News: Marvel Mastermind Teases Phase Three News

Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has offered up many Marvel Cinematic Universe details on the eve of the digital and DVD/Blu-ray release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, as he spoke with many outlets. Dark Horizons offered up a breakdown of the key elements of discussion.  

Captain America: Civil War

"It's very much, in a certain way, the completion of a Captain America trilogy. I think one day you'll look back and watch and it'll be one of the most unique and different trilogies ever around a single character."

Small Screen Crossovers

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Sif (Jaimie Alexander) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) have all showed up on Agents of SHIELD. Will we ever see the reverse?

"I think that's inevitable at some point as we're plotting the movies going forward and they're doing the shows. It's easier for them. They're more nimble and faster and produce things quicker than we do, which is one of the main reasons you see the repercussions of Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron in the show.

Going forward and certainly as they begin to do more shows and cast them with such great actors as they have - particularly Daredevil - that that may occur. A lot of it is by the time we start doing a movie, they'd be midway through a season; by the time it comes out they'd be done with the second, starting the third season. Finding timing on that is not always easy."

Spider-Man

"I think we can do great things with Spider-Man. I think Spider-man can serve great purpose in our universe and that's where he belongs. That was what was unique about him in the comics was not that he was the only superhero in the world; it's that he was a totally different kind of superhero when compared against all the other ones in the Marvel universe at the time.

The most important thing as a standalone is relaunching Spider-Man in his own standalone movie with his own storylines that fits into this universe. That is job number one for us."

Other Non-Marvel Studios Controlled Characters

Feige also explained how they had contingency plans in case they didn't get Spider-Man from Sony. He went on to mention that such plans are in effect for pretty much all their characters they have, but don't yet own the right to for cinematic interpretations:

"We always had contingency plans, which we always do anyway. Are we going to be able to make another deal with this actor? If so, we're going to do this; if not, we're going to do this. If we get the rights to a certain character, that's great; we're going to do this. If not, we're going to do this.

We always sort of operate under those various alternate timelines available and ready to shift if something happens... The connectivity is great, but it doesn't drive the train."

Guardians/Avengers Teaming

"Certainly Thanos and the Infinity stones are the connection between all those movies and especially Guardians. So I do think there'll be more crossover into that sector of the Marvel literal universe.

When or if those specific characters start switching remains to be seen. And the Guardians 2 team just left for Atlanta on Monday to start that movie, so all the Guardians effort and thought is going to that — which is shaping up very nicely right now."

Captain Marvel

Apparently she was originally going to appear at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron:

"Very, very early in development, there was a notion that there could be a ton of new people. Then it was like, 'We haven't really introduced them. We don't know where they're gonna come from. Joss kind of did not love that idea... It was an early discussion. Then it became, 'We'll just see Captain Marvel.' Then that felt weird. Just to have one new person.

The truth is, it didn't seem appropriate to have this new person in a new costume just literally come out of nowhere at the end of the story. It would have been a disservice to what, by the time this movie was coming out, people knew was coming anyway... Part of it, too, is that Cap says, 'They're not the '27 Yankees.' If Captain Marvel is there, what are we saying about her? There's a notion that they — Wanda and Vision and, I think to a lesser extent, Falcon and Rhodey — need to learn what it means to be a team."

Avengers: Infinity War

Has the story been plotted out yet?

"In broad strokes. Sometimes in super-specific things. But, for the most part, in broad strokes that are broad enough and loose enough that if, through the development of four or five movies before we get to the culmination, as you say, we still have room to sway and to move and to go and to surprise ourselves in the place we end up."

Producer Jeremy Latcham added:

I think it definitely is an end of some version of the team that we've come to know as The Avengers. Who knows exactly what's going to happen yet in that film... It's not the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it is the end of part of it, for sure. We're still trying to sort out which parts that means."

Marvel One Shots

Feige also confirms that scheduling more than anything is what is currently preventing further Marvel One-Shot short films from going into production:

"We talk about them a lot!. We have characters like that that Jeremy is always talking about. 'When are we gonna do Howard?', 'When are we gonna do Cosmo?'. We are a relatively small team, now moving into three movies a year. It's just about finding the time and place to do that. But there's a backlog of ideas."

Source: Dark Horizons