Marvel plans to keep making movies until you're dead and your children are old

Marvel fans of a certain age, it's time to start worrying.

This film franchise is almost certainly going to outlive us. Not even our kids are safe to live to see the endgame.

Marvel has made no secret of its tendency to plan things long-term -- a merchandising executive once told me at Comic-Con that they get basic blueprints no less than five years in advance -- but from what we heard on Monday night, the scope of this thing is ... well, beyond the capabilities of mere humans.

Marvel Studios on Monday night hosted a one-of-a-kind "open house," a chance for reporters to stroll through its offices on the Disney lot in Burbank. After a short elevator ride, we were shown to a conference room surrounded in models and murals (even the ceiling was done in cosmic Marvel!) and anchored by a gray sectional couch with bright red pillows.

Our host: Brad Winderbaum, VP of production and development at Marvel and a producer and co-producer on multiple MCU films. Before showing us around the place, he took a question from assembled press.

Right out of the box: How far does this universe expand? Does it have legs beyond the conclusion of Phase Three with Infinity War?

And if you're a compulsively completist Marvel fan, his answer may make you want to star exercising and eating healthier:

"We're looking beyond that point, and beyond the point after that, and ... even the point after that."

Doing the math here: A dozen years will have gone by when we finally reach that first point, which unofficially comes in 2019 with Untitled Avengers Movie. If each "point" represents 12-plus years, then Winderbaum & Co. are looking ahead -- gulp -- to something like ... 2055.

Two thousand and fifty-five. Iron Man might be real by then, for crying out loud.

Now, to be fair, Winderbaum was riffing. Or was he? These Marvel people are nothing if not dutifully enigmatic. He did, however, go on to say that the MCU is being built to outlast even the Ancient Ones among us:

The best thing about working at Marvel ... is that you can't ever exhaust the characters [that you play with] in the giant sandbox that we get to play in. And even though we are coming close to a culmination of sorts, especially in terms of the Thanos story, just like Marvel comics have been around for like 70 years -- that speaks to the endurance of the characters and the longevity of stories within this universe. Hopefully we get to make movies for another 70 years!

Do yourself a favor and don't think about how old you will be in 70 years. Unlike most of Tony Stark's, that calculation doesn't end well.