There’s a moment in the Captain America: Winter Soldier commentary that caught my attention and revealed what gave the film such a tight and explosive script.
According to the film’s directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, and writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, it was the eight solid months in a room with the script, banging out the issues and solving plot problems, that led to The Winter Soldier being one of the best stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
We got the opportunity to discuss the development process of Cap 2 and Cap 3 during our interview with the Russo brothers this week, and although they agree that the development process for The Winter Soldier was instrumental to its success, they were happy to have more time to give Captain America 3 the same treatment.
Related: The Russo Brothers challenged Marvel to take The Winter Soldier further
“We’ve had a lot more time to focus on ‘Cap 3’ than we had to focus on ‘Cap 2,'” said Joe Russo. “We were on ‘Cap 2’ one year before we started shooting, whereas this, if you count February from when we started, we get a year and three months, so it’s a little more time.”
This means that we’ll see Captain America 3 start shooting some time in late April or early May of next year, right when Avengers: Age of Ultron is set to hit theaters. This will give screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely plenty of time to develop the story with the Russos, especially if the quartet maintains their fluid working relationship with each other.
Essentially, the Russos spend weeks breaking the story with Markus and McFeely, then the screenwriters spend a few weeks developing a draft, then the directing and screenwriting duos meet again for another couple of weeks to break down the script as much as possible.
“You wanna hammer out the logic as completely as you can and make sure there are a lot of really good people in the room beating up the script over and over again,” said Joe Russo.
According to the Russos, the early stages of development can see them working 9-5 on the basic concept, but once a script gets involved, they spend hours pouring over it to make sure that every moment is as impactful as possible.
“You’re in a room for 13, 14 hours, looking through each scene,” said Anthony Russo.
According to most of the world, all of this backbreaking over the film’s logic paid off handsomely. It’s a pretty safe bet at this point to imagine that the same will be able to be said about Cap 3 20 months from now.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital Download.
More from this interview
Related: The Russo brothers tease potential Captain America 3 titles and overarching themes
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.