Marvel boss Kevin Feige has claimed they were considering pivoting away from Jonathan Majors's villain Kang before the actor was convicted of assault.
The Creed III actor was expected to play the Multiverse Saga's overarching villain, Kang the Conqueror, after being teed up for future movies in 2023's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
However, he was arrested a month after the film's release and subsequently convicted of harassment and assault, after which Marvel parted ways with him.
Marvel later announced that Doctor Doom - played by Robert Downey Jr. - would be the new archvillain, and renamed Avengers: The Kang Dynasty to Avengers: Doomsday.
Speaking to a group of reporters at Marvel Studios, Feige claimed that they were already wary of Kang's viability as a successor to the previous big bad, Thanos, and had approached Downey Jr. about playing Doom before Ant-Man 3's release.
"We had started even before what had happened to the actor happened, we had started to realise 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," said Feige, not mentioning Majors by name, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"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 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 utilise one of our greatest actors."
Downey Jr., who had previously played Tony Stark/Iron Man between 2008 and 2019, shocked fans at San Diego Comic-Con in July last year when he revealed he would play the evil Doom in Avengers: Doomsday, which is currently in production.
Doomsday will be released in December 2026, followed by 2027's Avengers: Secret Wars, which will conclude the Multiverse Saga and "reset" the entire MCU, according to Feige.
