Well, it’s official Anthony Mackie’s Captain America is heading to the big screen. According to Deadline, Mackie has closed a deal with Marvel Studios to play the title character in Captain America 4. The film will be written by The Falcon and the Winter Soldier head writer and creator Malcolm Spellman and staff writer Dalan Musson.
Marvel is being typically tight-lipped about plot details, so we don’t know anything about the story yet. That said, with Spellman and Musson writing the action movie, we can probably take a guess and say that the film will continue some of the story threads introduced in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
That TV series saw Sam Wilson (Mackie) grappling with the burden of becoming the new Captain America and questioning whether the world was ready for an African American to wield the shield. Along the way, he teamed up with his old frenemy Bucky Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier, to take down the Flagsmashers – a group of disenfranchised people displaced when the Avengers brought back those ‘dusted’ by Thanos snapping his fingers.
In the dramatic series finale, Sam decided to embrace the mantle of Captain America and took up the shield properly. Speaking at the time to Variety Mackie spoke about the importance of representation and what it meant as a black man to be the new Captain America.
“A friend of mine is a teacher down in Homestead, Florida, and she works with special needs kids,” Mackie said. “She’s like, ‘What are you doing? You’re gonna hurt yourself.’ And the kid tells her, ‘Well, Captain America looks like me now, so I need to get in shape if he needs my help.’ And I thought that was the coolest thing.”
There’s no release date for Captain America 4 and we don’t know if it’ll be part of Phase 4 or if it’ll be part of a hypothetical Phase 5. If you want to know more about the MCU then check out our guide on how to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in order.