Brothers and co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo made headlines this week thanks to a Q&A session they held at Wizard World Comic-Con New Orleans over the weekend. While they were there promoting the upcoming release, Captain America: Civil War, they also teased the massive size and scope of their next Marvel project, Avengers: Infinity War, offering a hint at how many characters will be in the two-part saga and how it'll place the spotlight on secondary Avengers characters.
They were quoted using the number "67" in reference to how many Marvel characters at the time were up on a board in their offices as they plan out Avengers 3 and 4 but in truth, that number is misleading.
Speaking with Collider during an IMAX screening of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Russos clarified a little of what they were trying to get across by saying that. Of course, 67 characters cannot - as we discussed here - get significant screen time, let alone a meaningful character story arc. Instead, it's 67 characters who may make an appearance in Marvel's biggest movie event to date.
“We were being figurative when we said [67 characters] and people took it as literal but there’s a lot of characters. Infinity War is meant to be the culmination of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe up to that point. It’s very ambitious in its scope, it wants to take everything that you’ve seen before and coalesce into some kinda of climactic ending. It’s complicated , ambitious storytelling…We’re not talking about lead characters, just people that make an appearance.”
“We start shooting both of them later this year in November and we’re primarily going to be based in Atlanta again. That’s where we’ll do out stage work and some exteriors. There will be locations from around the world involved as well. We actually relocate to Atlanta in late July to finish up pre-production there. We don’t come back to L.A. until the following June.”
“We’re shooting them concurrently, meaning that some days we’ll be shooting the first movie and some days we’ll be shooting the second movie. Just jumping back and forth. We won’t look like this next year.”
As for the status of the script, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely - who wrote all of the Captain Americas and Thor: The Dark World for Marvel as well - have a pair of outlines completed and have begun penning the first draft of Avengers: Infinity War - Part 1. The news goes to show how prepared Marvel Studios is for Phase 3 and how they've learned from the first two Phases. Everything seems to be meticulously planned out from the beginning this time, which helps explain how every Phase 3 movie already has writers and directors attached with the exception of 2019's Captain Marvel.
Next: 25 Movies Marvel Studios Should Consider For Phase 4
Captain America: Civil War will release on May 6, 2016, followed by Doctor Strange - November 4, 2016; Guardians of the Galaxy 2 - May 5, 2017; Spider-Man - July 28, 2017; Thor: Ragnarok - November 3, 2017; Black Panther - February 16, 2018; The Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 - May 4, 2018; Ant-Man and the Wasp - July 6, 2018; Captain Marvel - March 8, 2019; The Avengers: Infinity War Part 2 – May 3, 2019; Inhumans – July 12, 2019; and as-yet untitled Marvel movies on May 1, July 10 and November 6, 2020.
Source: Collider
Alternate Avengers: Infinity War logo design by Joe Steiner.