We Almost Got a Very Different ‘Avengers’ Film Before Kevin Feige Stepped In
While the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) would eventually come to dominate popular culture in a way that almost no other film franchise has, the success of an interconnected Marvel universe was never a given.
The moment that would solidify the MCU as the behemoth that it would eventually become was the release of 2012’s The Avengers.
Photo: Disney
The film brought together the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes for the first time, reuniting fans with Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor, who had all starred in their own films.
A Different Hero Was Almost Included in the Original Team
While the Avengers would eventually become an iconic team and the prototype for superhero team-ups going forward, as it turns out, we almost got a very different first Avengers movie.
In the recently released MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, Avengers director Joss Wheldon revealed that he had originally written a very different treatment for the film.
“We went through a lot of insane iterations. At the very beginning, I wrote entire drafts that had no bearing on what I would eventually film. There was a moment where we thought we weren’t going to have Scarlett [Johansson], and so I wrote a huge bunch of pages starring The Wasp. That was not useful.”
While The Wasp was a member of the original Avengers in the comic books, she was replaced by Black Widow in the MCU iteration of the team. Still, it makes sense that Wheldon would consider Janet Van Dyke for the team.
An Iron Man Villain Would Have Returned
The other big change that Wheldon’s original draft would have included was the inclusion of another villain- Iron Man antagonist Obadiah Stane’s son Ezekial.
“I also worried that one British character actor [Tom Hiddleston] was not enough to take on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and that we’d feel like we were rooting for the overdog. So I wrote a huge draft with Ezekial Stane, Obadiah Stane’s son, in it. Kevin looked at it and said, ‘Yeah, no.’ Louis D’Esposito actually, at one point, said, ‘Yeah, Kevin, it’s all wrong. But look how good it is. This is really good wrong!'”
Photo: Marvel
In the end, Louis D’Espositio and Kevin Feige intervened, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Still, it is interesting to get a peek behind the curtain and see what might have been.
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