This past Wednesday Marvel proved that, in spite of it all, it can still demand a good grip of online attention when it managed to get the internet voraciously watching 27 chairs get laid out in a row for over five hours. How much of the internet? A lot of the internet.
Deadline reports that the Doomsday cast announcement pulled in over 275 million views over its runtime, and 3.1 million mentions across social media–trumping the view records the studio previously established for the first Deadpool & Wolverine trailer. 24 hours after it dropped, and we were all still making rather silly jokes about chairs, the livestream remained the #2 trending stream on Youtube. Apparently no one just wanted to relive the magic when Marvel themselves condensed the whole thing down to under two minutes to post on Twitter.
#AvengersDoomsday. Now in production. pic.twitter.com/syykJ57W1l
— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) March 26, 2025
Considering much of the general doom-and-gloom there has been about Marvel’s output at the moment–a general malaise in the post-Endgame pivot to Disney+ combined with the recent sting of Captain America: Brave New World being met to middling reviews–it speaks to the studio’s ability to maintain much of that grip it’s had on pop culture over the past almost 20 years now. Perhaps any other studio with the reckless confidence to make people tune in for over five hours to see fold up chairs and a tiny glimpse of Robert Downey Jr. may have crashed and burned, and yet here we are.
And yet we may still be, if Marvel has anything to say about it. Doomsday‘s oddball cast mix–two returning Avengers A-Listers, the Fantastic Four, 95% of the main cast of the upcoming Thunderbolts, a random chunk of Fox X-Men stars, and then a few stalwart MCU mainstays–immediately left fans thinking that there may be more to come, either for Doomsday or inevitably for the multiversal shenanigans of Secret Wars, and the studio itself seems to be indicating that there will be.
“That’s what you call a deep bench of talent…actually it’s more like a row, but an extra long one…that must be it…right?,” Downey Jr. wrote in the comments of his Instagram post about the venture, only for Marvel Studios to respond shortly after:
“There’s always room for more…”
How long can they make us watch chairs this time?
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
English (US) ·