The Marvel Studios One-Shot shorts used to be an extra treat added to home releases of the MCU movies. Beginning with ‘The Consultant’ in 2011, there has since been a total of four other shorts produced for home release.
Some have been used to add levity, extra context, introduce new characters or even answer fan queries about a movie. In the latter case, the Iron Man 3 direct-to-video short film, ‘All Hail The King’, seemed to suggest there was indeed a real Mandarin somewhere in the cinematic universe. However, since 2014, there have been no new One-Shot short films. Could they make a return in the future?
Thor: Ragnarock screenplay writer and the writer of the first three One-Shot films Eric Pearson has been speaking to Cinemablend about this possibility.
"I think probably the drop in Blu-ray sales has hurt the One-Shots program -- though I've heard whispers of it starting up again. I can't confirm that at all, but I've definitely heard whispers of it. And I have a whole folder full of other One-Shots that I just came up with. And I was like, 'Oh, this will be a fun eight to 12 pages!'"
It seems that the One Shots could return in some form in the future and there are new ideas already floating around. This isn't the first time we've heard about the potential return of the shorts, as Spiderman: Homecoming star Tom Holland briefly mentioned the possibilty earlier this year.
Interestingly, Pearson also explained that the original idea for the one-shots was to put them before cinematic releases, similar to the Pixar model.
“When they first brought it to me I think their initial idea was to try and set up something like Pixar, where you could do a short film at the beginning with a lesser character, to kind of have fun, expand the universe, and test out the audience's appetite for one of these more obscure characters. So that would obviously be very expensive, especially when things were so 3D-heavy at the time. So the test process was going to be, 'Well, we'll do some shorts for Blu-ray content.' And that's kind of how it started.”
Would you be interested in seeing the return of the Marvel One-Shot short films. Which one was your favourite? Let us know in the usual place.
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