With Thor: Ragnarok quickly approaching, and looking to be one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s strongest efforts to date, might we add, it’s almost about time to start getting excited for the studio’s 2018 slate. And while projects like Ant-Man and the Wasp and Black Panther are certainly worth paying attention to, it’s undoubtedly Avengers: Infinity War that’s going to be hogging the lion’s share of the spotlight come next year.
Joe and Anthony Russo’s landmark event movie is currently on course for a release on May 4th, 2018, and it’ll herald the advent of Josh Brolin’s Mad Titan and his squadron of galactic accomplices. Yes, after much foreshadowing, we know Thanos to be the primary antagonist of the Russo Brothers’ ensemble piece, who wages an Infinity War to bring ‘balance’ back to the universe. Standing in his way are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, along with some of their newfound allies: Spider-Man, for one, along with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, and even Loki, who appeared to be holding the Tesseract in that leaked teaser trailer.
Juggling such a huge ensemble cast is no mean feat, and Joe and Anthony Russo will be bringing all of their filmmaking experience to bear when orchestrating Marvel’s Infinity War. It seems that they’ve done an excellent job so far as well, as Paul Bettany, who plays the Vision in the MCU, spoke to Collider recently and had nothing but praise for the directors.
“[The Russos] are so great. They’ve got so much trust, from the cast and from Kevin Feige and Marvel, in general. They’re incredibly on top of the day, when you show up, and they’re very open to your input and collaboration. They were incredibly relaxed. It was a wonderful, relaxed set that was stress-free. It was a stress-free set, which was brilliant.”
Touching on his experience shooting the pic, Bettany emphasized just how big of a film Infinity War really is, saying;
“It felt like the biggest movie that I’ve ever made and will ever make, and we’ve still got to make the [next] one. It’s f***ing crazy! I would come in, often at dawn because of the length of my make-up, and there would just be all of these twinkling lights. It looked like a town, but it wasn’t. It was where all of the trailers were. It was just massive. It’s massive! The call sheets are bananas. When you see the list of cast members, you’re like, ‘How is anybody else making a film in Hollywood, this year? How are they getting films financed? Everybody is in this!’”
Given what we know about the upcoming sequel, and what we’ve seen of it, we don’t doubt that at all. It truly is shaping up to be a production like no other and with over 60 characters said to be involved, we can’t even imagine how big the scale and scope will be. Thankfully, we’ll be able to find out what all the fuss is about fairly soon, as Avengers: Infinity War is now less than a year away, with the film set to descend upon theaters on May 4th, 2018.