Marvel Studios
Earlier this week, Vanity Fair released a feature story with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the screenwriters of Avengers: Endgame.
In the piece, the duo discussed how the ultimate endings for the heart and soul of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Tony Stark and Steve Rodgers — were in the works years before Endgame eventually came out.
“When Civil War came out, we’d already finished the first draft of both Infinity War and Endgame. We got the job as we were prepping Civil War. So that meant that Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel, had hired me, Chris, and [directors] Joe and Anthony Russo simply based on The Winter Soldier, to do both the Avengers movies,” McFeely said.
“I bring it up because it’s such a leap faith, right? We’d only had one movie as a foursome under our belt. We got the job, thought about it all throughout the shooting of Civil War. And then the last four months of 2015, we cracked both those [Avengers] movies. So Tony’s death and Cap’s dance were on three-by-five cards in September of 2015.” [via Vanity Fair]
McFeely and Markus’ timeline lines up with that of director Joe Russo, who tweeted earlier this summer that he originally wanted to kill Iron Man *in* Captain America: Civil War.
https://twitter.com/Russo_Brothers/status/1155934497361125376
Ultimately, Marvel Studios nailed the endings for both Stark and Rodgers, as each completed a character arc that had been carefully crafted over the course of a decade. And who knows, with the nature of comic book universe rules — you know, just because a character is gone, doesn’t mean they’re gone — we may one day get to see them in these iconic roles again.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him via eric@brobible.com