There are a few entertainment touchstones that people simply can’t wait for. For better for worse — for good or ill — these are the popcultural markers that delineate an entire generation of cultural consumption: after which nothing will ever be the same.
The Avengers launched the indominable MCU from a quirky superhero franchise into the titanic multimedia force it is today. Justice League, uncaringly hoisted on movie-goers who have long since grown jaded to DC’s supposed answer to Marvel’s iconic team-up, effectively killed the DCEU. And Infinity War, well, we’ll just have to see what that brings to the table.
Superhero fans have grown increasingly listless in absence of news of Marvel’s next gen crossover. The movie, which comes out next summer, had quietly wrapped production seemingly an eternity ago, and Marvel has immovably sat on it since then.
The summer came and went without so much as a teaser for the film. Thor: Ragnarok debuted to ecstatic fanfare, but no Infinity War. Even Justice League, which some assumed would debut the trailer, crashed and burned without so much as a peep coming from Marvel.
Really just a few months away, calls to see the trailer — which was confirmed as being completed weeks ago — have grown more and more fervent. As it turns out, we won’t have to wait for that much longer.
Hints have been dropped over the last couple days of the trailer’s pending release. Whispers from cast members, reveals on social media and the good old fashioned rumor mill kept speculation high, and news just dropped to the affirmative. The world will see the first trailer for Avengers: Infinity War will be released on Wednesday, November 29: a scant 24 hours as of this writing (and considerably less of this publication).
It makes a lot of sense why Marvel would wait so long before releasing the footage. Although it seems a lifetime ago, production wrapped not that long ago. That raw footage had to be run through post-production before anybody saw it (otherwise we’d have the train wreck that was the final Justice League trailer). That’s a lengthy process, often looped with reshoots and reconsiderations.
Thor: Ragnarok would have made sense to debut the trailer, admittedly. It would have raised the movie’s already considerable profile and undoubtedly sold additional tickets to the feature than it already did. At the same time, though, Ragnarok, with its $122 million US debut, fawning reviews and strong word-of-mouth, didn’t actually need the boost and either one or the other risked being lost in the crosshairs.
Justice League, the culmination of Marvel’s rival’s efforts to overthrow them as the go-to superhero franchise, would have made even less sense. The last think that Marvel — and, by extension, Disney — wanted was to give their chief competitors a boost, especially when they appeared to be in such a vulnerable position. In fact, they set The Punisher‘s revised release date so that the Netflix series went toe-to-toe with Justice League, undoubtedly syphoning off some would-be movie-goers who were already on the fence about the floundering DCEU.
And then there was Coco: a brilliant Pixar film released over Thanksgiving to both critical and commercial acclaim. It would have been an ideal vehicle to deliver the trailer, sure, but there were so many things going on that weekend: not just Coco, but speculation about Justice League‘s second weekend performance and the holiday itself. Undoubtedly, Disney wanted the spotlight all to themselves for what promises to be the culmination of everything the MCU has built up over the last decade.
And so here we are: an innocuous weekday release, just after Thanksgiving: a week past Coco, two weeks past Justice League and a full month past Thor: Ragnarok. Christmas is a full month away and the next big movie release, Star War: Episode VII — The Last Jedi, a comfortable three weeks out. Hopefully it was worth the wait, because Marvel’s certainly got our attention now.
