If there is one person who is insanely busy in Hollywood at the moment, it’s Joss Whedon. After the massive success of Marvel’s The Avengers, Whedon was signed on by Marvel to act as creative consultant on the Phase Two movies as well as write and direct The Avengers 2.
Speaking with MTV, he gives some updates on the script for Avengers 2 which should be finished in “a couple of months”. In the interview, he also gives some insights into his thought process for the sequel: “Don’t go bigger; go deeper… All of these people have met, so you have that out of the way. Now you can spend your time just digging in — and by digging in, I mean with a scalpel, to cause pain.”
As anyone who has been following the intermittent updates from Whedon will know that the man is planning a more character-driven sequel, rather than trying to ‘top’ the original movie.
He also gives an update on his return to TV for the Avengers spin-off S.H.I.E.L.D.: “[We start filming] a week from Tuesday. You have to bring a bit of spectacle to [S.H.I.E.L.D.]; it’s got to be bigger than your average cop show. But at the end of the day, it’s about the peripheral people. It’s about the people on the edges of the grand adventures. The whole point of the show is that even with all these big things, the little things matter. It’s about people who don’t have super powers. There will be some people with powers, there will be FX, and there will be the spectacle of science-fiction storytelling — but all played on a very human, small level. That’s the appeal of the thing.”
And finally, Whedon goes on to say that he’s yet to see a cut of Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, but he did give some information about his role as Marvel’s Phase Two creative consultant: “I read all the scripts and I give notes on everything. I’ll look at cuts when they’re ready to show me. I’ll talk to directors if they want to. I try to make myself useful without being intrusive. I’ve gotten to be a part of all of them. That’s a dream job for a kid like me.”
Iron Man 3 is scheduled for release on April 26th in the UK and May 3rd in North America and sees Robert Downey Jr. back as Tony Stark / Iron Man alongside Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts) and Don Cheadle (Rhodey / War Machine). Newcomers to the cast include Ben Kingsley (Hugo) as The Mandarin, Guy Pearce (Prometheus) as Aldrich Killian, Rebecca Hall (The Town) as Maya Hansen, James Badge Dale (The Lone Ranger) as Eric Savin / Coldblood, Ashley Hamilton (Sunset Beach) as Jack Taggert / Firepower, Xuegi Wang (Bodyguards and Assassins) as Chen Lu and William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption) as Sal Kennedy.
In other Phase Two news, several websites are also reporting that James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy will start filming this summer at Shepperton Studios here in the UK, which was home to both Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The First Avenger.
Originally published January 11, 2013. Updated November 29, 2022.
