The Avengers have been an amazing box office success. A sequel was predictable. The writer and director for the movie was far from certain. However, in an corporate earnings call last night the CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Robert Iger, confirmed that Joss Whedon would be returning to write and direct the important movie.
You can tell just how important The Avengers are for Marvel and Disney as they’ve signed an exclusive deal with Whedon. This means Whedon does not get to work on projects for anyone else but hopefully also means Disney agreed to a few Joss demands too. The statement from Marvel Studios reads;
“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.”
That’s right. As well as The Avengers 2 there will be a TV series. It’s not yet clear what the TV series will be. Guillermo del Toro is likely to do a Hulk TV series, also for ABC, and it would be disappointing if that project was the one Marvel means here. It’s also unlikely. There’s been suggestions that Hawkeye now has more than enough fans to standalone but given that the CW has their Arrow series launching, a Green Arrow show, a Hawkeye only TV series also seems unlikely.
Whedon is known for his success with Buffy and Angel. He is adored for his too brief Firefly. It’ll certainly be interesting to see which hero or heroes he picks for the TV series and how it ties back into The Avengers.
In the same all, Iger talked about the plans to “leverage the power of the Avengers” across the entire company. This sounds like the plan is to build up a highly connected world arc, which the various offerings can plug in to, draw on and contribute too.
It seems possible that some of the new movies and perhaps even the TV series will serve to build up more mainstream audience awareness of the Death loving super villain Thanos. Thanos appears after the credits in the first Avengers movie.
Via Hollywood Reporter.
