Latest Update Suggests ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ and ‘Secret Wars’ Will Stay True to the Original Comics
Ever since Marvel Studios confirmed the road to ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ and ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’, comic fans have been asking the same question: how closely will these films follow the source material? With Joe and Anthony Russo directing both movies, set for December 18 this year and December 17 next year, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The latest update suggests the answer may be more faithful than many expected.
Marvel hasn’t been shy about where its inspiration comes from. After debuting footage at CinemaCon, Kevin Feige told Entertainment Weekly that the story of ‘Doomsday’ draws on a famous comic run in which universes collide and different Earths encounter one another, which in movie terms allows Marvel to bring together casts from different franchises.
That description points squarely at Jonathan Hickman’s 2015 ‘Secret Wars’, illustrated by Esad Ribić, along with the ‘Avengers’ and ‘New Avengers’ runs that built up to it. Now, the man behind that very storyline has confirmed he’s involved. Speaking to Bleeding Cool ahead of his first trip to Italy for Lucca Comics & Games, Hickman revealed he has been consulting on both ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ and ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’.
He explained that he consults for studios and reads almost all of the movies they make while they’re still in development. According to Hickman, his involvement with ‘Doomsday’ began before filming started and continued through rewrites as several writers took turns on the script. He described it as fascinating to watch the story evolve over the past 2 and a half years since he first started reading drafts.
Hickman was also candid about how much he’s actually seen. He admitted he hasn’t watched a final cut of the film, but has seen a work-in-progress version. What struck him most, he said, was experiencing a movie mid-production without any of the CGI in place, something he had never done before.
A new look at ‘AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY’ will release on Friday. It will launch during World Series Game 1 of the MLB. https://t.co/25WL1zTO16
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) October 22, 2026
The confirmation quickly spread across social media, with outlets like ComicBook.com, Culture Crave and DiscussingFilm sharing the news. On Reddit’s r/Marvel, home to 1.3 million members, fans celebrated the update, while some on X called Hickman’s involvement in ‘Secret Wars’ the best Marvel news in years.
For longtime readers, this is a big deal. Hickman laid the foundation for ‘Secret Wars’ through his acclaimed work on ‘Fantastic Four’, ‘Avengers’ and ‘New Avengers’, a storyline that ultimately led to a soft reboot of the Marvel Universe. His runs also introduced the Incursions, catastrophic events in which 2 universes collide, and one must be destroyed to save the other.
New trailer for ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ In theaters December 18 https://t.co/1wsiTk1Nnv
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) August 15, 2026
Many of those ideas already appear to be on screen. The ‘Doomsday’ trailers have featured the Incursions prominently, and Wakanda’s strong presence is notable given that the nation was the epicenter of the first Incursion in Hickman’s ‘New Avengers’. Elements of that run have also surfaced before, with a version of the Illuminati appearing in ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’.
That doesn’t mean fans should expect a panel-for-panel adaptation. The Russo brothers previously told TechRadar that they plan to draw inspiration from both Jim Shooter’s original ‘Secret Wars’ from 1984 and Hickman’s 2015 version, while treating the comics as loose inspiration. Feige has also hinted that ‘Doomsday’ and ‘Secret Wars’ will connect in a very different way than ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ did.
New poster for ‘AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY’. In theaters on December 18. https://t.co/OhIp6kOsuw
— Pop Base (@PopBase) October 3, 2026
Still, having Hickman reviewing scripts alongside writers like Stephen McFeely, Michael Waldron, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers suggests the spirit of his story is being protected. For fans hoping to see Battleworld, Doctor Doom’s grand ambitions and the multiverse’s collapse brought to life with care, that’s about as reassuring as it gets.
Do you want Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars to stay faithful to Jonathan Hickman’s comics?
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