Amid all of the Iron Man 3 hype, Collider spoke with Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige about the Shane Black-directed movie and how it's paving the way for the hotly-anticipated 2015 follow-up to The Avengers. Praising writer-director Joss Whedon's (unfinished) script and its promising character interactions, Feige also implies that The Avengers 2 is just a tentative title for the sequel.
“Well Joss has said it on the record in the past, it’s not about going bigger,” Feige says. “It’s not about, ‘And this time there will be five more explosions in this section!’ I mean certainly you want to up the ante, you want to exceed people’s expectations, but I think there are various ways of doing that and Iron Man 3 is a very, very good test for us of doing exactly that. The first movie we make after The Avengers has our hero spending more time out of the suit than any of the other movies; that seems potentially counterintuitive to some people, but that was exactly why we did it. We didn’t want to say, ‘Oh now it has to be bigger and he fights 100 people in armored suits.’ Yeah the action sequences are big, there’s more action in Iron Man 3 than in the other two movies, but at the same time it’s a much deeper and a more exploratory character journey on the heels of our biggest spectacle with The Avengers.”
“We’ve been consistent in talking about this leading up to The Avengers: what is most interesting to us and why we hired Joss Whedon in the first place is the interaction between the characters. That’s more fun to us than the massive action scenes that are gonna have to come with it that we’re gonna have to figure out, and we’re gonna have to be clever and raise the bar, but already the scenes that Joss has of just the characters sitting around and interacting are hilarious and are awesome and are moving and a notch or two above the first movie, and to me that’s where you wanna top yourself.”
When Collider asked if The Avengers 2 will have a subtitle, Feige teased, “I would say that if you look at the trend of our upcoming movies, Iron Man 3 is the only one that has a number. I like Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi instead of Star Wars 2, Star Wars 3.”
Marvel Studios already describes their highly-anticipated sequel to the No. 3 highest grossing film of all time, “Marvel's The Avengers,” as another “big cinematic event.” And expected to feature the reassembly of iconic Marvel super heroes Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow & Nick Fury taking on a new unexpected enemy, new additions to the superhero team up of a lifetime are possible.
Expecting reprisals from Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L. Jackson, and directed by Joss Whedon from a screenplay by Joss Whedon, “Marvel’s The Avengers” sequel is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series “The Avengers,” first published in 1963 and a comics institution ever since. And set for release May 1, 2015, the film is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. In addition to the sequel, Marvel Studios will release a slate of films based on the Marvel characters including “Iron Man 3” on May 3, 2013; “Thor: The Dark World ” on November 8, 2013; “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” on April 4, 2014; and “Guardians of the Galaxy” on August 1, 2014.