'We will draw inspiration': Joe and Anthony Russo reveal which of Marvel's Secret Wars comic book series have influenced Avengers 5 and 6's plot

• The Russo brothers have revealed which 'Secret Wars' comic book series inspired the next two Avengers movies
• Two different comic runs, which were released in the 1980s and 2010s, bear the 'Secret Wars' title
• The films are influenced by both literary works

Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars' cumulative story isn't influenced by one of the latter's comic book namesakes over the other, the Russo brothers have revealed.

Speaking to TechRadar for their new movie The Electric State, which lands on Netflix this Friday (March 14), Joe and Anthony Russo revealed that they'll "draw inspiration" from the 1980s and 2010s comic book series that bear the 'Secret Wars' moniker.

Avengers: Secret Wars is one of two Marvel films that the siblings will direct over the next two years. And, with two different comic runs called 'Secret Wars' – the Jim Shooter-written one, which ran from May 1984 to April 1985, and the Jonathan Hickman-penned version that released between May 2015 and January 2016 – fans have wondered which series will directly impact the fifth and sixth Avengers movies.

"Well, we always create our own version of the story," Joe Russo replied when I asked if they sought inspiration from one comic run over the other. "So, we use the comics as loose inspiration.

"But, you know, I grew up on the original run. That's something that got me into Marvel comic books. The Hickman run is also fantastic [and they're] very different from each other in a lot of ways, so we'll draw inspiration from both of them."

What can Marvel's Secret Wars comics tell us about the plot of Avengers 6?

Projects developed by Marvel Studios are secretive at the best of times. However, I suspect the Disney subsidiary is taking things to a whole new level from a confidentiality perspective when it comes to Avengers: Doomsday, which lands in theaters in May 2026, and its sequel film.

Well, if you ignore the most recent leak concerning the next two Avengers movies, anyway. Oh, and depending what you'll read into the Russos' response to my query about which Marvel heroes will appear in Doomsday and Secret Wars.

So, what do Shooter and Hickman's literary works tease about Secret Wars' overarching narrative? (Spoilers follow for both comic book series and, potentially, Avengers: Secret Wars!)

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Shooter's '80s run, whose art was produced by Mike Zeck and Bob Layton, tells the tale of The Beyonder, a cosmic entity who becomes fascinated by the heroes and villains that inhabit the Marvel universe. Determined to find out who is the best superpowered being of them all, he transports them to a distant galaxy to do battle on a world called *ahem* Battleworld.

As for the limited series from Hickman and artist Esad Ribić, it involves the destruction of the Marvel Multiverse due to an Incursion – a cataclysmic event that causes various universes to collide and destroy each other. The fragments of these realities that remain are stitched together to form a new version of Battleworld, which is ruled over by the God Emperor iteration of The Fantastic Four's iconic villain Doctor Victor von Doom.

With Robert Downey Jr set to play the Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) version of Doom, it seems likely that Avengers: Secret Wars will primarily pull from Hickman and Ribic's comic series. That much is made even clearer by the fact that we've been introduced to Incursions in other Marvel films, such as Doctor Strange 2, too, so this won't be a foreign concept to cinemagoers when Doomsday and Secret Wars are released.

That doesn't mean we can discard the '80s era story, though. That comic series saw the introduction of Spider-Man's classic black suit, which paved the way for Venom in the comics. With Spider-Man 4 sandwiched between the next two Avengers films, Doomsday could pick up a loose plot thread from Spider-Man: No Way Home – i.e., a piece of Venom's alien symbiote being left in a bar – we could see it bind to Tom Holland's Peter Parker, who might use said black suit in Secret Wars. Looking further ahead, it may also set the stage for Spider-Man 5, which could explore Parker's dark side, liberation from the symbiote suit, and even lead to the creation of the MCU's Venom.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, but I'll refrain from spoiling anything else about both comic runs and their Marvel Phase 6 movie namesake. Principal photography on Doomsday will reportedly begin in April, so don't be surprised if we start to hear more rumors about its cast and plot in the weeks and months ahead.

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