Early on in the development of Avengers: Infinity War, directors Joe and Anthony Russo committed to the threequel’s bleak and devastating finale, as doing so would tee up the next chapter in Marvel’s cinematic universe – you know, beyond Ant-Man and the Wasp and next year’s standalone Captain Marvel movie.
But it seems Infinity War didn’t always have a sky-high body count, as the film’s co-writer, Stephen McFeely, has revealed to Collider (h/t ComicBook.com) that early drafts of the Marvel juggernaut actually killed fewer characters.
However, as the film began to take shape, all four creators – namely McFeely, Christopher Markus and the Russo Brothers – agreed that a certain number of characters needed to die, as they didn’t have enough material in Avengers 4 to justify their survival.
No, it was more the reverse that some people in earlier drafts made it to the next movie and we decided that we didn’t have enough story for them and so they…disappeared.
McFeely, meanwhile, once again stressed that Marvel’s pool of creators huddled together for a “two-movie conversation” as they set out on an endeavor to create Infinity War and its so-far untitled sequel, the latter of which will tend to unfinished business in 2019.
We had so many characters in movie 1, and we knew it was a two-movie conversation. Some characters were better served in movie 2 after this event. We were making some choices based on some characters we knew were going to leave us at the end of the first movie, so they got highlighted in the first movie. And some who were going to be in the second movie more maybe got less attention or less screentime [in Infinity War] — I’m thinking of Cap and Natasha, specifically. It’s about the story we wanted to tell in movie 2, mostly.
That means the likes of Cap and Black Widow will enjoy more screen time during Avengers 4, as the war against Thanos takes on an entirely new meaning. In fact, word is Earth’s Mightiest Heroes will dabble with time travel and alternate timelines as they seek to undo the Mad Titan’s mass extinction event. Stay tuned for more on that front.