Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | July 21, 2026
The new trailer for Avengers: Doomsday dropped yesterday instead of waiting for San Diego Comic-Con, and it was surprisingly light on anything… new. Most of it looked like things YouTubers have guessed over the last several months, with slightly longer looks at the teasers we saw back in December. My hope is that they are shielding the movie’s secret weapon, which could be Tony Stark’s relationship to Peter Parker, until after Spidey hits screens later this month. Heck, maybe we’d even find out that Tom Holland is more involved in Doomsday than we thought, and they’re just waiting. But we’ve been burned before.
Feige has been doing the rounds in the build-up to Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Doomsday tickets going on sale, and he stopped by Josh Horowitz’s Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, according to THR. During their chat, Feige was asked how it feels to have whiffed on Mahershala Ali joining the MCU as Blade, the biggest layup imaginable, and he was pretty blunt in his answer. “I am feeling like a gigantic loser and failure that we didn’t get off the ground with Mahershala,” he explained.
It’s good that he’s honest, but the negative perception certainly hasn’t helped Marvel’s brand when it comes to snagging talented stars. There was a time when joining an MCU movie could be a significant boon to your career. Now, it’s arguable that the MCU needs stars more than they need it (except for maybe Chris Evans). Case in point, Feige has revealed that one star has turned them down enough that it has begun to feel like a tradition, and that actor is Adam Driver.
According to Feige, he has tried to court Driver on several occasions and has consistently been met with a friendly no. “It’s no secret we’d like to [work with Driver],” Feige noted. “But it’s a tradition to Zoom with him, and then he passes. That’s a long-lived tradition. He couldn’t be more cordial. He is usually upfront about how he is feeling.” It makes sense that Feige would want an actor like Driver. He adds a bit of prestige but has already proven that he can work well inside of a big, nonsensical franchise. Will it ever happen?
There have been rumors, recently, that Driver will play the MCU’s version of Magneto, and, look, sign me up. Driver would be a fantastic choice (even though his age would suggest Marvel would have to rework his backstory, which makes me… nervous, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, and it will need to be crossed at some point). Feige explained in the same interview that no one has been cast for that film yet, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his hopes.
The main question I have is: who did they approach him about playing before? Was Driver a choice for Mr. Fantastic? Could he have joined The Eternals? Maybe they considered him for Sentry? We’ll never know, but it is pretty funny to imagine Driver saying, “thanks, but no thanks” to one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, and then closing his laptop because clicking out of the Zoom window would be too much trouble. We’ve all been there.
