KEVIN FIEGE ON AVENGERS AND THE FUTURE OF MARVEL
KEVIN FIEGE ON
AVENGERS AND THE FUTURE OF MARVEL
Kevin Feige President of Marvel Studios |
As you know, The Avengers destroyed the box office in its
opening weekend pulling in $207 million and breaking the record for biggest
second weekend bringing in $105 million in the USA, while joining the exclusive
$1 Billion Dollar club.
In a recent interview
over at CHUD, Marvel President Kevin Feige talked about The Avengers 2 and when
it might happen, The Skrulls, offers up an interesting bit of information on
Captain America 2, and more!
The Skrulls |
On where the rights to THE SKRULLS stand:
“Yes, Skrulls have a big connection to Fantastic Four. So
there are some contractual limitations about who can do what when it comes to
Skrulls. Though that is not why we didn’t do Skrulls. There is already enough
going on in this movie. “
On how they came about CONNECTING THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE:
“I would say it happened in stages over the course of
production on Iron Man. We were tasked with making Iron Man and Hulk into
movies, by ourselves, in 2006/2007. And we were not owned by Disney at that
point – we were our own company – and if those movies did not work we would
have lost a lot. And the studio would not exist right now. It was sort of a
go-for-broke mentality that we had. And we believed in the way we wanted to
tell the stories, and how we wanted to bring Tony Stark in particular to life.
Chris Evans. Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo |
So that was the only thing we were working on, the only
thing we were focused on. And during development – I don’t remember who it was
– but some of the writers asked, “Hey we want to have an agent who is sort of
trailing Tony Stark, and is asking questions to add an air of mystery and
global consequence to what he’s doing. Can we use SHIELD?” And I said, no no,
you can’t do that. I said that as a knee-jerk reaction because that is what I
would always say when people writing Fantastic Four or X-Men or Spider Man or
whatever – I’m not saying they all asked for SHIELD, but many of them would ask
for something that wasn’t in their contract. So my knee-jerk was no no. But
then I thought, oh wait, you can! Of course you can! It’s ours! We have it!
Guardians of the Galaxy FanArt |
And that’s when Agent Coulson was added to Iron Man, and
having fun with what SHIELD stands for and that sort of thing. Then it was
shortly after that, that I was meeting with Sam Jackson’s people, just as part
of a general Hollywood meeting, and his people asked, “Anything for Sam?” And I
said, “You know, actually, in the comics they draw this character Nick Fury to
look like Sam.” And they said, “Yeah, Sam loves that. He loves all those
comics.” So I asked if he would want to come and put on an eye patch and work
with us for a few hours. They said he’d totally do it. So I said to Jon
[Favreau, director of Iron Man], let’s do this Nick Fury thing.
We’ll have him come to Tony Stark’s house at the end of the
credits. We didn’t know if it would work or if people would care, so we didn’t
want to muck up the movie itself with it. That might be confusing, like, “Who’s
this guy?” But we did think that for any fan hardcore enough to sit through six
minutes of credits, they’d get a little bonus of Nick Fury telling Tony that
he’s part of a bigger universe. And everybody went for it, whether they knew
who Nick Fury was or not because they knew who Sam Jackson was! What the heck
is he doing walking in at the end of this movie?!
And when Robert [Downey Jr] agreed to do a similar thing at
the end of The Incredible Hulk, it really solidified. Oh my god, these
different movies, with different kinds of trailers and commercials and
attitudes, but they’re connected? And that picked up so quickly and people were
so into it that we thought, wow, this could work. I think at Comic-Con 2006,
somebody asked if there could ever be an Avengers movie. And I said, well, I
don’t know.
But if you look at
the characters that Marvel Studios has the rights to — Iron Man, Thor, Captain
America, Hulk, Nick Fury. And the audience started getting very excited by that
notion. I had no idea we could actually do it when I said that in 2006. But
after the release of Iron Man, that opening weekend, Marvel sort of called and
said, “Okay. How many movies do you want to do, what order do you want to do
them, let’s do them.” So we announced the following Monday all these movies and
release dates. A couple of them shifted from the original announcement. But now
here we are in 2012.”
On the FUTURE OF HULK:
Spidey and Hulk FanArt |
“I think Joss [Whedon, writer-director of Avengers] is much
more eloquent about this than I am, but Hulk is seemingly more suited for an
ensemble piece were he can be the loose canon, the unpredictable bad boy. You
can’t get the same kind of moments necessarily when its a stand-alone movie and
everything is on [Bruce Banner's] shoulders.
Joss just said this earlier today: Bruce Banner spends all
his time saying, “I don’t want to turn into the Hulk, I don’t want Hulk to come
out.” But the audience wants the exact opposite! Obviously that is part of the
nature of Bruce Banner and that is a part of The Avengers, but he has evolved
to a point that he wouldn’t have been able to if we hadn’t taken him through
The Incredible Hulk. Now we find him a little more at piece with it all. And
it’s not until he meets Tony Stark and exposed to the other heroes of the
Avengers that he is willing to go for it – in that moment that we won’t spoil
here.”
On The AVENGERS 2 and when it will happen and CAPTAIN AMERICA 2:
“If we do an Avengers 2 it will be after [Iron Man 3, Thor
2, Captain America 2]. They have to grow, they have to change. What they’ve
gone through in this movie will impact their state of mind and where they stand
in their next movies. Then whatever they go through in those movies is going to
affect where we meet them in the next Avengers film. But I think people will be
surprised to see, as we go forward – particularly in Iron Man 3 – the notion of
how singular the stories can become. Iron Man 3 is a very singular Tony Stark
story. As is Thor 2. Cap, who is stuck in the modern day with no friends or
family, there will be some revelations of who is still alive from his days in
WWII, but SHIELD and Nick Fury are kind of his confidants right now. So of all
these movies, Captain America 2 will be most closely associated with Avengers.”
Who Will join this happy Avenger Family Next?? |
There is a definitely an air of excitement when it comes to
all the future projects of Marvel, and we looking forward to what lies ahead
for this company that is building something that’s quite spectacular.
Be sure too keep your eyes on our blog because we will be releasing our TOP Character as well as Cast picks for the future Marvel Cinematic Universe Films... So be sure you keep your eyes on FILM RAP!
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