Joss Whedon, fresh off the success of The Avengers, has signed on to write and direct its sequel The Avengers 2.
Marvel Studios confirmed the news in a statement last night;
“Joss Whedon has signed an exclusive deal with Marvel Studios for film and television through the end of June 2015. As part of that deal, Whedon will write and direct Marvel’s The Avengers 2 as well as help develop a new live action series for Marvel Television at ABC. He will also contribute creatively to the next phase of Marvel’s cinematic universe.”
As anyone who saw The Avengers knows (which the box office indicates was pretty much everyone), his hiring for the sequel is something to celebrate. Whedon managed to successfully merge characters from five different movies into a two hour film and still make it unmistakably his own. But this doesn’t just bode well for The Avengers 2, this bode’s well for the next phase of Marvel’s films. Marvel hasn’t had the greatest track record with directors, so this is a step in the right direction and proof that they want the next batch of films to be as successful as possible.
When Whedon came on board for The Avengers, Marvel was already halfway through with their lead up films. Whedon did a rewrite for Captain America: The First Avenger and directed the post-credits scene for Thor, but he had to work with what others had done before he joined in.
Now, Whedon can help out with Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which evidently needs some help), and be there from the start for Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. Whedon can work with directors and hopefully make The Avengers 2 groundwork more subtle and less shoehorned in than it was in Iron Man 2 or Thor.
But Whedon isn’t just working with Marvel on a movie, he’s returning to television for a project that’s almost guaranteed to do away with his recent bouts with cancellation. There have been talks of a live-action Marvel TV show on ABC, possibly dealing with the day-to-day workplace of SHIELD, and now Whedon is involved in development. Details are few about the show, but Joss Whedon and TV shows are always a good combination, especially when Marvel is thrown into the mix. Look for more on that in the next year.
Are you glad Whedon is back for The Avengers 2? What do you hope to see in the Marvel TV show?
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3 Comments
Hoepfully Joss learns from the failure of Iron Man 2. You can get away with camp and humor for the first Avengers because the novelty of having a “crossover” movie with 4 different franchise characters was enough to support it –script notwithstanding. Come on, it was a solid script but not “awesome”, we look to Nolan/Goyer for that!
However, if Whedon allows internet critics/bloggers to encourage him to keep going down the camp/comedy route he’ll wind up in the same shape Iron Man 2/Batman Forever/Scott Pilgrim/Kick-Ass wound up in. Crippling itself by going silly and never recovering.
Let the comedy-addicts who whine about any movie that’s not a comedy grow up or shut up. “Dark” is where the sweet-spot is for comic book movies. Whedon got lucky the first time, it won’t happen twice.
You heard it here first: go serious, or go home.
Whedon got lucky? Really? And I don’t see how you can put Batman Forever in the same category as Scott Pilgrim, Kick Ass, or Iron Man 2. In fact, aside from each being adapted from a comic book, none of them are particularly related.
Whedon did more than get lucky. His taking over of writing AND directing the sequel as well as having a hand in all Marvel films as well as the ABC series from here on out is a blessing the likes of which are unheard of in the hallowed corridors of major studio tv and film.
That’s all Joss Whedon has going for him. Novelty. All of his works are boring genre-mashups. Firefly was a Scifi/Western and that was all. Nothing unique or visionary. Dr Horrible was just a Musical/Romcom/SuperHero (told from the villain’s perspective). Everything in everything he’s done has been done before, but he just crams them together. The Avengers was no exception, just a typical friendship story (a ragtag group of friends has a falling out over petty issues but eventually overcomes their problems for a feel-good ending) where the friends happen to be superheroes.
And now that he has a box-office hit I’ll bet that he’ll feel even more justified in making the Avengers act more like teenagers in a particularly smarmy sitcom than full-grown adults with matters of life-and-death weighing on their heads.