Samuel L. Jackson Reveals His Avengers Script Was Stolen Before Production

Samuel L. Jackson has revealed that his script for the first Avengers movie was actually stolen during production, forcing Marvel Studios to go on a cross-continental hunt for the perpetrator. That manhunt ultimately culminated in an ABSCAM-style sting operation, this one of the crazier behind-the-scenes stories about a movie production – but just one of several crazy stories about what it took to make Marvel’s The Avengers a billion-dollar box office game-changer! 

Marvel’s Secret Invasion Disney+ series premiered this week; during EW’s interview with the cast (which includes Jackson, Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, returning Marvel star Ben Mendelsohn, Oscar-winner Oliva Colman, and Peak Blinders actor Kingsley Ben-Adir. During the interview, the subject came up of just how crazy Marvel is about protecting against secrets and spoilers leaking; after Emilia Clarke explained how she immediately saw the vast differences between Game of Thrones and Marvel in terms of security measures, Jackson validated her viewpoint with a few of his stories over a decade-and-a-half of paying Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

In a more recent example of Marvel’s dogmatic security measures, Jackson explained how Marvel security shot down a drone that tried to fly over the set of Secret Invasion – and in other cases of drone fly-overs, the studio went so far as to track down and detain the pilots. that story led Jackson to some older examples of fans going too far to get Marvel Studios secrets, such as the person working on Avengers who stole Jackson’s script for The Avengers: 

“I remember when we got ready to do Avengers, someone printed out a copy of my Avengers script that had my watermark on it, and put it online for sale,” Jackson explained. “I was shooting in Canada and Marvel came to Canada. It had been printed in the production office… They found out who it was, dude quit, left the country. They set up a fake buy for the script, dude didn’t show up. It was crazy.”

Rumors of Jackson’s stolen script started circulating the blogosphere back in 2011, just after Marvel Studios made a public splash in Times Square filming Captain America’s (Chris Evans) re-awakening in modern times, with Samuel L. Jackson also appearing in the scene. The uncertainty over the authenticity of the script, plus the fact that it was Sam Jackson’s script, made buyers squirrely. That instinct was smart on their part: because if you didn’t believe it before that Kevin Feige has a team of spies and snipers ready to go at any moment… you should now. 

Marvel’s Avengers and Secret Invasion are both streaming on Disney+.