Avengers: Infinity War Writers Reveal Movie Originally Had Thanos Wiping Out the Nova Corps

Avengers: Infinity War starts off with Thanos (Josh Brolin) having already secured the Power Stone. Thanks to the events of Guardians of the Galaxy — which we all watched earlier this month as a part of ComicBook.com’s #QuarantineWatchParty event series — we know the team left the Infinity Stone on the planet of Xandar; Xandar, of course, being the alien planet under guard by the Nova Corps and Gleen Close’s Nova Prime. The Mad Titan wiped out the planet off-screen but according to Infinity War writer Christopher Markus, there was one iteration of the script where movie-goers were supposed to see the razing happen on-screen.

Partaking in another #QuarantineWatchParty event Sunday evening, Markus revealed the team behind the flick wrote “many drafts” of the attack, except none of them ended up making the final cut. “We wrote many drafts of it,” Markus says on Twitter. “An entire attack on the Nova Corps, but in the end, it was a beat you could fully understand without seeing it.”

The attack in question will undoubtedly serve a major role in the eventual introduction of Nova proper, the Human Rocket known as Richard Rider. As you can read in BD’s theory about Nova’s introduction here, a major attack such as the Battle of Xandar is the perfect reason to put focus on the development of the Worldmind, something that can give a new iteration of the Nova Corps some extra power as they police the cosmos.

As Markus told us last fall, there was a time where the team wanted to introduce Close as the voice of the Worldmind in Infinity War.

“We actually had, I remember in the big manifesto thing that we did, where the first work we did on these movies where we just… every possible storyline that you could take from what’s around, that Nova has the Xandarian Worldmind,” Markus told ComicBook.com on Thursday. “Yeah, the Xandarian Worldmind, was that after… it was almost going… In this conception, he would be the herald, not unlike the Hulk, who was actually standing in for the Silver Surfer, but that one member of the Nova Corps survived Thanos’ attack. The Xandarian Worldmind would be the voice of Glenn Close, because you had her and why not? And that he would be Richard Rider and he would come to earth.”

Avengers: Infinity War is now streaming on Netflix.

What’s your favorite Infinity War moment? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by joining the conversation online by hitting me up on Twitter at @AdamBarnhardt!