Marvel fans think they've worked out when Spider-Man: Brand New Day takes place, but I'm not convinced they're right
Spider-Man: Brand New Day's position on the MCU timeline might have been revealed
Filming will begin in Glasgow, Scotland in August
A Marvel fan has snapped some set photos that indicate when it could be set
Spider-Man: Brand New Day won't arrive in theaters until July 2026, but some fans think they've already worked out where it'll sit on the Marvel timeline.
With filming due to begin on Spider-Man: Brand New Day in August, preparations have been underway in Glasgow for a number of weeks now. The Scottish city is being used a stand-in for New York City (NYC), so Glaswegians have seen their hometown receive a US makeover before the cameras start rolling.
One eagle-eyed Marvel fan has wasted no time snapping images of the sets being erected for Spider-Man 4, too. Indeed, X/Twitter user lukec1605 recently uploaded some photographs that indicate what year it might take place in.
As the above post reveals, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) version of NYC is being renovated, with numerous construction builds in progress. This might have something to do with events that occurred in Thunderbolts*, aka one of three new movies released by Marvel Studios this year. That film is set in the MCU's present, which is believed to be the year 2027. You can read more about what happened in that flick via by Thunderbolts* ending explained piece.
But I'm getting off-track. Two of the images in the aforementioned post reveal that work is due to be completed on these renovations and new builds by December 2027. Cue MCU fans jumping to conclusions and convincing themselves that the next Marvel Phase 6 movie will take place in late 2027.
I'm not satisfied this is the case, though. Those pictures only indicate that the buildings will be erected before that year ends. Depending on the size of said build, it can take multiple years to complete work on them, too. It's entirely possible, then, that Spider-Man's next outing in the MCU could be set in early or mid-2027, or even sometime in 2026.
There's evidence that Brand New Day could take place well before December 2027 as well. Season 1 of Daredevil: Born Again, whose story is thought to play out between late 2026 and early 2027, sees Wilson Fisk become NYC's latest mayor. Throughout the Disney+ show's first installment, Fisk fast-tracks a number of developments in the city, so it's plausible that the ongoing construction work was greenlit by him. If that's the case, events in Spider-Man 4 might run concurrent to Daredevil: Born Again season 1.
That said, Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle/The Punisher will a supporting role to play in Brand New Day. The last time we saw him, i.e. in Born Again's season 1 finale, he escaped captivity after being incarcerated in a secret prison facility patrolled by Fisk's Anti-Vigilante Task Force. In order to show up in Spider-Man 4, he'll need to have broken out of jail before that film begins. This would mean Brand New Day has to take place from mid-2027 onwards.
Hopefully, we'll get a better idea of when the film is set, plus who Stranger Things' Sadie Sink is playing in Spider-Man 4, when principal photography finally gets underway. In the meantime, find out why Spider-Man: Brand New Day's release was delayed or learn more about how its official title takes its cue from the most controversial moment in Spidey's comic book history.
You might also like
Marvel superstar Robert Downey Jr sparks new Avengers: Doomsday fan theory over possible dual role in the MCU movie, and I hope it's not true
Spider-Man: Brand New Day reportedly set to feature one of the first Avengers in a big role, but I hope it's not true for two huge reasons
Find out how to watch the Marvel movies in order
Solve the daily Crossword
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Criminals cash in on TikTok Labubu trend with dangerous fakes
At an anonymous industrial estate on the outskirts of London, a queue of police vans and empty lorries block the usual flow of lunchtime traffic. They are here to seize fake Labubu dolls. Thousands of them. After weeks of work, intelligence that started at a corner shop in south Wales has led Trading Standards officers to a labyrinth of rooms hidden above this retail outlet. Inside, they estimate millions of pounds worth of fake products are piled up, floor to ceiling, but what interests them most are the fluffy, mischievous-looking dolls at the centre of a global TikTok craze. According to Forbes, the popularity of Labubu dolls helped parent company Pop Mart more than double its total revenue to £1.33bn ($1.81bn) last year. They are wanted by children and adults alike, with some telling us they queued for hours or travelled across the country just to secure an authentic one. Adorable or just weird? How Labubu dolls conquered the world Labubu fan fury after dolls pulled from stores However, messages seen by BBC News also suggest scalpers may be buying hundreds of genuine products at a time to resell them at a profit, with authorities reporting a "flood" of counterfeits entering the market. Border Force has seized hundreds of thousands from UK ports in the past few months, meanwhile officers at the London industrial estate believe the dolls grinning up at them from the crates hide a darker secret. "The head comes off. The feet will pull off," explained Rhys Harries from Trading Standards, as one literally falls apart in his hands. Mr Harries first saw dolls like this after raiding a corner shop almost 200 miles away in Swansea, before tracing them back here. "I've found them in the bags where their eyes are coming off, their hands will come off." Mr Harries' team use a plastic tube, shaped like a child's throat, to measure how dangerous objects are - if it fits, it is a choking hazard. "These [parts] will all get stuck and then potentially cause choking," he said. Mum-of-one Jade said she "100%" agreed the fakes were a choking hazard after some fell apart shortly after giving them to her son. The 34-year-old from Caerphilly knew she had bought fakes - sometimes nicknamed Lafufus - for her son Harri's sixth birthday as she could not justify the cost of the authentic dolls. But she felt "obliged to get him one" after all his friends got their own and found knock-offs for just over £10, compared to some genuine ones costing £80. However, just a few hours into Harri's birthday, Jade said the keyring came off, followed by part of one of the feet a few days later. When Harri was swinging his new toy the hook came off the keyring, only for Jade to spot it in his mouth. She said "luckily" her son was old enough to tell her about his toy falling apart, but she warned things could be different for younger children. According to the Intellectual Property Office, the rush by criminals to get fakes to market often results in dangerous materials being used. "Counterfeiting is the second largest source of criminal income worldwide, second only to drug trafficking," said Kate Caffery, deputy director of intelligence and law enforcement. "It's in the interests of these criminal organisations to respond quickly to trends to maximise it, to get on the back of it and make the most money that they possibly can. "So that's why we see it happening so quickly and a complete disregard for safety concerns." Ms Caffery dismissed claims these fakes were made in the same factories or using the same materials as the real thing as "absolutely not true", adding that they "could be made from anything". These range from the inferior to the dangerous, including toxic plastics, chemicals, and small parts that aren't properly attached "that can then pose a chocking hazard". Although fake Labubus are still relatively new to the market, investigators know from previous cases involving counterfeit toys that they can be made with banned chemicals, including some linked to cancers. Authorities say most counterfeit products, including Labubus, can be traced to China, Hong Kong or Turkey and people are being warned to look out for "too good to be true" pricing or packaging that feels cheap and flimsy. TikToker Meg Goldberger, 27, is no stranger to collecting in a market filled with fakes. She has about 250 Jellycat plush toys, alongside her new collection of 12 Labubu dolls. "The more people talked about it and the harder they became to get, the more I needed them. That's why I now have 12," she said. However, pretty early into her search, Ms Goldberger said she realised the odds were stacked against her in her hunt for the real thing. She said she spent about 12 hours over several days waiting for Pop Mart store's TikTok live video, where Labubus are released for sale at a set time, just like gig tickets. "It used to be they sold out within like a minute. It's now like literally two seconds. You can't get your hands on them," she said. Instead, she opted to find someone reselling them online, but also discovered why they may have been selling out so fast. When she asked an eBay reseller for proof the Big Into Energy Labubu series she was interested in was genuine, Ms Goldberger was sent "a screenshot of what could have been like almost 200 orders of Labubus". "These people will sit at home and somehow robots hack the websites and bulk buy them, which is why they go so quickly. Then they'll resell them." Mr Harries said a selection of fake Labubus would be taken from London back to Swansea for use as evidence. The rest will be stored as evidence at a secret location before being either recycled or destroyed. "These were going everywhere," he said. "There were invoice books with them and they were going all across the UK. It's a national issue." Pop Mart has been asked to comment. Labubu firm sees profit soaring by at least 350% 'I was a shopping addict - it needs to be taken more seriously' Found on celebrity bags and in viral videos: The toy fashionistas are loving
USA Today
27 minutes ago
- USA Today
Fantastic Four's box office drop proves Marvel is losing average moviegoers
Marvel Studios might be staring down the endgame for its cinematic universe as we know it. With The Fantastic Four: First Steps estimated for a difficult 66-percent box office drop from its respectable opening weekend of $118 million domestic, the comic book movie giant has watched its 2025 strategy lose some of the core audience that cemented the MCU as appointment viewing for years... the average moviegoers. Right now, Marvel most likely won't have one of its films situated within the top five of domestic earners at the box office for the first time since 2011 (excluding 2020, of course), just looking at Box Office Mojo. REVIEW: The Fantastic Four: First Steps plays it too safe to get it just right After running Hollywood for the better part of 15 years and change, Marvel is stuck with all three of 2025 films likely falling behind their peers in domestic box office competition. February's Captain America: Brave New World (roughly $200 million) suffered from lackluster reviews and a convoluted fit into the grander storyline, while May's Thunderbolts* (roughly $190 million) boasted good reviews but lacked marquee characters casual fans knew about. The Fantastic Four: First Steps should outgross both of those films domestically when it's all said and done, but it's unlikely to top the ultimate grosses of films like A Minecraft Movie (roughly $424 million), Lilo & Stitch (roughly $421 million and counting), Jurassic World: Rebirth (roughly $311 million and counting), Superman (roughly $306 million and counting) and even April's surprise horror hit Sinners (roughly $278 million), an original project. New films await. The new Fantastic Four film earned good notices from critics, but the substantial drop shows that, once the big fans got in their viewings during opening weekend, there weren't as many casual moviegoers left waiting to see the new MCU project as in years past. This is the third time this year that a Marvel film has shown an inability to leg out. With probable global hits like Avatar: Fire and Ash, Wicked: For Good and Zootopia 2 on the horizon, a Marvel film will also possibly miss the top 10 globally at the box office (outside of 2020) for the first time since 2011. The Fantastic Four: First Steps isn't doing big business internationally and is already proving to lack legs stateside. Compare this film's lukewarm results to 2024's Deadpool & Wolverine, a monster success with two primarily non-MCU characters that grossed roughly $637 million domestically. Marvel's biggest success since 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home relied on two characters whose previous films were created by other studios under the generic Marvel banner. Both of those films had rampant nostalgia in their corner to go along with big-name characters. Marvel will next partner with Sony on next July's Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which will reportedly boast Mark Ruffalo's Hulk and Jon Bernthal's Punisher. We're assuming another Tom Holland Spider-Man vehicle will do big business, as will December 2026's Avengers: Doomsday that boasts Robert Downey Jr.'s MCU return. However, even those big projects lean on past glories to wrangle in the casual moviegoers. This year, a new Captain America in Anthony Mackie, a new anti-hero squad and the MCU's first go at the Fantastic Four all failed to reach past the expected audience. At least one of those films (Captain America) got awful reviews, but none of them really hit the zeitgeist in the way, say, James Gunn's Superman did just a couple of weeks before The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Perhaps that's why Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige hinted that a "reset" awaits his cinematic universe. Nostalgia can power your film to success, but even Marvel Studios has a finite amount at its disposal. Qualifying the Downey Jr. days of the MCU as nostalgic is dangerous business, as the original grand finale to that run, Avengers: Endgame, only came out about six years ago. If Marvel's best trick up its sleeve is playing the hits to get regular moviegoers off the couch and into the cinema, the studio is going to run out of that goodwill pretty quickly. Avengers: Doomsday has Downey Jr. going for it, sure, but the film has no narrative payoff on the horizon. The grander MCU storyline post-Endgame has been, to put it mildly, a jumbled mess. The thematic denouement of the Infinity Stones saga was a decade-plus in the making, and the entire globe flocked to see how it concluded. Right now, the next Avengers film seems to be hinging on brand recognition and nostalgia to get audiences to the movies. Unless your wardrobe primarily consists of Marvel t-shirts, can you plot out how this gigantic story has gone lately? While the next Avengers film will partially work at the box office because brand recognition and nostalgia are still perniciously attractive to a wider audience, you just can't expect the same impact of past Avengers films. The payoff just isn't there to nearly the same degree. Downey Jr. will be the big draw; the new characters compiling the expected Avengers ensemble is a strange hodgepodge of film and television successes and failures. The disastrous rollout of so many Disney+ streaming shows particularly diluted the brand and made the grander story nearly impossible to follow. Again, everything that's happened since Thanos turned to dust has been a gigantic shrug. If Doomsday hits and word spreads of a confusing plot, even an Avengers movie with RDJ can wither on the vine. You can't say the Marvel Cinematic Universe is dead because the machine will keep turning out just enough of its die hards to pop on opening weekend. However, Disney will only be willing to fund so much MCU content comparative to years past if these movies keep popping up and evaporating the weekend after release. Big movies need legs. They need to get casual moviegoers interested. For years, Marvel did so with admirable consistency, even if every movie didn't hit a billion dollars globally. Right now, the studio can only rely on yesterday to make tomorrow viable. The new projects aren't working as well as before; the casuals are tuning them out. Unless a project is directly harping on what's been done before, the golden age of Marvel is probably over by now. In order for there to be even the faint chance of a second one, the studio is going to have to reboot this entire ordeal and simplify all of this for general moviegoers. Until it does, expect more of those big second-weekend drops. All financial numbers this piece originate from Box Office Mojo.
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How to watch the ‘Love Island' U.K. finale from the U.S.
After a seriously steamy summer, the latest season ofLove Island (U.K.) is about to end. The dating show, which airs in the U.K. on ITV2 (and streams on ITVX), filmed all summer long from Majorca, with host Maya Jama helping this season's contestants find love – or at least a hot fling or two. On Monday, August 4, we'll learn who the winners of this season are. Episodes of Love Island also stream in the U.S. on Hulu after a three-day delay, which means you can also tune in to the finale there on August 7, but you'll have to try and avoid spoilers in the meantime. Here's how to watch the Love Island season finale when it airs live in the U.K. or on a delay. When is the finale? The Love Island U.K. finale will be broadcast in the U.K. on Monday, August 4, at 9 p.m. BST — that's 4 p.m. ET for U.S. viewers, if you plan on tuning in live with a VPN. On Hulu, you can stream the finale on August 7. What channel is on? Love Island is broadcast in the U.K. on ITV2 and streams on ITVX (and on a three-day delay on Hulu for viewers in the U.S.). How to watch the (U.K.) finale in the U.S.: Love Island Series 12 cast: The full cast of Love Island Series 12 is below: Sophie Lee, 29, motivational speaker and author, from Manchester Dejon Noel Williams, 26, personal trainer, lives in London Meg Moore, 25, payroll specialist, lives in Southampton Tommy Bradley, 22, landscape gardener, lives in Hertfordshire Alima Gagio, 23, wealth management client services executive, lives in Glasgow Ben Holbrough, 23, private hire taxi driver and model, lives in Gloucester Megan Forte Clarke, 24, musical theater performer and energy broker, lives in Brighton, from Dublin Helena Ford, 29, cabin crew, lives in London Conor Phillips, 25, professional rugby player, from Limerick Blu Chegini, 26, construction project manager, lives in London Shakira Khan, 22, marketing, lives in Burnley Harry Cooksley, 30, gold trader, semi-professional footballer and model, lives in Guildford Where to watch past seasons of You can stream every season of Love Island U.K., Love Island All Stars, Love Island Aftersun, Love Island Games, Love Island Australia and all the Love Island reunions free on ITVX in the U.K. If you're watching from outside of the U.K., you'll need the help of a VPN. You can also tune in to all 12 previous seasons of Love Island U.K., as well as Love Island Australia, and seasons 1-3 of Love Island USA with a Hulu subscription. Where to watch past seasons of You can also catch all of Love Island USA in the U.K. on ITVX. So if you don't want to pay for Paramount, Peacock or Hulu, and you want to watch the U.K. series anyway, a VPN plus a free ITVX account may be your best (and cheapest) option.
