Avengers Assemble Research

The Idea

The Avengers Comic

ØThe Avengers was originally a comic book first published by Marvel Comics in 1963 created, written and edited by Stan Lee and the artist/co-plotter was Jack Kirby.

ØThese comics featured most of Marvel’s popular characters including Hawk-Eye, Iron-Man, Thor and Captain America as one of the leaders.

ØThese comic books are still being released today as ‘Avengers: Avengers World’.

The Avengers Movie

ØThe CEO of Marvel Comics Avi Arad announced in 2005 that The Avengers will become a movie. This was before any of the single character movies were released.

ØMarvel wanted to release separate films before The Avengers was released to show the Characters and make the Audience familiar with the characters before releasing the crossover film ‘The Avengers’.

Development Finance

ØIn the beginning of 2008 the Writers Guild of America strike was delaying films being made. This strike to insure that writers get paid the fair amount when working for bigger studios e.g. Paramount, Lionsgate, Disney, Sony and Warner Bro’s.

ØMarvel negotiated with the Writers Guild of America to ensure that it could create films based on its comic book counterparts, including Captain America, Ant-Man and The Avengers.

ØAfter the successful release of Iron Man (2008) in May, the company set a July 2011 release date for The Avengers. In September 2008, Marvel Studios reached an agreement with Paramount—an extension of a previous partnership—which gave the company distribution rights for five future Marvel films.

ØMarvel didn’t have to search for a production company as the company have Marvel films.

ØDevelopment of The Avengers began when Marvel Studios received a loan from Merrill Lynch (Bank) in April 2005. After the success of the film Iron Man in May 2008, Marvel announced that The Avengers would be released in July 2011. With the signing of Johansson in March 2009, the film was pushed back for a 2012 release.

ØThe film’s estimated budget was $220 million.

Script Development

ØZak Penn – The screenwriter of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ was hired to write the film in 2007
ØThe script was written roughly around the concept of the Avengers comic series, but with less of the characters to make it easier to keep to the characters identities and do the comic justice.
Ø In July 2009, Penn talked about the crossover process, saying "My job is to kind of shuttle between the different movies and make sure that finally we're mimicking that comic book structure where all of these movies are connected. . . There's just a board that tracks 'Here's where everything that happens in this movie overlaps with that movie'. . . I'm pushing them to do as many animatics as possible to animate the movie, to draw boards so that we're all working off the same visual ideas. But the exigencies of production take first priority”. The following month, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige (Producer)  stated he would introduce some more characters into The Avengers and that the Hulk would factor in the film.
ØSome people were worried about introdcing the Charcter ‘Thor’ into the Avengers as he is much more Science fiction than the other characters. Feige simply said that he hoped that the stripped down less science based film of Thor would help people understand Thor’s Character more.
ØPenn completed the first draft of the script in March of 2010,  after which Joss Whedon would re-work.

Pre-Production

Casting:

ØRobert Downey, Jr. Was cast as part as a four-film feature deal including Iron-Man 1 and 2 and The Avengers and the confirmed Iron Man 3.

ØChris Evans as Captain America (Steve Rogers).  Captain America’s Story continues from the end of the single film in 2011.

ØMark Ruffalo as The Hulk/Dr Bruce Banner. Edward Norton who was Banner in the previous hulk film declined the role.

ØChris Hemsworth as Thor. Again his story continues from his character movie.

ØScarlett Johansson as Black Widow/Agent Romanoff. A new character for the avengers. Unlike Jeremy Renner’s character Hawkeye, who has been seen as a small part in Thor.

ØTom Hiddleston as Loki. His character is from Thor. Loki never had a clear ending at the end of Thor, and has advanced into the Avengers.

ØSamuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.L.E.D. Nick Fury has featured in most of the other character films. As well as Clark Gregg’s character Phil Coulson.

ØJoss Whedon was announced as director of the film in July 2010, Stan Lee and Arad agreed that he will do a fantastic job directing the film.

ØThe Walt Disney Company agreed to pay Paramount at least $115 million for the worldwide distribution rights to Iron Man 3 and The Avengers. The deal also allowed Paramount to continue to collect the 8 percent box office fee it would have earned for distributing the film and a marquee credit — placement of the company's logo on marketing materials. As a result, the onscreen production credit reads "Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures" though the film is solely owned, distributed and marketed by Disney.

ØIt was announced that the film would be shot in New Mexico, Michigan and Ohio.

ØSome ideas that were not used on Iron Man 1 and 2 were used in the Avengers.

ØThe film needed Science consultation from science and entertainment exchange.

ØInitially, Paltrow’s character ‘Pepper Potts’ was not meant to be in the film, but after Downey’s insistence she was cast. Whedon didn’t intend on including supporting characters as he wanted to isolate the main characters from their old stories to make all the main characters seem much more like a team.

The Shoot

ØShooting began on April 25th 2011 in New Mexico

ØDuring the first weeks of shooting, A stuntman injured his head while attempting a stunt involving a 30ft fall after getting hit by an arrow. A spokesperson for Marvel assured that despite the injury the stuntman will continue work on the Avengers.

ØSome of the climatic scenes of the battle in New York were shot in Cleveland, Ohio. This shoot included the Army Reserves to make the battle seem more realistic.

ØSome filming took place in a Vacuum chamber in NASA’s station in Ohio. Also a space power facility was used to film some of the S.H.I.L.E.D research facility.

ØThere were many Ariel shots of New York throughout the film. Special effects were added in editing to make it seem like the battle was taking place in New York.

Post-Production

ØIn December 2011, Disney announced that the film would be in 3D, and be digitally remastered for IMAX.

ØThe Avengers contains more than 2,200 visual effects, shot by 14 different companies

ØWhen digitally recreating New York City’s skyline, Disney and Sony agreed that the OsCorp tower from the soon to be released Amazing Spiderman should be included in the skyline. This idea was dropped as the skyline had already been completed.

ØAlan Slivestri who scored Captain America, composed the score for the Avengers. And developed/recorded the score at Abbey Road Studios in London.

ØSoundgarden wrote a song to be included on the official soundtrack of the movie.

ØThe film did not have a title sequence that included the cast’s names until right at the very end of the film. The beginning only had ‘The Avengers’ logo.

Øhttp://www.methodstudios.com/work/the-avengers

Sales/Marketing

ØThe Avengers was shown at Tribeca Film Festival before general release.

ØThe film was also promoted at Comic-con in San Diego in 2010.

   Posters:

Exhibition

ØDisney decided that to save confusion from a British TV show with the same name, in the UK it would be released as ‘Marvel Avengers Assemble’.

ØThe world premiere was in Hollywood, yet there were other premieres in other countries.

ØAvengers is the 3rd highest grossing film of all time with a worldwide total of $1,511,757,910. Also the highest grossing film from a comic/about superhero’s, and Disney’s Highest grossing.

ØTicket presales exceeded the amount for Captain America, Thor, Ironman 1 and 2 combined by over 150%.

ØThe film review site ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ reported a 92% approval rating.

ØOverall the film was received extremely well.

ØSome reviewers thought Mark Ruffalo’s portrayal of Bruce Banner better than previous actor (Edward Norton).

Other Windows

ØThe Avengers was released on DVD, Blu-Ray, 3D and Digital Download in September 2012.

ØThe Avengers was also released as a different package including deleted scenes and bloopers.

ØA video game for the film was developed but was never released as the studios was closed by THQ. Yet another game is being developed but it’s not based around the film’s storyline.

ØIron Man 3 is a priority for Marvel at the moment. Yet Avengers 2 is set to be released in 2015 as Whedon as Director again.