If this happens, it could make a lot of people really happy and have a lot of people complaining.
Deadline New York, the East Coast version of Deadline Hollywood gossip blog, is reporting that Joss Whedon is in “final negotiations” to direct the big screen adaptation of The Avengers comic book.
The film version is the ipso facto sequel to all of Marvel’s films from the last two years and the ones yet to come before The Avengers’ May 4, 2012 release date. Many of the stars of Marvel’s slate of films, including Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, are rumored to have signed on to reprise their roles in the team-up film.
Whedon has a relationship with Marvel as a comic book writer, yet not on any of the Avengers‘ titles. He has written Astonishing X-Men and Runaways for the comic book company. Plots from his X-men comic book made it into X-Men: The Last Stand and he did an uncredited rewrite on the first X-Men film.
His past experience on such genre-friendly TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse show his ability to juggle many interesting characters and be able to give them moments to shine. But this is usually chalked up to his writing ability, not his skill as a director. Also, those last two projects were cult hits yet ratings failures and his only film directing experience, the 2005 Firefly spin-off, Serenity, was a box office bomb. So while his legion of fans might be giddy with excitement, there is cause for concern.
I think that there are some concrete reasons as to why SERENITY didn’t do well in the theaters, but I don’t think that Whedon’s direction is one of them. Even putting my fandom if his work aside, I think that this is a good and logical choice.