IRON MAN 3 Scribe Talks AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
Revealing that he knew about The Avengers: Age of Ultron a year before Marvel's announcement, Drew Pearce talks about Whedon's plans and how they won't be hindered by events in Iron Man 3.
In anticipation of next month's Blu-ray and DVD release of Iron Man 3, screenwriter Drew Pearce had a lengthy chat with SciFiNow about the film and Robert Downey Jr.'s next outing as Tony Stark alongside Earth's Mightiest in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. While Shane Black's film ended with (spoilers) Stark blowing up his suits & tossing his now unneeded arc reactor (end spoilers), Pearce assures Joss Whedon has a handle on where to take the character next. "We take his arc reactor out, but I think we also make a pretty definite statement that he is Iron Man," said the British writer. "And although Joss isn't part of the process as such, he saw all the cuts of the movie, so I've got to assume he knows exactly what he wants to do with Tony in [The Avengers: Age of Ultron] and how we've left [Tony Stark] is going to help that, not hinder it," Pearce offered.
Admitting that he knew about Marvel Studios' plan to announce The Avengers: Age of Ultron at San Diego Comic-Con, Drew Pearce explains that, “Obviously, Age of Ultron suggests that in Avengers 2 there will definitely be some level of, if not giant evil robots, then definitely a robotic or artificial intelligence entity. I may or may not have been excited about it for a year," he teased. "Not every aspect of Phase Two is planned already, but Joss has been thinking about it for a year and Kevin has been thinking about what Avengers 2 does since the first film. The scale I think they're going to reach for is going to be truly epic, which is incredible when you consider how epic Avengers was. But on a character level the story will actually be smaller, or at least more intimate. It's hard to put a list together of all the things Joss [Whedon] is good at as a writer, but definitely in the top five would be dealing with the shifting dynamics of a large group of characters," Drew Pearce assures.
Although Drew Pearce acknowledges that he doesn't know what capacity Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver will come into Age of Ultron, the writer believes, "The core of Avengers will still be our Avengers. There will, of course, be other characters in the mix, but I think what Joss is really good at is creating a family and then pulling them apart, and to that end he's got so much more to do with the family he established in Avengers. So I suspect that the first port of call in that movie will be kicking the shit out of those characters to see how they cope as a group."
Also, while it's been rumored and heavily implied that Tony Stark will be the creator of Ultron, Drew Pearce says, "There is a hell of a lot of rumors, though. Ultron may be something that appears in Guardians of the Galaxy, or it might appear in the Thor universe. I've read a lot of stuff online, and I don't think anyone has got close to the real plan yet." Speaking of the "real plan," an anonymous user on the 4chan boards claims to be a Marvel employee (with a pic to prove it) and has dropped major Age of Ultron plot points that he/she "overheard" at work. What do you think?
So far starring Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Cobie Smulders, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson and James Spader, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen in negotiations to join, The Avengers: Age of Ultron is directed by Joss Whedon from his screenplay, and is slated to begin production in March 2014 and release on May 1, 2015.