Ross Marquand Says He Would Jump at Chance to Return to Marvel (Exclusive)
The Walking Dead star Ross Marquand would love the chance to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the future. The Aaron actor replaced Hugo Weaving as The Red Skull in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War and 2019's Avengers: Endgame, appearing as the gatekeeper to the Soul Stone on the planet Vormir. Hugo Weaving's Red Skull clashed with Chris Evans' Captain America in 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger. After Weaving and Marvel couldn't agree on a contract, the studio pivoted to Marquand instead. Marquand talked everything Marvel on the red carpet for The Walking Dead finale, where the topic of a Red Skull return was broached.
ComicBook.com's Brandon Davis caught up with Ross Marquand and asked if he'd ever return to Marvel. "I can neither confirm nor deny that," he said. "But I would very much jump at the chance. I'm a comic book guy." Earlier, Marquand also compared what it's like to act in The Walking Dead Universe and the MCU. Marquand joined The Walking Dead in 2014 after being a fan for several years. Along with doing the motion-capture work for Red Skull, the actor also voiced Ultron in What If... ? and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Why Hugo Weaving Is No Longer The Red Skull
In a surprising move, Marvel Studios brought back Captain America villain Red Skull in a new role in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. The character first appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain America: The First Avenger as played by Hugo Weaving. The Hydra scientist tampered with the power of the Tesseract and the Space Stone repaid him by teleporting him to Vormir. But Weaving didn't play Red Skull in the Avengers movies. Instead, Ross Marquand took over the character in his new role as guardian of the Soul Stone.
In an interview with TimeOut in 2020, Weaving explained why he didn't return to the role in the two Avengers films, claiming that Marvel Studios tried to hedge on the agreement established when he first signed on to play the villain. "Oh, yeah. I loved playing that character Red Skull – it was a lot of fun," Weaving says. "We were all obliged to sign up for three pictures: I was thinking [Red Skull] probably wouldn't come back in Captain America but he may well come back as a villain in The Avengers. By then, they'd pushed back on the contracts that we agreed on and so the money they offered me for The Avengers was much less than I got for the very first one, and this was for two films. And the promise when we first signed the contracts was that the money would grow each time. They said: It's just a voice job, it's not a big deal. I actually found negotiating with them through my agent impossible. And I didn't really wanna do it that much. But I would have done it."
What MCU project would you like to see Red Skull make an appearance in? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.