Kevin Feige spoke with CHUD about The Avengers and revealed some details on Captain America 2.
He has helped with ever Marvel film since X-Men in 2000 and directly produced the Marvel Studios in-house films ever since he was made Marvel's President of Production in 2007.
Here are highlights of the interview:
On the build-up to making an Avengers movie: "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. 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!"
On the post-credits scenes hinting at future films: "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 Hulk in The Avengers: "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 Avengers 2 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."
