Joss Whedon is hot these days, so hot he describes himself as "jammed" by success. He has been at the South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conference in Austin Texas, where he debuted his new low-budget version of "Much Ado About Nothing." So several interviews have come out of that:
This one on the red carpet:
A tidbit about S.H.I.E.L.D. from a Q and A with the crowd, via Comic Book Movie:
. . . Coulson died at the hands of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in The Avengers. With the show taking place after the climatic battle with the Chituari in NYC many theorized that Coulson would be seen in flashback, that he was really a robot, a Skrull shape-shifter or something else equally outlandish. Well S.H.I.E.L.D. executive producer Joss Whedon told the crowd at SXSW that Coulson is in fact returning from the dead.
“I’ll tell you guys this, Heimlich,” Whedon joked, before effectively clamming up about the show. “I can’t talk about it,” he admitted, but said that he did bring Coulson back from the dead for the ABC drama. “Yes. For realsies.”
Now that it's established that Coulson really did die in The Avengers and that Fury didn't lie to the other Avengers, the question now is HOW does Coulson come back from the dead? There are a number of items and methods that this could be used to accomplish this in the pages of Marvel Comics but the vast majority of such devices have yet to be presented in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
On bringing back the original Star Wars characters, via Digital Spy:
The director has said that he would have been interested in the job of directing Star Wars: Episode VII, had his commitments to The Avengers 2 not taken him out of the running.
Asked by Digital Spy which original series characters he would want to see return in the new films, Whedon said that he would take a different approach.
"You know, I wouldn't go back, I'd go forward. I would want to create characters that would resonate the way that they did," he explained.
Whedon also discussed the rumors that Lucasfilm and Disney may be looking to recast the role of Han Solo with a younger actor for a potential standalone film.
And still another in-depth interview
on Deadline.com in which he talks about shooting "Much Ado," his own success with gives him little free time to do various projects, whassup with S.H.I.E.L.D., and finally more regret that he wasn't able to direct Star Wars:
Excerpts:
DEADLINE: You shot Much Ado secretly from the press. Did you keep it from Marvel as well?
WHEDON: No, I absolutely told them because if that got out and they hadn’t known, I think that would have caused some concern. I told them I was going to do this and I snuck out for a few afternoons to rehearse, and I took one extra day after Monday. But it really didn’t interfere with the schedule much at all. And I had boundless energy when I returned. I think it worried them! Kevin [Feige] and Jeremy [Latcham], their faces were kind of pasty and their mouths were dry but they said, ‘It’s good, you’ll have a good time… we support you’. I think they found out and I found out what that this was the only way to relax me.
DEADLINE: You need relaxing?
WHEDON: I’m in constant danger of burning out. Look, this is not a healthy person talking to you. ’I’m going to make a sequel to the biggest movie I’ve ever made!’ … ’Perhaps a TV show would go along nicely with that…’ I always order the entire left side of the menu and then wonder why I’m full. With Much Ado it was different because it was truly contained. The script had been written. There were things that took a lot of time to edit. I didn’t know how to work Final Cut Pro — Danny [Kaminsky] my assistant had to teach me. He’s also a producer on the movie and edited it with me. And of course when I couldn’t afford a composer I said, let’s do even more work! But that I could do on our own time around the Avengers schedule.
~~~ snip ~~~
DEADLINE: You’ve just wrapped the S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot, another part of the Marvel universe. WHEDON: That was fun to do, but again, too much work. The idea of the Little Guy is something that I am very fierce about, and there has never been a better Little Guy than Clark Gregg. That intrigued me, this world around the superhero community. It’s the people whose shop windows get blown up when the Destroyer shows up. It’s the more intimate stories that belong on television that we can really tap into the visual style and ethos, and even some of the mythology, of the Marvel movies. I think we’ve put together another really great ensemble headed by Clark. And how much it’s actually seeding or hinting or reacting to what’s going on in the movies is something we’ll let play out as we go. For me the most important thing is that people fall in love with it on its own merits, rather than constantly asking, “Is there gonna be an Avenger?” Well, there’s not gonna be a Hulk because that guy’s too expensive.
DEADLINE: Is the plan for you to run S.H.I.E.L.D.?
WHEDON: I will be as involved as I can be – mostly on a story level. On the TV show I can say, “No, do it my way.” I’m just trying to keep it exciting and meaningful and surprising.
DEADLINE: At what point did you realize these small passion projects could be marketable? WHEDON: Dr. Horrible changed everything for me. We started it because of the Writer’s Strike. And I watched other people making other original shows. I tried to partner with various people from Silicon Valley and that never goes anywhere. Finally I was like, let’s just do this. And it was a monster hit. The payback for the amount that we did was absurd.
~~~ snip ~~~
DEADLINE: You couldn’t do the Star Wars gig. Would you have had a take?
WHEDON: Oh yeah. And it’s not just Star Wars. Everything I see I think, Oh, I’d really love to do one of those. I’ll read something or have an actual idea of my own, and think, I wish I could do something with that. And sometimes you can say, “I think I will”. But I’m trying to be a little more careful in the next few years about budgeting my time than I was in the last two.
DEADLINE: Did you take a meeting with Lucasfilm? WHEDON: No, all of this happened long after I was committed to The Avengers, so there was never any question. There was just a peep of sadness from me. But I think, in all honesty, that JJ Abrams is the guy for the gig and I couldn’t be happier about that.
