Film Set Interview The Avengers Producer Kevin Feige

/Film Set Interview: ‘The Avengers’ Producer Kevin Feige

By Peter Sciretta/April 2, 2012 11:00 am EST

Read our other interviews from The Avengers set:

And you know, the great news is Joss was overseeing the people that were doing the boards and the pre viz, but he wasn’t drawing them, he was writing all those words and all those interactions and all of that great dialogue. And it’s why, you know, the harshest critics around, like Robert Downey, you know, he comes in every morning and goes, “Okay, now how am I going to tear this apart…It’s pretty good. Pretty good.” And you know, he’ll (?) and he’ll, you know, but that’s Joss’ strong suit.

Q: Is this a disaster movie? I mean, have you been looking at any of the like, obviously Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay kind of have cornered the market on insanely, crazy disaster movies. Have you been trying to — are the set pieces kind of on that scale at any point or is it…?Kevin Feige: Well, you know, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea that like it’s on that scale necessarily from a natural disaster sense, but I would watch the trailers for those movies and go, boy, that spectacle was really cool. You know what would be cooler? If there were five of those guys right in the frame and got rid of that tidal wave. You know, we’re not doing that, but I always thought that’s the purpose of the “Avengers” is to be able to, you know, push back a force of that scale.Q: Can you talk a little bit about the word that’s out today that you’re not doing a presentation at Comic-Con. Just out of curiosity, what went in to that decision?Kevin Feige: You know, I think it’s — my fear is it’s spinning into a, “Oh, Marvel’s abandoning Comic-Con; studios are abandoning Comic-Con,” which is, at least in our case, is not the case at all, you know. You guys walked around the set today and you may have noticed that there were some big giant walls and pieces missing.

So we’re going to have a very big booth this year and, the biggest one we’ve ever had, with a ton of stuff going on there and there’ll be various things outside of Hall H. It’s just Hall H that we’re not doing. We’ll have a lot of other things going on. Cap is coming out that weekend and there’ll be a few events going on to celebrate that and it’s much more booth-focused this year in and around it.

Because frankly, we didn’t have access to everybody. And I thought, if I – well I’m gonna go, “Hey guys, remember last year we had everybody? Here’s a few people.” Because we’re filming, because we’re working on the movie and because, frankly, it takes two or three days away to go and do that or at least to prep and plan for that. And it’s all full speed here and that’s right about the time we’ll be finishing up here and going to Cleveland to continue the – some of the outdoor action scenes.

Q: Is there a runtime you’re aiming considering how grand this film is and how many people are in it?Kevin Feige: We never really aim for a runtime necessarily. I mean, it’s just whatever the end – whatever the movie ends up being. It’s a long script, though.Q: Speaking of Cleveland, I am curious about what kind of outdoor stuff are you doing in the city? And are you sort of — are you gonna have superheroes in full costumes running around the city?Kevin Feige: Yes.Q: I’m curious about the casting over the years. Because obviously, when you’ve got Robert Downey it was a huge coup. It took a long time to find Chris Hemsworth, you know; Chris Evans is a natural, but I’m also curious about how you cast them knowing you’d want to put them together eventually. Have you been doing – had you done any kind of screen tests with them together, I mean, over the course of this whole process or…?Kevin Feige: We didn’t. We did when we were doing auditions for the Maria Hill character, we had four or five actresses that came in and Sam Jackson was cool enough to come in that day and do all the scenes with that actress because, you know, Maria Hill’s going to be standing next to him the whole movie or much of the movie. But other than that, we didn’t, you know, just the timing of it, you know.

And when we cast Hemsworth, we were shooting “Iron Man 2” and soon after we cast him I brought him on the set of “Iron Man 2” and introduced him to Robert and they started a sort of friendship there and camaraderie there, which I wanted to do early on, but we didn’t have Cap until, you know, a year or so later and we didn’t have Ruffalo until, you know, until a few months after that. So but you do, you say, okay, you need somebody. Look, the pressure of finding the guy for his own movie is bigger than anything else, anyway. So if you found a guy that fits for that movie and fits for that character, you’re not going to hire somebody if you don’t think they’re strong enough to then also go toe-to-toe with the other actors in the “Avengers”.

So it was always in the back of our heads, but other than the Maria Hill instance, there wasn’t sort of a mix and match screen test.

[CROSS TALKING]Q: Was Maria Hill – is Maria Hill above Coulson or is she above Coulson. Is he kind of, they have they’re like interplay between them ‘cause…Kevin Feige: There is interplay between them, yeah. Yeah.Q: All right. And how much is the character in — ‘cause she was sort of the last of the people cast, well after most the big announcements .Kevin Feige: I mean, it’s not an insignificant part. I mean it’s — she’s got a lot of screen time.Q: On a visual level, you know, clearly when you’re defining the look of Iron Man, the look of Thor, the look of Captain America for their own movies, that’s really all you’re concerned about. So when you’re bringing them all together were there any sort of challenges in tweaking any of their individual outfits, you know, just to make sure that again on a visual level, the seven of them standing side-by-side looked like, yes, they are part of the team, they are part of the same world?Kevin Feige: Yeah. It’s a good question. I mean it’s the — James Chinlund who’s our Production Designer in this movie, we brought on because he has a very unique style and a very unique vision and we wanted somebody who would do something completely different than in any of the other movies. And when you have the aesthetic that you’ve already seen walking around the bridge of the helicarrier, that’s a whole other — you haven’t seen anything like that in any of the other movies. So right away, the aesthetic of the film is its own.

And we did – obviously, Captain America is going to have an updated costume for this movie. Tony’s always tinkering with his suits so you can imagine that there’ll be a few incarnations of the suit. Hulk essentially is that, you know, we’re designing to the actor, so that’ll be Hulk, but it will be slightly different designed Hulk than you’ve seen before. And with Thor and Loki, it’s essentially their outfits from the previous movie, but we did want to rough and scuff it up a little bit in Loki’s case, you know, he’s dropped off into the abyss after all, who knows where he – what nether worlds he’s been in, in between movies.

And with Thor, we wanted to give him a few different looks. The one thing we actively avoided to that extent was saying we should probably take off his cape when he’s walking around the helicarrier. So when he’s in his Asgardian casual wear on earth and interacting with other characters, he doesn’t have the metal sleeves, he doesn’t have the cape and he doesn’t have sort of the over armor, sort of the disk over armor piece. But again, we want all the characters to look cool on their own and Ryan Meinerding, who you’ve heard me talk about before is our great concept artist and sort of our lead visual designer for all the movies, did his first rendering of, okay, here’s what they all look like in a frame. And it was awesome. Thank God.

Q: Was it equally awesome the first day they all – everyone was in a scene together? I mean, you must have been nervous the night before, like are these guys going to be able to act together or with each other.Kevin Feige: Yeah, I wasn’t that nervous. I mean, they’re all great. I mean, it’s all – they’re all such good actors that – and Joss had delivered such great words for them to say that you’re always nervous on the, you know, the day before you begin. But we had a few – they weren’t all together on the first day. So it was sort of mixing and matching leading up to the time when they were all together for the first time. And it was great. And it was frankly what you wanted because it was, you know, the first time that the characters are interacting was also the first time the actors were interacting. So for a certain extent, we didn’t want to do a boot camp where they all become chums and get to know each other and become a perfect well-oiled machine ‘cause that’s not what they are, you know, for a good chunk of this movie.Q: Is there a romance in this film or is it just all bromance?Kevin Feige:Well there’s a lot of bromance going on, but I see, you know, Scarlett is in there, Maria’s in there, it is – there is less of a love story in this movie than there have been in any of our other movies, yeah.Q: Is there any casualties – this is much bigger an epic than the other films. Is there any casualties in this? Are we going to see — are we gonna lose any of our beloved characters?Kevin Feige: Well, I mean, even if we were I certainly wouldn’t tell you.Q: But I’m just saying, is there consequences?Kevin Feige: You know, frankly, it’s something that I felt is important in movies, is to get those kinds of stakes and consequences whether it’s death or injury or whatever it is. But there will be long-term consequences as a result of this movie, so it feels real. So it feels, like you know, I think that is – that’s important. You know we’ve come close in a few of the movies to doing things like that and haven’t necessarily and I think it’s important to.Q: Where does this movie leave a space for like a Nick Fury movie or Black Widow movie or like even if it’s a smaller budget movie because obviously you’ve got this huge scale movie. Can Marvel do a smaller scale movie without people going, oh it’s not like the “Iron Man” or “Avengers” or…Kevin Feige: Well, I think so. I mean, you don’t want to do something that seems like the “Avengers” movie without the Avengers. But you know, when you have Jeremy Renner and Scarlett Johansson, I mean, these characters own franchises at every studio. I mean, certainly. You know there is Jeremy Renner’s “Hawkeye” movie that could be cool. There’s a Scarlett Johansson “Black Widow” movie that could be cool. You know, is there, you know, if S.H.I.E.L.D. is an organization, it could easily be its own movie or TV show.Q: I think more of a Nick Fury, because obviously there’s like a lot of stuff we don’t know about him before S.H.I.E.L.D, yeah.Kevin Feige: Sure. So, I mean, all of that is on the table. Some of those things are more active than others.Q: The TV projects that would, that you guys are tossing around, I don’t know what stage they’re at, but would that be part of the shared universe?Kevin Feige: I don’t think so.Q: So the ABC Hulk would be a different thing?Kevin Feige: Yeah.Q: What’s the thinking behind that?Kevin Feige: Well, you know, the thinking behind it is there’s enough going on with all the movies that we’re developing to go into that and that “Hulk” series, you know, is sort of designed to be focusing on a different part of Banner’s life and Banner’s sort of journey. And frankly, it’s not – you know, you don’t want Clark Gregg and I don’t want to call Clark Gregg you know every day and go, “And so Mr. Jackson, would you mind going down ….” I got to do this in movies.Unit Publicist: We’re just going to wrap it up, so one last question.Q: You guys are partnering now with Disney/Pixar. Is there a desire on your end to work with Pixar to make, you know, a movie together?Kevin Feige: Well, I think the notion of an animated movie based off of a Marvel property is a no-brainer and it’s something that we’ve been talking about. You know, Lasseter is now both Pixar and Walt Disney animation. So, you know, I don’t where, whatever project would fall where necessarily. And frankly, Pixar is all about original properties and original ideas, but an animated version of one of our characters, one of our 8,000-plus characters would seem to be something that could happen at some point.Q: Where is Ant-Man? Wasn’t that announced like way back, the very first …Kevin Feige: I sat at Comic-Con 2006 with Louie Leterrier, Jon Favreau and…Q: And Edgar, yeah.Kevin Feige: Edgar. Yeah, he delivering a second draft in a few weeks, which I think has been my answer for five years.[CROSS TALKING]Kevin Feige: See you tomorrow. Thanks, guys.