If 2011 was a busy year for the beloved Joss Whedon production-wise, both with the shooting of his major tentpole picture “The Avengers” along with his secretly lensed adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” then 2012 should be a time for Whedon to sit back and watch these hotly anticipated projects unfurl. Along with 'Avengers' and 'Much Ado,' we’ll also see the release of “Cabin in the Woods,” a long stalled Drew Goddard-directed/Whedon-penned project that Lionsgate acquired following the financial shakeup at the film’s original studio MGM.
As for “The Avengers,” which will finally see popular Marvel heroes like Iron Man and Captain America assemble into the ultimate comic book fighting force, Whedon took some time to discuss the film’s post-conversion process to 3-D with JoBlo. Marvel is no stranger to the post-conversion process, having done it with both “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” this past summer, but Whedon assures those waiting for the superhero epic shouldn’t fret about the recent announcement that “The Avengers” will receive the same treatment.
“ ’The Avengers’ isn't obnoxiously 3-D. There's no, 'Oh look, we're going to spend 20 minutes going through this tunnel because it's in 3-D!' And no one is pointing at the screen the entire time. But it's an action movie. Things tend to hurtle toward the screen anyway…I'm not a big fan of extreme long lens, talky movies — I like to see the space I'm in and relate to it, so 3-D kinda fits my aesthetic anyway. And the technology has advanced so far in the past couple years."
Plans are to release the film in both 2D and 3D on May 4th, 2012, so as long as we’re able to enjoy the superhero brawl without the 3D eyesore, we’ll be happy. Along with the “The Avengers” news, there’s more word on another Whedon-related production that may have his legion of fans – the self proclaimed “Whedonites” – breathing a sigh of relief. Perhaps still standing as his best commercial achievement thus far in his career, despite critical success and fan adoration for excellent series like “Firefly” and “Dollhouse,” Whedon’s popular ‘90s television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” has long stood as a sacred cow of the Whedonites. A little over a year ago, news came that first-time screenwriter Whit Anderson was taking a crack at a revamp of the popular television series as a full blow feature film reboot for Warner Brothers. Now LA Times’ Hero Complex is saying that things apparently didn’t go to well with Anderson’s draft of the script she submitted this past summer.
Apparently sources close to the production are saying that Anderson’s script fell below studio expectations, and the search for a new writer is on. Back in November, Whedon wasn’t very forgiving of the 29-year old writer who proclaimed herself as a 'Buffy' fangirl, leaving Whedon to humorously state, “This is a sad, sad reflection on our times when people must feed off the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths — just because they can’t think of an original idea of their own, like I did with my ‘Avengers’ idea that I made up myself.”
Though perhaps a quote in the story is most telling of the project's future, as Hero Complex cites a key player as stating, “If you’re going to bring it back, you have to do it right, [Anderson] came in with some great ideas and she had reinvented some of the lore and it was pretty cool but in the end there just wasn’t enough on the page.”
Perhaps Anderson lacked the wit and satirical bite of Whedon’s original series, sending Warner Brothers back to the drawing boards on this one, and leaving Whedonties with a few less sleepless nights.