How MCU Directors Collaborated For ‘Avengers: Infinity War’

Joe and Anthony Russo might be spearheading the epic of Avengers: Infinity War, but bringing the film to life turned out to be somewhat of a team effort between the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s directors.

During a visit to the set of Infinity War last year, the Russo brothers spoke to reporters about the role that some of the MCU’s other directors had in the picture. As it turns out, directors like Guardians of the Galaxy‘s James Gunn and Thor: Ragnarok‘s Taika Waititi had a unique role, in terms of determining the tone of certain characters.

“I would say collectively, everyone in the Marvel Universe has been involved in this movie.” Joe Russo explained. “We’re very close with all the directors. We love them all. We have a lot of conversations with people constantly. We had a lot of talking with Taika, because that movie [wasn’t] finished, and he had to execute things on set that we needed real information about tonally, about the direction it was going in. The Guardians’ two movies existed. We had seen both, so we have an understanding of how those characters behave. I think James has functioned in the way that everyone has been functioning.”

The Russos also sought out a bit of input from those directing the films surrounding Infinity War – namely Black Panther‘s Ryan Coogler and Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s Peyton Reed.

“As far as how we’re working, we’re working in a real collaborate, united artists approach to the movie, in respect to hearing where people are taking their characters.” Joe Russo continued. “Ant-Man 2 is just about to start shooting, so we need to keep in communication with Peyton constantly about story elements in that, that may effect this. [Ryan] Coogler. Ryan was in the middle of shooting Black Panther. He was here, and we had several conversations. Met with him many times, met with the crew many times with him, his production design department. We looked at fight vids from the story. We had a lot of interaction with Nate Moore, the producer. Many text messages back and forth with Ryan. It’s really just trying to do the job of managing the universe as it’s progressing.”

According to the Russos, this spawned from a desire to make sure that Infinity War was accounting for the stories that would be happening around it.

“I think here’s really where it becomes most relevant, is that if a movie has been completed, there’s really nothing else to talk about.” Anthony Russo explained. “The movie exists. It’s like everything you need to know about that movie is in the movie, is on the screen. That’s the expression, that’s the story. That’s the experience that we all had of it. Then, that’s what you need to know to carry that story forward, and these characters forward. For the movies that haven’t been completed, that’s where it gets into a tricky spot for us, because we want to make sure that we’re being sensitive to what’s happening during the execution of those films, the process of discovery that they will go through in the execution that’s different from what was on the page in the scripts. Which, of course, we read all the scripts. That’s really where it becomes critical that we communicate with other people, just to understand how things are evolving, while we’re executing while they’re executing-

“What we need from their storytelling, to help move us forward.” Joe Russo added. “I think, in particular, on this one, that was Ryan, because he was shooting while we were shooting. There was a lot of cross-collaboration there.”

Black Panther is in theaters now. Avengers: Infinity War lands in theaters on April 27, and Ant-Man and The Wasp soars into theaters on July 6. Captain Marvel hits theaters on March 8, 2019, followed by Avengers 4 on May 3, 2019.