Kevin Feige just made it official: Nova is a Marvel Studios movie.
Feige confirmed the news to Brandon Davis in an interview on the Comic-Con show floor, after Marvel’s Hall H panel came and went without a word about the project.
Responding to what has been said officially about the Nova reports, Feige answered: “Not a damn thingā adding, āBut it’s a movie.”
That’s the first on-record confirmation from Marvel Studios itself.
Until this weekend, everything Nova rested on reporting: the WGA directory listing I covered on July 8, and Deadline confirming five days later that Michael Waldron is developing a Nova feature and eyeing the director’s chair.
What Feige confirmed, and what he didn’t
Nova is a movie, not the Disney+ series Marvel spent years developing. That’s it. No director, no cast, no dates, and Feige didn’t publicly address Waldron, whose involvement remains Deadline’s reporting for now.
Marvel also hasn’t put a name on which Nova, though every piece of the development history says Richard Rider, and it had better stay that way.
Nova skipping the Hall H stage tracks with early development.
As I said when Deadline’s story broke: a project this early almost never makes the Comic-Con stage, but Feige loves a cosmic tease. He saved this one for the show floor.
Two years ago, Feige told the same reporter Nova was a show
Back in July 2024, Feige told the very same Brandon Davis that Nova was happening with Richard Rider as “a show, yeah, yeah,” and that it was a few years away. Two years later, same interviewer, and the answer flipped to a movie.
Davis has been pulling Nova updates out of Feige since 2018, when Feige told him the character had “immediate potential” during the Infinity War press rounds.
Eight years of asking finally produced a straight answer, and that answer confirms the trajectory I’ve been reporting: the Disney+ version is dead, killed by budget math when Disney slashed MCU streaming spending, and the character got promoted to theatrical instead.
Waldron, Powell, and what comes next
Per Deadline, Waldron, the Avengers: Doomsday, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Loki writer, is penning the script and wants to direct if the project moves forward.
He’s also already on record about his leading man: I’ve laid out the full case for why Glen Powell just went from wishful thinking to the frontrunner.
Marvel’s Hall H panel kept its focus on the theatrical slate: Ryan Gosling’s Ghost Rider, Black Panther 3, and Avengers: Doomsday, which hits theaters December 18.
A cosmic hero whose origin was set up by Xandar’s destruction at the start of Infinity War now has a clear runway on the other side of Doomsday. The road to Annihilation starts here. Stay tuned.
