With the debut of Disney+ some brand new featurettes and behind-the-scenes videos about the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have now seen the light of day. Among them is the extensive Casting the MCU, an extra available for viewing under Avengers: Endgame on the streaming service. This featurette tells the tale of Marvel Studios‘ casting director Sarah Finn, whose journey with Marvel officially began with 2008’s Iron Man but as she reveals in the video, it started much, much earlier than that.
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Finn recounts her full journey through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting from even before she began working for Marvel Studios and revealing she interviewed for the position and “auditioned” just like all the actors that they brought over the years. She went on to reveal that because of her personal connection to a certain Marvel movie her first meeting really went in her favor.
“My oldest two boys and I had seen Fantastic Four maybe fifty or sixty times so when I walked in to meet everyone for the first time they had a statue of Doctor Doom there and I kind of lost it,” Finn revealed. “I’m an inner-geek for all of this stuff so it was really exciting to think about Iron Man and working with this team.”
While recapping her early days with Marvel Studios, Finn revealed the guiding principle that she learned on that film with regard to bringing these characters to life, something that she uses to this day on Marvel Studios projects.
“I really didn’t know that much about (Iron Man),” Finn said. “When you start to look at the comics it can quickly get very confusing so I learned on that movie to really key into the director’s vision for the project and try to understand their approach and the story they want to tell. The key is who is going to breath life into these characters on the page in a way that audiences will respond to, connect with, and be memorable.”
The complete Casting the MCU video goes in depth on much of the casting for the franchise and features the high ranking creatives of Marvel Studios offering a ton of praise for Finn and her work on the films.
“Sarah Finn is responsible for all of these amazing actors and actresses that we’ve brought into this,” President of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Kevin Feige said.
“Sarah Finn is a gift. She’s a gift as a human being. She’s a gift as a storyteller herself,” executive vice president of production for Marvel Studios, Victoria Alonso adds.
Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame co-director Joe Russo took his praise even higher, saying: “Sarah Finn is unequivocally the greatest casting director in the business right now and what she has done, when you look at the level of talent that has been amassed over this decade it’s staggering, and it’s all attributable to her. She has just done an amazing, sensitive job of finding the right actors to portray these characters. This is a great group of people who love working together, who love working on these films, and that’s also a testament to her abilities as a casting director.”
Check out more of the major Marvel Studios reveals packed into Disney+ right here!
Other upcoming Marvel Studios projects on the horizon (which Sarah Finn helped cast!) include Black Widow on May 1, 2020, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in Fall 2020, The Eternals on November 6, 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, WandaVision in Spring 2021, Loki in Spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, Spider-Man 3 on July 16, 2021, What If…? in Summer 2021, Hawkeye in Fall 2021, and Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021, and Black Panther 2 on May 6, 2022. Disney+ series without release dates include Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk. Ant-Man 3 and Blade are also without theatrical release dates.
