Marvel Asked Joss Whedon To Direct AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Joss Whedon is tired. Avengers: Age of Ultron is poised to become one of the highest-grossing films of all time, and The Avengers already holds that title. Whedon has been working hard in the Marvel machine for years now, and though he's talked about wanting to make other superhero movies (namely Batman), he's made it pretty clear in various interviews that Age of Ultron will be his last ride with comic book films...at least for the foreseeable future. But that doesn't mean that the studio let him just walk away: before they hired Anthony and Joe Russo for the job, they asked him back to direct Avengers: Infinity War. Whedon told Rolling Stone:
They very sweetly asked me and I'm like, really? No. It would set me for life – and that life would be about five years long. It's only going to have more characters and be longer and be a bigger movie. That doesn't mean it can't be great; a part of me is desperate to do it. Because I still have enormous love for these characters and want to shepherd them through all other things. But the fact of the matter is, it's been over five years really since I created something. I mean, I created the S.H.I.E.L.D. show, but based on their universe, you know.
I've seen some fans wondering why Marvel didn't at least ask Whedon to direct the next Avengers movie, and now we have confirmation that they did. And while he didn't get into specifics, Whedon also mentioned a bit of friction between him and Kevin Feige on the set of Age of Ultron:
That's part of Kevin's style, too – he wants to get his fingers into everything. Some directors, he makes them crazy; some directors he works fine with. Kevin's incredibly smart about rearranging things and finding not just problems but solutions, which is even better. When he and I are in pursuit of the same thing, it's great — and when we're not, it's tough. There's no way you make this movie without a certain amount of friction, and I respect the friction because I usually find that the best work comes out of that. It's like when an actor has opinions about his role, and we're like yeah, you're supposed to. So this movie was tough. Because I was fighting for some things that are a bit different and that I believe in.
The writer/director is still in promotion mode for this film, so he'd never say anything overtly negative about Feige at this point in the game, but I wonder if, in a few years, we'll hear him clarify and expand on these comments and speak a little more about the dynamic between he and the Marvel Studios president. You can't tell that there was any trouble behind the scenes when you watch the finished film, but this interview has me wondering what kind of compromises Whedon had to make creatively and why Feige wanted those changes. Both of these guys are very smart — Feige is far from a traditional Hollywood suit who doesn't know what he's talking about; the whole MCU was his vision, remember? — and I'm sure they both had some interesting things to bring to the table, and maybe one day we'll find out some more about this. In the meantime, Age of Ultron arrives in theaters this week.