Is The Avengers movie a little behind schedule already? And has Robert Downey Jr just confirmed that Joss Whedon’s script is firmly in place?
An interesting story has popped up over at Bleeding Cool, which is suggesting that Marvel Studios is looking, not for the first time, to tighten the budgets on the upcoming Avengers movie as much as it possibly can.
Marvel is rarely a studio to splash cash around, and, if you remember, it's this approach that reportedly almost cost it the involvement of Samuel L Jackson in its projects at one point. In the case of its ensemble feast, The Avengers, Bleeding Cool is saying that Marvel is looking to get the budget close to Sony's original outlay on the first Spider-Man movie. That'd put the cost of The Avengers somewhere around the $140/150m mark, firmly in the mid-range for a modern, big budget blockbuster.
As such, those working on the film are apparently being told to "get it all done on the relative cheap", which has reportedly led to changes of personnel behind the scenes, with some walking off the project. The impact of this is that pre-production on the film has been delayed, although time is still very much on Marvel's side here, as it looks to get the film out in time for the summer of 2012.
In other The Avengers news, Robert Downey Jr has been talking about Joss Whedon's screenplay work on the film, and it seems he's mightily impressed. It does, of course, suggest that a shooting screenplay is pretty much in place for the film, dependant on the sign off from important people in quite expensive suits.
Here's the link to Bleeding Cool's story, while Robert Downey Jr has been talking to MTV right here.
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