Avengers: Does Marvel’s RDJ Doom Reveal Confirm Jonathan Hickman’s Version of Secret Wars?

Robert Downey Jr. is back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Having played Iron Man from the franchise’s inception in 2008 through Avengers: Endgame five years ago, most would have thought the actor was permanently done with the MCU. During Marvel Studios’ Hall H panel at San Diego Comic Con, however, that all changed. The studio revealed Downey was not only returning to the MCU, but he’d be playing one Victor Von Doom, a seismic announcement even by Hall H standards.

Downey’s inclusion in both Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars all but guarantees the studio is adapting the latest, most popular take of ˆ—the one crafted by architect Jonathan Hickman—rather than the original one that the Russo Brothers have credited with stoking their love of the comics medium.

What Secret Wars comic is the movie based on?

In 2020, Joe Russo said Secret Wars was his favorite comic book, doubling down on his live-action version of the film being the biggest movies ever made.

“You know, I read that when I was 10 or 11, and it was the scale of getting all of the heroes together. It was one of the first major books to do that — that was really event-storytelling to me at its finest. And what happens when you put all of those personalities together,” Joe Russo explained. “I also like the idea of villains having to team up with heroes. Anth and I like complicated relationships between heroes and villains, we like villains who believe they’re heroes in their own stories, so it’s all sort of built into this notion of Secret Wars. To execute something on the scale of Infinity War was directly related to the dream of Secret Wars, which is even larger in scale.”

His brother Anthony added, “It would be the biggest movie you could possibly imagine, so that’s what really excites us about the story — the ambition of it is even bigger than the ambition of the Infinity Saga.”

While the Hickman Secret Wars deals with the multiverse, incursions, and combining worlds into a singular universe, the original Secret Wars was more of a tournament of champions than anything else.

Marvel Studios’ upcoming film slate includes Captain America: Brave New World (February 14th, 2025), Thunderbolts* (May 5th, 2025), The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25th, 2025), Blade (November 7th, 2025), Avengers: Doomsday (May 1st, 2026), and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 7th, 2027).

Stay tuned to ComicBook.com’s Comic-Con hub for the latest news and updates out of SDCC 2024.