Jeph Loeb on The Difficulties of MCU Movies and Shows Crossovers

As we already know an common complaint within the fans of the MCU is how the movies ignore the events of the MCU series, as the movies has yet to feature any characters from the series or mention the events of the TV shows, something the fans are hoping is for Avengers Infinity War and the untitled fourth movie to feature the characters from the shows, if not at least an cameo. while attending a panel for Luke Cage at the Televisions Critics Association, the Head of Marvel Television Jeph Loeb has explained why its difficult for such crossovers to happen, the issue is pretty much schedule and how the movies are planned before the storyline for the next show or season are even planned.

“I can tell you that part of the challenge of doing this sort of thing is that the movies are planned out years in advance of what it is that we are doing,” Loeb said. “Television moves at an incredible speed. The other part of the problem is that when you stop and think about it, if I’m shooting a television series and that’s going to go on over a six-month or eight-month period, how am I going to get Mike [Colter] to be able to go be in a movie? I need Mike to be in a television show.”

This makes sense, something that annoyed some fans is how Captain America Civil War pretty much ignored the fact that there was Inhumans running around the world, but  should be noted that Markus and McFeely started working on the script of Civil War in Summer 2014, before the mid-season finale of Agents of SHIELD in December of that year in which Skye got her powers even aired. When they were doing the script, season 2 of SHIELD was not greenlight yet, not even planned, while Civil War was already planned, even during the set visit for Civil War, Markus and McFeely had no idea that about the "Fish Oil Incident" that occured at the end of season 2, when the duo was asked if the the movie would include references to the Inhumans. Also the scheduling is one of the reasons its unlikely we may see at least the Netflix heroes for the next two Avengers, as Infinity War and the Untitled fourth film are both scheduled to start filming in November 2016 all the way to Summer 2017 and the Defenders, Jessica Jones Season 2 and possibly The Punisher are all going to start shooting around the same time as Infinity making it impossible for them to appear in the movie, not to forget it would be too late to rework the script just for the sake of adding them.

But its not unlikely it may never happen, Loeb explains, “Anything is possible,” Loeb continued. “As I often get reported by you folks for saying #ItsAllConnected, our feeling is that the connection isn’t just whether or not somebody is walking into a movie or walking out of a television show. It’s connected in the way that the shows come from the same place, that they are real, that they are grounded.”

Also Loeb explains that crossovers should not happen just for the sake of it, but that these characters need to appear if the story needs the character to appear. “We have seen some characters that have appeared and crossed over,” Loeb said. “Most notably, one of our cast members that isn’t here because she’s working is Rosario Dawson, who continues the character of Claire Temple. So the short answer is we are already doing it. The long answer is as things go by, as the story dictates it, we’ve always been big fans of providing Easter eggs for our fans, but we never want to be known as an Easter egg farm. It has to work within the story. We never want to do Luke Cage gets into a cab as Foggy Nelson and Matt Murdock are getting out of the cab. For those of you that are old enough to know this reference, it’s not when The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was on Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. You actually get to see our characters interact with each other.”