"Marvel's The Avengers 2" is still two years away from arriving in theaters, but that hasn't prevented director Joss Whedon from whetting the geeky appetites of Marvel fans.
Speaking at the "Iron Man 3" premiere in Los Angeles this week, Whedon told Yahoo! that he had actually finished a first draft of the script. "I'm reading it now, but I think it's in pretty good shape. I may be biased, but we're in a very good place," he said. "It's going very well. Eventually someone will explain to me that it's not."
"Marvel's The Avengers 2" is expected to return the onscreen crew from the first film -- or maybe not. Robert Downey Jr., who plays Tony Stark in the Marvel universe, is no longer under contract with the studio. ("Iron Man 3" was the last commitment on his current deal.) The actor hasn't said no to returning, however, but he's certainly been opaque about the idea. From an interview he did with GQ:
"It got me thinking about how big the message from your cosmic sponsor needs to be before you pick it up. How many genre movies can I do? How many follow-ups to a successful follow-up are actually fun? Because, as quiet as it's kept, I come from a family of very innovative writers and directors and actors and artists, and the circle of friends they were in were the people I heard having pun-offs playing poker at two in the morning, and it was just the most comforting aspect of my childhood. So there's this kind of legacy of souls from what I consider to be a very particular time in entertainment, and I'm sensing a return to that—it's what me and the missus are doing next. It's not unlike: I heard Brady signed on for three more years with New England, and then he's done being a QB, because he'll be 40. I'm 47, and I'll be 50."
Beyond Stark, "Marvel's The Avengers 2" could include some newer superheroes. "I've got these two characters [in the draft] -- my favorite characters in the comic book, a brother-sister act," Whedon teased at the "Iron Man 3" premiere. "They're in the movie, that's exciting."
As The Playlist notes, the "brother-sister act" could be Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, twin siblings who appear in both the "X-Men" comics and "The Avengers." (They're the mutant children of Magneto; as Vulture notes, they were villains in "X-Men" and heroes in "The Avengers.")
Despite the fact that the rights to the "X-Men" property is currently held by Fox and "The Avengers" rights are controlled by Disney, the dual citizenship, so to speak, of the characters means the twins could appear in both franchise. "If they want to use them in the 'X-Men' movies they could, if we want to use them in the 'Avengers' movie we could," Marvel president Kevin Feige said last year.
Head over to Vulture to watch the rest of Whedon's comments.
