Here’s some potentially exciting news for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Thor: Ragnarok screenwriter Eric Pearson revealing to CinemaBlend that he’s heard “whispers” that Marvel may be looking to revive its One-Shot series of short films.
“I think probably the drop in Blu-ray sales has hurt the One-Shots program — though I’ve heard whispers of it starting up again,” said Pearson, who penned the first three One-Shots – The Consultant, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer and Item 47. “I can’t confirm that at all, but I’ve definitely heard whispers of it. And I have a whole folder full of other One-Shots that I just came up with. And I was like, ‘Oh, this will be a fun eight to 12 pages!'”
The Marvel One-Shots started out as brief shorts attached to the home entertainment releases of the MCU movies, but gradually increased in size and scope with latter efforts Agent Carter and All Hail the King clocking in at around 15 minutes and featuring the likes of Hayley Atwell and Ben Kingsley. The last, All Hail the King, was attached to the Thor: The Dark World Blu-ray.
Pearson also went on to reveal that the original plan was to adopt the Pixar model of screening the shorts theatrically alongside Marvel’s cinema releases:
“When they first brought it to me I think their initial idea was to try and set up something like Pixar, where you could do a short film at the beginning with a lesser character, to kind of have fun, expand the universe, and test out the audience’s appetite for one of these more obscure characters. So that would obviously be very expensive, especially when things were so 3D-heavy at the time. So the test process was going to be, ‘Well, we’ll do some shorts for Blu-ray content.’ And that’s kind of how it started.”
With the sheer number of projects on Marvel’s slate, it’s understandable why the One-Shots fell off the radar, but their return would surely be welcomed by fans and as Pearson states, they would certainly make a good testing ground for some of the more obscure characters in the Marvel library.
