Superheroes Are Back! 2025 Is Going To Be The Best Year For Cinematic Superheroics This Decade
Avengers: Endgame (2019) was a peak moment for live-action superheroes. Since then, the general consensus among fans and casual viewers is that the superheroes on-screen are in a decline. There have certainly been big hits and fun times in the 2020s, but the overall excitement for the genre has waned. 2025 has the potential to reignite that excitement.
This year is going to be a fantastic mixture of new faces, new franchises, and new beginnings, along with the welcome return of some of the best heroes of the modern era of cinema. Listed below are all of the projects (movies and TV) we know to be releasing in 2025 from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Studios. It’s a lot to get excited about!
Captain America: Brave New World
In theaters February 14, 2025.
It’s been nearly six years since Steve Rogers handed Sam Wilson the shield at the end of Avengers: Endgame (2019). It’s been nearly four years since we watched Sam fully accept the role of Captain America in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021). Now, a new chapter in the Captain America film franchise begins as Sam finds himself embroiled in an international incident and face-to-face with a red Hulk.
Maybe the most exciting aspect of Captain America: Brave New World is how it mixes the old with the new. The Serpent Society—a longtime villain group in the Captain America comics—is being introduced in this film. At the same time, characters going all the way back to the second MCU movie, The Incredible Hulk (2008), will be relevant in Brave New World, the 35th in the MCU. It’s the past meeting the present to move into the future, and it’s going to be great!
Daredevil: Born Again
Streaming on Disney+ March 4, 2025.
Netflix’s Daredevil is the best TV show in the MCU. Period. It’s dark, violent, and focuses incredibly well on building its characters. Matt Murdock, his friends, and his enemies became so beloved that it seemed incomprehensible that they wouldn’t return after Netflix lost the rights to all of the Marvel characters they’d used. So now, nearly six-and-a-half years after the final episode of Netflix’s Daredevil was released, Daredevil is born again on Disney+.
Daredevil: Born Again apparently went through some upheavals during production, but judging by the trailer it looks like everything was for the better. The story looks like it will focus heavily on the popular “Mayor Fisk” storyline from the comics, and multiple familiar faces from the original Netflix series are returning. Think what you will about Daredevil’s appearances in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022), but Daredevil: Born Again looks amazing.
Thunderbolts
In theaters May 2, 2025.
The MCU has been around for a long time, and in that time it’s introduced many fascinating characters that don’t always get the spotlight they deserve. Thunderbolts promises to take some of those characters and give them a co-starring role in a team-up movie unlike anything we’ve seen so far in the MCU.
Characters introduced in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Black Widow (2021), Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018), and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) all come together to form a rag-tag team that already looks like it will be filled with fun action and plenty of scenes of misfit “heroes” not getting along with other. It will also introduce a character who could potentially be an impact player in the MCU going forward.
Superman
In theaters July 11, 2025.
There were many positives about the previous incarnation of the DC Extended Universe. Henry Cavill as Superman was absolutely one of the DCEU’s biggest positives. But the loss of Cavill as Supes should in no way diminish the passing of the torch to David Corenswet. A lot has already been said about James Gunn’s reboot of the Superman film franchise (and of the wider DC Universe), but this movie looks intriguing.
James Gunn has made a career out of blending humor and emotion into mass-appeal genre films. Seeing his take on Superman is going to be a treat. Plus, this is the official start of the “soft reboot” of the connected DC Universe, so part of the excitement of the movie is getting our first real feel for the tone of what’s to come.
Fantastic Four: First Steps
In theaters July 25, 2025.
The Fantastic Four have had a tumultuous journey on movie screens. The unreleased Fantastic Four movie from 1994 was an inauspicious introduction to Marvel’s first family for many film fans. The FF movies directed by Tim Story in 2005 and 2007 are fun, but they still didn’t feel quite right. And the 2015 Fantastic Four kind of missed the entire point of the characters. But Fantastic Four: First Steps looks like a movie will finally do the team justice.
From the retro look, to the clear focus on family, to the glimpses of Galactus in his classic form, First Steps is already impressive. If they can get it right for longtime fans as well as people being exposed to this story for the first time, Marvel could have a huge new franchise on their hands. The Fantastic Four is top-tier team in terms of its importance in comic books dating back to the 1960s, and it’s well past time that they joined the MCU.
Peacemaker (Season 2)
Currently scheduled for August 2025.
The first season of Peacemaker was a huge surprise. How do you take a lesser-known character, spin-them off from a movie in which they end up being essentially a villain, and create one of the highest watched and rated superhero TV shows of the modern era? You make something like Peacemaker.
Not much is known about the plot of season two of Peacemaker. Not much is known about what the state of the DC world will look like in season two either, since season one definitely took place in the previous incarnation of DC’s universe prior to the reboot. If you’ve seen Creature Commandos on Max, you might have noticed some references to events that align with Peacemaker (both the character and the show). Part of the interest in season two will be to see how much of Peacemaker’s backstory they address. But an even bigger part of the intrigue is simply knowing that season one was so fantastic. Hopefully season two is just as good.
