In their latest magazine issue, SFX caught up with Marvel Comics’ Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada to discuss the road to Marvel's growing cinematic universe. Specifically teasing Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier leading up to the inevitable sequel to The Avengers, Quesada offers:
"It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens next," teases Quesada. "But personally I think that The Avengers now enhances the solo movies because it was so successful. Everyone has their favourite moment or character and now it’s like ’we’ve seen what you’ve got so show us some more.’"
With Iron Man 3 kicking off "phase 2" of Marvel's Cinematic Universe, Quesada promised that the Shane Black-directed film will be an improvement from 2010's Iron Man 2. "It’s going to have some amazing surprises," he teases. "I don’t think people have any idea what it’s going to be like but it’s a wonderful take on what the third Iron Man movie should be. We have a really unique perspective on it and we’re pretty happy with how it’s shaping up. [Robert Downey Jr.] has really taken the character to some new and interesting places."
In regards to the sequels that follow - Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Quesada couldn't offer much. "The goal is to mine different territory to what we have already," he says. "We’ve been very lucky and fortunate to [also] have these characters enhanced by the performances of these actors."
Considering this interview was conducted before San Diego Comic-Con, Quesada was mum on the fact that Guardians of the Galaxy was Marvel's second 2014 film. In regards to how that iswas determined, "There’s a whole library of Marvel characters that could benefit from these treatments," he says. "What happens is that when one breaks out and is a success, it makes you think that if that character worked then maybe these two or three others that we never thought about before might also work. But we have to be really judicious about how we do these films because you don’t want to become your own worst enemy by over-saturating and flooding the market with this stuff."
Concluding, Quesada adds that "So much of what we do is part of a big collaborative process at Marvel. So we’re going to stick to our guns and continue doing the things that we want to do in the way that we want to do them. I know that it’s tough as a fan because fans are impatient, they want to see their favourite character up there but at the end of the day the worst thing that we could do is rush a character to the screen and have it fail because then you don’t see them again for decades. That’s why we’re so strategic about this stuff, because we don’t want to hurt any characters or the Marvel brand by rushing out product."