Kevin Feige Speaks On Future Films, Maintaining Standalone Stories, And More!

They're all developed separately—they're all developed on their own with the sole intent of making the best movie possible for this character. We do have timelines and various markers that we like to keep track of across the movies, and head into future movies potentially. But that's always sort of the seasoning as opposed to the actual ingredients of the movie. We're in very early stages of talking about the story for Iron Man 3 with our writer-directors on that, and the discussions have been only about Tony Stark and Tony Stark's story and what we feel like putting him through in this movie. There's been no discussion of the connection between the other worlds, and there may not ever be a discussion about that. But again, it's the comics. In some comics, the heroes are standalone completely, and in other comics, they team up or gather into the Avengers. So it's always about whatever is the story we're telling. In the Thor film, the inclusion of SHIELD was based on the need for a Black Ops, for a CIA, for a Men in Black-type organization, and we had the end of that movie, before we had the beginning of Avengers, because we need these movies to work as their own movies—because that's what they are. If it were really just about making a bunch of small movies that led up to other movies, they would be a third of the cost and it would be a whole different exercise.

Well, because they all come from the comics, and the comics for the most part, 90% of them is a shared universe, it's just assumed that they all take place within this universe. How much we go out of our way to play with that or suggest that depends on what the character is. Doctor Strange, which is only in long-lead development and has been for many years, has got one of the best origin stories of any of our characters, and like Thor taps into the cosmic world, he taps into this magic world. So between introducing Stephen Strange and making him the Sorcerer Supreme, exploring this sort of unabashedly magic side of the universe, I don't know how there would be room for Tony Stark to show up and wave, or have the Hulk come barreling down the street. I don't think there's the need.

I think really what that is is a list of stuff that we have worked on at one point or another over the last ten years. Ant-Man certainly is, and it's something we hope to do soon with Edgar [Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead], although we've not announced anything yet. I mean, really the official stuff is Avengers and then Iron Man 3—those are the most active, of course. As I said earlier, Don Payne is working on the story for Thor 2, should we be so lucky, and our writers, Chris Markus and Stephen McFeely, who did Captain America for us, are starting to work on Captain America 2 because if we are going to make a sequel, we want to be ready, we want to be prepared for it. But we're not focusing a whole lot of attention on that right now because we're focusing on the first ones—and without that, there won't be anything else. And then there's the wish list—there's Doctor Strange, which I've been talking about for years, and Black Panther, more of the blue-sky development that comes down the line.