Kevin Feige Talks Captain Marvel, TV Characters In Movies, Spider-Man, Guardians On Earth, One-Shots And More
Last night I attended an event where Marvel head Kevin Feige and Avengers producer Jeremy Latchem were in attendance answering questions about Avengers: Age of Ultron and the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You can read everything they said about plotting the Infinity Stones in the first two and upcoming phase three of the MCU, and where they are headed in The Avengers: Infinity War Parts 1 and 2 in our other post. In this post you can find all the interesting answers that didn't fit thematically in the other post:
Why didn't Captain Marvel have a cameo at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron?Kevin Feige: It was in the script at one point, it might have been one draft. Was it... It might have just been Captain Marvel. And we shot a plate and thought we may add her in there but the truth is it just didn't seem appropriate to have this new person in a new costume come out of nowhere at the end of this story. It would have been a disservice to, what by the time the movie was coming out, a character people already knew was coming anyway.Jeremy Latchem: Really early in development there was a notion of there being a ton of new people. But then it was like, we haven't really introduced them, we don't know where they are going to come from, and Joss really didn't love the idea. It was an early discussion and then it just became Captain Marvel. And then that felt weird, to just have one new person and the guys go "what?"Kevin Feige: And also what does Captain America say? 'They're not the 27 Yankees'. Well if Captain Marvel is there, what are we saying about her? The notion that they need to be, certainly Wanda and Vision, and to a lesser extent Falcon and Rhodey, need tolearn what it means to be a team, even if the most dysfunctional team in the history of teams.
Will The Marvel television characters or storylines ever appear in the Marvel movies?Kevin Feige: I think its inevitable as we're plotting the movies going forward and they're plotting the shows. The schedules do not always quite match up to make that possible. Its easier for them, because they are more nimble and faster to produce things, which is one of the reasons you see the repercussions of Winter Soldier or Age of Ultron in the shows. But going forward as there continues to be more shows and casting such great actors as they have, particularly with Daredevil, that may occur. But a lot of it is, by the time we start doing a movie they might be midway through (filming) a season and by the time the movie comes out they'll be done with their second season and starting a third season. So finding timing on that isn't always easy.Would they keep the casting from a Marvel television show if the character appears in a movie?Kevin Feige: Probably, it'd probably be a cool thing to do. (laughs) But that particular scenario has not come up yet.
How does it feel to be able to include Spider-Man in the MCU?Kevin Feige: Making that agreement with Amy and Mike and Tom Rothmans at Sony was great and really amazing. On a personal level making these movies it means a lot because you can do great things with Spider-Man and he can serve a great purpose in our universe, and thats where he belongs. Thats what was unique about him in the comics is not that he was the only superhero in the world, it was that he was a totally different kind of superhero when compared against the other ones in the Marvel universe. ... It means a lot and now we better not screw it up.How did they deal with inserting Spider-Man into the plan they already had leading towards Infinity War?Kevin Feige: The short answer is: the most important thing is the stand alone movie, relaunching Spider-Man with a stand alone movie with a new storyline that fits into this universe – thats job number one for us. And as is the case, the connectivity is great but it doesn't drive the train. That being said, if I understand what you're asking, we had... this has been a dream of ours for a long time, and we always had contingency plans should you know — which we always do anyways. Are we going to be able to make another movie with this actor? If we are then we'll do this, if not, we're going to do this. If we get the rights to a certain character that'd be great, then we'd do this, if not, we'd do this. So we always sort of operate with those alternate timelines available and are ready to shift if something happens.
When will Guardians of the Galaxy cross over with the earth bound Marvel heroes?Kevin Feige: Well, its a good question. And certainly Thanos and the Infinity stones are the connection between all those movies and especially Guardians. So I do think they'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.
How does Howard The Duck make it back to Earth?Kevin Feige: Does Howard The Duck want to come to Earth? I don't know, It didn't work out too well last time he came to earth.
When will Marvel One Shots short films return?Kevin Feige: We talk about that a lot actually, because when you have tables like that (lots of potential storylines, most unexplored in the finished film), and we go, What are we going to do with Howard? What are we going to do with Cosmo? We should do a one shot with Michael Pena. I mean, the universe is big. We're moving up to three movies a year and I'm not sure how much beyond that we can go so the one shots are great for: oh we have this great idea, wouldn't it be fun to see... We talk about it a lot. We're a relatively small team. We're comfortable doing three movies a year so its just about finding the time and the place. But we have a backlog of ideas.
When will we get more casting announcements for Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2?Kevin Feige: I think it will be pretty quickly. There will be a slew of casting announcements over the next few months. Before the end of the year on those two films and some other films.
You can watch the entire 26 minutes of the Kevin Feige / Jeremy Latchem Q&A over here.