie Larson (Captain Marvel), Teyonah Parris (Monica Rambeau), and Lyshana Lynch (Binary) to be in the film, yet they’re nowhere to be seen.  The closest things we have to their involvement in the film are Larson saying that she could not confirm nor deny her involvement, and a leaked, likely AI generated image of the film’s Funko Pops featuring Binary.

The specific line ups for the teams in the movie were revealed at a Disney event in Brazil, which left me with a handful of interesting notes. The Avengers (led by Captain America), had no women in their five person team, but did include Loki. I really hope that this is because actors like Brie Larson (Captain Marvel) and Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk) are being saved for a reveal closer to the film’s release. Chloe Bennet also seems free, so they could add Quake to the team, they could diversify the line up and bring back aspects from the MCU’s best show, which also happens to be the most neglected. Also, Namor, King of Talokan (basically Marvel’s Aquaman although an anti-hero who debuted three years before Aquaman) was listed as a “Wakandan”.

While the Brazil event is just a step in the marketing road to Doomsday, the real promotion for the film began with the release of Avatar: Fire And Ash. Seeing that everyone and their grandmother goes to see Avatar, it’s no wonder Marvel Studios chose to promote Doomsday there. 

For the first four weeks of Fire And Ash’s theatrical run, a different teaser for Doomsday was attached and exclusive to theaters for a week before being dropped online. The first teaser announced the return of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, who now has a child, presumably with Peggy Carter because we all know Disney isn’t brave enough for the other thing. The second teaser saw Thor, praying to his father, Odin, for strength in the coming battle against Doctor Doom, so that he could return to his (adopted) daughter, Love. Meanwhile, the third teaser saw Professor X and Magento in a conversation about death — and holding hands (is the Cherik Yaoi canon?), and James Marsden’s Cyclops finally in a comic accurate blue and yellow suit… it only took him 26 years to get out of the black leather. Lastly, the fourth and (for now) final trailer saw Black Panther and M’Baku (King of Wakanda) meeting the Thing of the Fantastic Four. 

Notably, the fourth trailer was also the only one to feature a woman (not counting Thor’s young daughter Love) in Black Panther. It seems to me that Marvel, in trying to return to “what worked”, is going back to the mindset of Ike Pearlmutter, the former CEO of Marvel Entertainment, who famously said “Women and black people don’t sell toys”. The lack of female characters in Doomsday seems like taking two steps back after a (small) step forward with the slight increase in female-led projects since 2020. Marvel also has no female led projects coming out this year, and as far as we know, the next. Their upcoming projects (aside from the ensemble Avengers: Doomsday and the non-MCU second season of X-Men ‘97) all star white men.

The Doomsday Clock began to tick in the public eye with the release of the fourth trailer, as the Marvel Entertainment YouTube channel began a countdown livestream set to go for well over eleven months. I guess the five and a half hour livestream wasn't long enough for them. 

With ten months to go before the film’s release, Doomsday’s marketing is unparalleled to anything Marvel Studios has ever done. Who wouldn’t be excited for a movie uniting the Avengers with the Fantastic Four and X-Men after twenty years of the MCU not having Marvel’s “biggest” (according to fanboys who grew up in the 90s) names? Although, let’s be real (and this is coming from a Marvel fan who’s only disliked two projects in the last six years) — it could also be a three hour, nostalgia bait filled cash grab. And in the name of cash grabbing, they could screw over the recent stars and female characters in favour of the main casts of The Infinity Saga and X-Men, a movie literally as old as this century. No matter how the movie turns out to be, one thing can be said for certain — the marketing is Marvel Studios’ most ambitious yet.