Kevin Feige Reveals Replacing Kang With Doctor Doom Was Planned for a Long Time

Next year, Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom will do battle with the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men in Avengers: Doomsday . But for a long time, the MCU’s Multiverse Saga was going to showcase Kang the Conqueror as the “Big Bad.” Then, a couple of things happened. First, Kang actor Jonathan Majors was faced with a host of legal troubles. Then, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania underperformed at the box office. Not long after, Marvel shifted gears, and Doom became the main villain. But according to an interview with Marvel’s Kevin Feige, he was pivoting away from Kang even before all that. Here’s what he had to say to The Hollywood Reporter:

We had started even before what had happened to the actor [Jonathan Majors] happened, we had started to realize that Kang wasn’t big enough, wasn’t Thanos, and that there was only one character that could be that, because he was that in the comics for decades and decades. Because of the Fox acquisition, we finally had it, and it was Dr. Doom. So we had started talking about Dr. Doom even before we officially pivoted from Kang. And in fact, I had started talking with Robert [Downey Jr.] about this audacious idea before Ant-Man 3 even came out. It was a long plan that we had, to take one of our greatest characters and utilize one of our greatest actors.