The Hollywood trades are reporting that Marvel Studios has changed the release date for an as-yet-unrevealed superhero movie from May 16th, 2014 to August 1st, 2014. Speculation about the identity of the unnamed superhero movie has centered on Guardians of the Galaxy (see "'Guardians of the Galaxy' in 2014"), though Edgar Wright’s Ant Man movie is also a possibility (see "'Ant-Man' Test Reel"). The identity of the film is expected to be revealed at Comic-Con.
The reason for moving the film to August certainly makes sense in light of the heavy slate of action movie tentpoles already slated for the summer of 2014. Marvel’s Captain America 2 will start things off on April 4th (see "Russo Brothers in Talks for 'Captain America 2'"), followed by the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man reboot on May 2nd, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on May 23rd, Transformers 4 in June, and the X-Men: First Class sequel on July 18th.
The wild card (or cards) for the scheduling of comic book movies will be any potential DC Comics-inspired offerings, since, though Warner Bros. reportedly has a number of DC projects in development, no firm dates have been revealed for DC superhero movies beyond Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, The Man of Steel, which is set to debut on June 14th, 2013. Given the long lead times needed to produce these effects-heavy comic book-based tentpoles, Warners and DC will have to announce projects either at Comic-Con or shortly thereafter in order to have a chance to land a major superhero movie in theaters by the summer of 2014.
