Joss Whedon Confirms He Has No Involvement With Marvel’s Cinematic Universe
After Avengers: Age of Ultron was released, director Joss Whedon passed on directing Avengers: Infinity War for Marvel. He explained that it was a difficult production for him to work on and that he wanted to do different things.
Well, during a Q&A at Oxford Union, the filmmaker clarified that not only is he not directing Infinity War, but he’s also done with working with Marvel completely. Whedon had a hand in helping to shape the entire second phase of the MCU, but he's not around to help anymore. He’s not even a part of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. because he walked away from that as well! He explains:
"I've gone off the reservation for a while. It was five years that I was working on either Avengers or S.H.I.E.L.D. That was an enormous gift they gave me; they handed me several hundreds of millions of dollars and said 'do what you do,' which is very rare and I was very lucky. At the same time, it's important for me not just to have my own thing and do something smaller, but also to create a new challenge for myself because I will start to repeat myself."
When asked to clarify how "off the reservation" he was, Whedon was very blunt in his answer saying:
"No, you know, I was their sort of consigliere for a while... but I sort of had my finger in all of the films in the second phase but then I just had to concentrate only on Ultron and sort of know that when it was done, I was just going to stop, so I made a completely clean break."
I guess there’s always a chance he could come back to help Marvel out again, but talk of making a “clean break” doesn’t sound like someone who is looking to go back. I really did love what Whedon did with the Avengers, and it’s sad that things didn’t play out differently between him and Marvel. It will be fun to see what he does next, though!