"We have so many characters we’re dealing with. We’re breaking ground on ‘Avengers: Infinity War.’ We have a board with 67 characters on it," co-director Joe Russo said last weekend, and, naturally, everyone (including us) picked up on that morsel. But it seems he was being colorful, and talking more recently with Collider, the directing duo clarified what they meant with that comment.
“We were being figurative when we said [67 characters] and people took it as literal, but there’s a lot of characters. ‘Infinity War’ is meant to be the culmination of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe up to that point. It’s very ambitious in its scope, it wants to take everything that you’ve seen before and coalesce into some kinda of climactic ending. It’s complicated , ambitious storytelling…We’re not talking about lead characters, just people that make an appearance,” the Russos said.
Bottom line: it’s still going to be big, but just don’t expect 67 lead roles. Fair enough.
The project is also going to be a big logistical challenge, with the team revealing that when they start production this fall they will shoot both ‘Infinity War’ movies concurrently. "…some days we’ll be shooting the first movie and some days we’ll be shooting the second movie. Just jumping back and forth. We won’t look like this next year,” they explained. Rest up, dudes.
"Avengers: Infinity War — Part 1" opens on May 4, 2018.