Disney/Marvel
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Fanboys and fangirls, rejoice! The folks at Slashfilm were apparently listening in to a Disney Investors conference call and heard the news that Joss Whedon, writer/director of this summer’s mega-hit The Avengers, has officially signed on to come back and do both duties again for the sequel. We all hoped this would come true, so this is a great day.
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Whedon pretty much had the ability to do whatever he wanted to do after directing the third highest grossing film of all time, so to scratch the itch of directing something smaller and more personal, he filmed a micro-budget Shakespeare adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing in black and white and shot it entirely in his Santa Monica home. That one is coming out soon, and it seems like now that he’s done something super small, he’s ready for the task of directing what’s sure to be another massively budgeted tentpole movie. I think the entirety of Marvel fandom is thrilled with his decision to bring these iconic heroes back to the big screen once again, and while the original film was certainly an exhausting experience for Whedon (who had only directed one movie before that!), it’s clear he’s up for the challenge of directing another one.
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He’ll also be developing a television series for ABC that will be set in the Avengers universe, but that show isn’t supposed to be featuring any of our main superheroes. Early word pegged it as a cop show, but we’ll see if Whedon (who is extremely familiar with TV, having developed multiple iconic cult classic series) can bring us something fresh and worthy of the Marvel title into our homes on a weekly basis. Perhaps it will be similar to Marvel’s short film Item 47 (available on The Avengers Blu-ray), which stars Lizzy Caplan and Jesse Bradford as two criminals who find one of the guns dropped by the alien invaders during the climactic battle at the end of the film and use it to rob banks. Info on this is sparse right now, but we should know more soon.
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A release date for The Avengers 2 hasn’t officially been released yet, but Marvel has a pretty full slate right now. They’ve got Iron Man 3 coming on May 3rd, 2013, Thor: The Dark World out on November 8th, 2013, Captain America: The Winter Soldier in theaters on April 4th, 2014, the highly ambitious Guardians of the Galaxy hitting the big screen on August 1st, 2014, and Edgar Wright’s long-in-development Ant-Man waiting in the wings for an official release date, too. I’m guessing it’ll be at least 2015 before we see The Avengers 2, but we’ll keep you posted with more info as it becomes available.
