Anthony Russo Says Avengers Doomsday Still Hides Cast Names

Anthony Russo said Avengers: Doomsday still has unnamed stars, and that the roster is so large he loses track of who Marvel has revealed. He said it at a New York Q&A after an Avengers Endgame: Encore screening, with the comments out on September 25.

Marvel’s own film page already names 30 actors. Endgame Encore is back in theaters with new footage aimed straight at December 18. The leftover names are less a vault than a list that even the director cannot hold in his head.

Russo Says the Doomsday Cast Is Still Incomplete

Russo directed Doomsday with his brother Joe Russo, as they did Endgame. He did not tease a single extra name. He said the problem was size, and that he could no longer sort public names from private ones without stopping himself.

The cast is so large, and we’ve announced some of the cast, and we haven’t announced some of the cast. I get confused myself over who we’ve announced and not announced, so I have to just slow down.

Anthony Russo, co-director, Q&A after an Avengers Endgame: Encore screening

That is not how event films usually sell mystery. A director who has to slow down so he does not mix the two piles is managing a filing cabinet, and one bad slip on a carpet would name the rest. He also said the new beat at the end of Encore is “where Doomsday is born,” tying Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter’s last dance to the film that follows.

He told Marvel.com the brothers would not rip up Endgame to plant that seed. “We weren’t going to mess with what that movie is,” he said. The new scenes sit on top of the 2019 cut and point forward, which is the same method now being used on the cast list: add, withhold, repeat.

Who Has Marvel Named for Doomsday So Far?

The studio’s film page still publishes Marvel’s listed Doomsday cast as 30 actors, headed by Robert Downey Jr. as Victor von Doom. Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are on it. So are Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Paul Rudd, Tom Hiddleston, Florence Pugh, and the Fantastic Four of Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

The Fox-era X-Men bloc is already public too: Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Kelsey Grammer, Alan Cumming, and Channing Tatum. Wakanda and Talokan names on the same page include Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Tenoch Huerta Mejia, and Mabel Cadena. Simu Liu, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Lewis Pullman, Hannah John-Kamen, Danny Ramirez, Kathryn Newton, and Kelsey Grammer’s Beast round out the posted roster.

NAMED BLOCS VERSUS NAMES STILL OFF THE PAGE

Those 30 names already mix three movie universes on one call sheet. Russo’s confusion is easier to believe once the page is read as a pile, not a poster.

Extra Footage Inside Endgame Encore

Encore returned to theaters on September 25, seven years after Endgame opened, with new material Marvel says sets up Doomsday. Russo told the studio site he still remembers the 2019 opening-night noise when Steve Rogers lifted Mjolnir and Carol Danvers tore through the sky. The rerelease is meant to put that feeling back in a room before the new film arrives.

The added ending pushes one beat past Steve and Peggy’s dance. Loki arrives, and Russo said that is the moment Doomsday starts. Premium screenings in IMAX and Infinity Vision get a further sneak peek. Disney has been selling Infinity Vision as its own large-screen stamp, and the company said at CineEurope that more than 7,500 screens had applied for the badge.

Marvel’s own account put the encore in theaters as a straight line into the new film.

This is the encore.

Relive the experience when Avengers Endgame: Encore returns to theaters September 25. Tickets now available for IMAX and Infinity Vision screens: https://t.co/6pjMpct4UL pic.twitter.com/Ekb5b9on1o

— Marvel Entertainment (@Marvel) August 25, 2026

Screening reports have also described extra Doomsday-facing material in those premium tags, including TVA texture around Loki’s visit. Treat that as what people in the room say they saw, not as a new official roll call. The point is the method: the rerelease is already doing the announcing that a cast list is not.

Is Hugh Jackman in Avengers Doomsday?

Marvel has not put Hugh Jackman or Ryan Reynolds on the 30-name page. It has put them on a stage, in a bit, asking to be let in. At D23 on August 14, Downey and Evans walked out with Hayley Atwell. Marvel’s recap says Hayley Atwell will be returning as Peggy Carter, standing next to Evans as Steve Rogers. That sentence is official. Her name is still missing from the movie page that lists everyone else.

Jackman beamed in by video. “I just wanted to check in totally unprompted,” he said, with Reynolds needling him from off screen. “Just wondering if you might need some help rounding out the cast? I’d love to join. And I don’t know, I might be able to convince Ryan to appear in Avengers: Doomsday.”

The same recap then lists the film’s stars and does not add either man. Kevin Feige did not stop the panel to say yes. Atwell’s happy-ever-after joke landed, Evans said they should have known better, and the official list stayed where it was. If Russo cannot remember who has been announced, this is why: the studio will confirm a person on a stage and still leave them off the page that Google reads.

Atwell’s own line at D23 was the tell. “Now, we know that there’s nothing this crowd loves more than a happy ever after,” she said. Evans answered that Steve was so close to getting his at the end of Endgame. The encore’s new ending is the studio showing that the dance does not hold. Holding Atwell off the 30-name list is the same trick in casting form.

Captain Marvel and Hulk Are Still Unlisted

A short set of original-era names is still missing from Marvel’s page, and those are the ones a searcher actually types. None of this confirms they are in the movie. It only shows how much connective tissue Marvel left hanging, then declined to nail down.

STILL OFF MARVEL’S LIST

• Hayley Atwell: Named at D23 as Peggy Carter in the film, still absent from the 30-name page.
• Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds: Asked on camera at D23 to join; Marvel’s written list did not move.
• Brie Larson and Iman Vellani: The Marvels ends by pushing into mutant ground, which is the conflict Doomsday is built on, and neither is posted.
• Mark Ruffalo: Banner’s last mid-credits beat with Shang-Chi and Captain Marvel is still unresolved on the official roster.
• Benedict Cumberbatch: Multiverse of Madness ends with Clea recruiting Strange to handle an incursion, the kind of collision Doomsday is selling, and he is unlisted.
• Tom Holland and Jeremy Renner: Both were absent from the March 2025 chair livestream; Renner later posted Hawkeye gear while Winston Duke said extra photography was underway, which is a tease, not a credit.
• Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin: The Russos said those X-Men “feed into this movie in a very meaningful way.” Berry has said fans should “keep waiting, because it’s not going to be there.”

Asked at Comic-Con about Captain Marvel and Wanda Maximoff, the Russos would not shut the door and pointed to an end-credit scene. That is the other half of the irony. The names people argue over are not deep cuts. They are the people Marvel has spent a decade teaching audiences to expect, then declined to type onto a webpage.

Joe Russo and Anthony Russo have also said they want to surprise themselves about who these people are now, including the choice to put Downey in Doom’s mask after Tony Stark’s last snap. Russo told Marvel.com they shot that Endgame pickup on the stage across from the Paramount lot where Downey first read for Iron Man. The new film is being sold as the place that feeling goes next. The unlisted names are how the studio keeps the feeling from peaking in September.

Endgame Encore Takes $3.8 Million on Thursday

The rerelease is not a side note. Exhibitor Relations posted Thursday preview sales of $3.8 million for Encore, ahead of the $3.4 million Thursday take for the recent Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith reissue. Studio estimates put the weekend in the $25 million to $28 million range. The original Endgame once held the domestic preview record at $60 million, a mark Spider-Man: Brand New Day later passed.

THURSDAY PREVIEWS FOR THE ENCORE AND ITS COMPS

Those Encore tickets are buying Marvel a memory reset. Russo said the original film landed months before COVID changed the habit of going out, and that putting Endgame back in a theater has a layer of power for that reason. He also said audiences will walk into Doomsday already carrying old feelings, and that the brothers intend to use that store of feeling to go somewhere new. Holding names in reserve is how you keep a seven-year-old rerelease pointed at a December date instead of at nostalgia for its own sake.

December 18 Still Has Names in Reserve

Doomsday opens on December 18, 2026, the same date as Dune: Part 3. Avengers: Secret Wars is dated December 17, 2027. Doomsday tickets already on sale sit beside an official list that is, by Russo’s own word, unfinished.

HOW THE NAMES HAVE DRIPPED

1. March 2025: Marvel names a large block of actors by showing on-set chairs in a livestream, and leaves several original Avengers off the furniture.
2. July 2026: San Diego Comic-Con plays Doomsday footage; the Russos keep Captain Marvel and Wanda in the maybe column and point to credits.
3. August 14, 2026: D23 puts Atwell on stage as Peggy Carter and lets Jackman ask for a job the written list still will not give him.
4. September 24, 2026: Encore previews take $3.8 million, with new footage Marvel says feeds Doomsday.
5. September 25, 2026: Russo says some of the cast is still unannounced, and that he gets confused about which pile is which.

The March chairs, the Comic-Con dodge, the D23 ask, and the Encore tags are the same machine. Russo’s Q&A did not open a new mystery so much as admit the machine has more names than a person can track. December 18 will sort the list. Until then Marvel is selling the gaps, and the director has already said he cannot keep them straight.