As you would expect, Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige has been making the promotional rounds for Iron Man 3, and, as you would expect, he’s been asked about everything Marvel. Well, he’s answered a lot of questions, so we’ll tour the Internet and the newsstand to give you the choicest info tidbits and how we read them.
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch:
Joss Whedon’s teasing that he was working on adding a brother and sister pair into the script for Avengers 2, fans immediately thought of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Entertainment Weekly asked Feige point blank about it, and his answer was noncommittally-committal:
I’m not confirming or denying. The draft could change six months from now.
Our Read:
Either they are in the script now but there’s a chance they might not make it to the final draft, or they are not in the script right now but might be sometime in the future. Maybe.
Doctor Strange:
The Sorcerer Supreme has been consider by many fans a mortal lock on a Phase III debut since Feige was asked about him by MTV in January. Back then, going by his phasing, I thought the only thing he confirmed was that a Dr. Strange film was in the works–which was common knowledge.
Well, Collider brought the Master of the Mystic Arts up during their time with Feige, and the got….another quasi-confirmation:
Dr. Strange is something that I talk about often and it’s sort of next up for us to dig into and explore. Our executive producer of Iron Man 3, having done Captain America: The First Avenger and as that was finishing he started working on the bones that would become Iron Man 3, and now that he’s finished with Iron Man 3, he’s working on the bones that would become Doctor Strange. Now that Iron Man 3 is finished, some of our quote-unquote spare time is going to be devoted to trying to crack Strange.
That was enough to have Collider has when the film was coming out. They got another non-committal answer they took as gospel-ish:
As we look past 2015, past Avengers 2 and Ant-Man, I think Dr. Strange should be one of the next movies in the years following that.
He also mentioned in the print version of Entertainment Weekly (which wasn’t reproduced online, I believe) that he “would love” Dr. Strange to be a part of Phase III.
Our Read:
Any film that someone is going to dedicate “some” of their “spare time” to developing is not a dead solid lock for being made. Again, I’d love to see a Dr. Strange film, and hope it does eventually get made, but I just don’t think that we are there yet.
Daredevil,The Punisher, Blade, and Ghost Rider:
When these characters reverted back to Marvel, their fans rejoiced. Now their favorite characters, whose films ranked from “Good” to “Oh my God no!” would be back in house and have a chance of finally being done right.
Um, no, not really. In the print version of Entertainment Weekly, Feige addressed these characters, and the prognosis doesn’t look good:
Whenever a character comes back to us, it’s usually because because the other studios don’t want to make the movies anymore–and that usually means the [previous] movies may not have been particularly well received. They all have potential, but we’re not going to say “We got it back–make it!”
Let’s face it, with only two films a year and a interconnected universe they really don’t fit well in, having these characters in films was a remote possibility to start with. Feige is just confirming something we really already knew.
But don’t give up all hope, fans! When Entertainment Weekly asked Feige about the possibility of Marvel superheroes appearing on the proposed Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show, he was open to the possibility:
If that works the way everyone expects it to work I think that would open up another avenue, another outlet for some of those characters. Maybe they guest star, I don’t know. I think they’re avoiding the cameo of the week on that show, which is very smart.
Our take:
If we ever see these characters on the big screen again, it won’t be for a long, long time. Unless they start making more than two films a year, Marvel Studios’ dance card is filled up until 2016 at the earliest, and there are many other Marvel properties that haven’t had a shot at the spotlight. However, DC/Warners has had a lot of success with television offerings from their characters, so there is an audience there. Daredevil and the Punisher are made for TV. Blade had his shot there, so he might be out of luck. And Ghost Rider is probably too costly to get made on a network budget. But I have to agree FBOL editor Rich Drees and say that Daredevil–and maybe the Punisher–could find a home on ABC, after an appearance or two on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Latino Review:
El Mayimbe over at Latino Review likes to play it up that Marvel Studios has it out for his website. How true is this? Let’s go to Peter Sciretta over at SlashFilm for the answer:
Peter Sciretta: You’re a very internet-savvy guy and it seems like you’re reading everything… There’s a lot of sites up there reporting leaks or rumors or sometimes even misinformation. I wanted to get your thoughts on “How does Marvel deal with this” in an age when sharing information on the internet is becoming unstoppable.
Kevin Feige: What are you talking about? Latino Review?
Nobody specifically. Really just interested in how Marvel Studios is evolving to handle the internet as a whole…
How would you “punish” them if you were us?
Its an interesting question. I think the only thing you could probably do is exclude them — don’t give them access. Don’t invite them to set visits, to junkets. But I don’t know, info is always going to get out there and someones always going to be posting it.Here’s what I will say, since X-men one frankly, where a photo was stolen off a wardrobe thing and it was the very first look of Hugh Jackman in costume as him under flourescents… it looked awful. (Laughs) It was just like “Oh, this is the world we are living in. This is the reality.” So we’ve always just accepted it. Spy pictures will leak and we used to try to run ahead and put out a cool picture first. Now if we have a cool picture we will put it out, but if we don’t, that’s okay.
Misinformation… You know, it gets a little annoying when somebody is like “This is what’s happening! This is what Kevin Feige is doing!” It’s annoying when they are right and it’s equally annoying when they are wrong, because everybody passes it. “Planet Hulk is the next thing” and everybody talks about it and you’re just like “Okay, but you’ll be disappointed if you’re expecting it.”
Shane Black: (smirking) It’s like Iron Man flying off to see The Guardians at the end of this one…
You read that everywhere.
Kevin Feige: Exactly, but then again, nobody knew about Redford until we announced it. Nobody knew about what you know now having seen Iron Man 3, so as long as there are secrets that big that are still being kept, I know it’s nobody in the inner circle. Does that make sense?
Our Take:
See how Feige automatically went to Latino Review as the culprit? And how the examples he and Shane Black are rumors that El Mayimbe reported on? I think this might be the one time where El Mayimbe is right. I also think it means that you have to take any Marvel rumor coming from El Mauimbe with an industrial-sized grain of salt. Because A) his sources are far removed from Marvel’s “inner circle” and B) Marvel could very well be feeding him false information to discredit him.
