Marvel Studios Planning More Marvel One-Shot Short Films

Marvel Studios is “working on” more Marvel One-Shot short films, reveals Co-President and executive producer Louis D’Esposito. Marvel launched its brand of direct-to-video shorts in 2011 with a series of mini-movies tying into Iron Man 2, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, and The Avengers, filling in gaps with such characters as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Agent Carter (Hayley Atwell) after Captain America: The First Avenger. A fifth short, 2014’s All Hail the King, takes place after the events of 2013’s Iron Man 3 and reveals the fate of Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) ahead of his return years later in the feature film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

“We’re working on them,” D’Esposito says in the new book The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “It’s just finding the time. And I have a couple earmarked that I want to do.” 

In 2015, when Marvel Studios was in Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, president and producer Kevin Feige said the studio had a “backlog of ideas” that could explore little-seen characters like Howard the Duck (Seth Green) and space dog Cosmo — who make cameos in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy — and fast-talking Ant-Man fan-favorite Luis (Michael Pena). 

“We talk about that [Marvel One-Shots] a lot actually, because when you have tables like that (lots of potential storylines, most unexplored in the finished film), and we go, ‘What are we going to do with Howard? What are we going to do with Cosmo? We should do a One-Shot with Michael Pena,’” Feige told /Film at the time. “I mean, the universe is big. We’re moving up to three movies a year and I’m not sure how much beyond that we can go, so the One-Shots are great for: ‘Oh, we have this great idea, wouldn’t it be fun to see…’”

“We talk about it a lot,” added Feige. “We’re a relatively small team. We’re comfortable doing three movies a year, so it’s just about finding the time and the place. But we have a backlog of ideas.”

Other short films produced by Marvel Studios include Team Darryl and Team Thor: Part 2, mockumentaries playfully explaining Thor’s absence in Captain America: Civil War and acting as a bridge to Thor: Ragnarok, and Spider-Man: Far From Home tie-in Peter’s To-Do List, a Blu-ray short made of deleted scenes about Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) errands ahead of a class trip to Europe. 

Marvel Studios has announced I Am Groot, a series of “photo-real” animated shorts starring Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 character Baby Groot, to release on Disney+.