It’s a well known fact by now that Marvel were so keen to keep their secrets close to their chests for Avengers: Infinity War that they dished out fake scripts to the cast and crew. Even those who believed they were reading the real thing, like Benedict Cumberbatch, had actually been given the stand-in screenplay.
Until now, though, we weren’t sure exactly what differences there were between the real and fake scripts. In the new book The Art of Avengers: Infinity War, however, a passage reveals that one major change was that the fake script kept Loki alive in the film’s opening sequence. Instead of bravely standing up to Thanos to protect his brother Thor, the God of Mischief hopped on an escape pod and survived.
Executive producer Trinh Tran explained that the truth had to be revealed to crew members when they were confused upon filming the actual version of the scene.
“We created a version of the script where Loki would get away in an escape pod at the beginning of the movie. When we started shooting that particular sequence, we had crew members who were thoroughly confused. We had to let them know that those were fake versions of the script that they read.”
Seeing as the fake scripts worked so well for Infinity War – well, except for Mark Ruffalo spilling the beans over a year ago, but no one really noticed at the time – Marvel repeated the process for Avengers 4. In fact, many cast members, including Karen Gillan, have said that they look forward to seeing the next movie so that they can finally find out what happens in the scenes they aren’t in.
It was jokingly – well, we think – said before by the Russo brothers that the idea to produce fake scripts first came about as a way to stop Tom Holland from accidentally spilling the beans. Like Ruffalo, though, even this didn’t prevent the Spider-Man actor from dropping spoiler-bombs all over the place.
Regardless, it’ll be interesting to learn what other things were changed about Avengers: Infinity War in the fake script as the behind the scenes process of the movie continues to spill out.
