Avengers: Doomsday Begins Production with an Unfinished Script
As of today, Avengers: Doomsday is officially filming, and it’s off to a shaky – if traditional – start. Following a series of purported set photos of actors James Marsden and Ian McKellan, both of whom are confirmed to be in the movie, in costume as Cyclops and Magneto, most assumed that the next Marvel Avengers film was already shooting, but that appears not to be the case, as the Russo Brothers announced that the cameras started rolling today via an Instagram post. The duo Marvel hopes will be its saviors used an appropriate – though disappointing – image to whet fans’ appetites in their announcement:
View this post on Instagram
I understand why they used a chair; they don’t want to give away Doctor Doom’s look yet, and there will probably be plenty of leaked information about Doomsday that they’d have preferred to keep hidden. But the shot of Robert Downey Jr.’s chair can’t help but invoke that ridiculous, interminable casting announcement from a month ago that was five and a half hours of chairs. It isn’t really the Russo Brothers’ fault as much as Marvel’s, but still, they could have maybe thrown Doctor Doom’s mask onto the chair or something. (That being said, the possibility that they can’t do this because there is no mask because Doctor Doom’s iconic metal suit will be digitally inserted as “nanotech” is too disturbing to think about – and a larger possibility that I want to admit right now.) But this isn’t a big deal; the more worrying news comes from a rumor shared on X by scooper MyTimeToShineHello that says the script to Avengers: Doomsday is “not done DONE” – meaning that, while it does exist in some form, it is constantly (as in “every day”) being rewritten because it’s “not as good as they want it to be.”
To answer everyone’s question: yes, there is a script, but they’re going to keep rewriting it every day on set because it’s not done DONE. Like it’s not as good as they would want it to be. https://t.co/79b4bMwJAq
— MyTimeToShineHello (@MyTimeToShineH) April 27, 2025
Normally, I wouldn’t put a huge amount of stock in this – certainly not enough to write an article about it – but this particular rumor was then confirmed by John Rocha, the host of podcast The Hot Mic, who says that his regular co-host, Jeff Sneider, has been saying this regularly on his paywall-blocked blog The InSneider. Sneider is someone whose reporting I trust quite a bit; pretty much everything he said about The Fantastic Four: First Steps turned out to be true. Moreover, Rocha says that the reason for the incomplete script is that deals are still being negotiated, so they don’t know which actors and characters they’ll have to play with in Avengers: Doomsday, which means they need to leave certain things open and will likely have to add some superheroes to various scenes.
Yep. This is what @TheInSneider has been reporting for WEEKS on THE HOT MIC and in his newsletter.
The #AvengersDoomsday script ain’t DONE done because they haven’t closed all the deals with all the people who’ll be appearing in it.
An interesting way to make a movie… https://t.co/3JZaNIl27g pic.twitter.com/UrCfsZIgHs
— John Rocha (@TheRochaSays) April 27, 2025
Do you want to hear something funny? This week, the beginning of filming on Avengers: Doomsday, was supposed to see the release of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, the first version of this story. The Kang Dynasty was due in theaters on Thursday; it will be Thunderbolts* instead, which will be almost a year late. And I understand that things happen, and when you’ve got something like the MCU with all its moving parts, you have to allow some fluidity. But considering how slapdash this entire saga has felt, it’s hard to give Marvel the benefit of the doubt, especially with the incomplete script, something that happens often with Hollywood blockbusters. This doesn’t even have to be a death knell for a movie: the Bourne films were being rewritten constantly during filming, and they all turned out well. But the post-Endgame MCU has been so mismanaged, so disjointed, so poorly planned, so seemingly random that a big movie shooting with only part of a script feels like more incompetence. And this is one of the problems with modern Hollywood’s emphasis on release dates over seemingly everything else: you risk jumping the gun with a still-developing movie. Would waiting until you have your whole cast locked in before announcing a release date really be that big a tragedy?
But we get it; Marvel sucks now. We can still have some fun speculating who they’re trying to get signed up for Avengers: Doomsday. The most obvious ones are the remaining X-Men who weren’t announced last month: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Halle Berry as Storm, Famke Janssen as Jean Grey, and Anna Paquin as Rogue. It would feel weird having some of the others without these four, and I expect Marvel is working hard to get them all signed. There’s also Chris Evans as Captain America, someone I would bet money will return either in Doomsday or Secret Wars, if not both. Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner would round out the original Avengers as the Hulk and Hawkeye (I don’t think Scarlett Johansson is an option), and Benedict Cumberbatch will certainly be necessary, as Doctor Strange is the mystical counterpart to Doom’s magical know-how. Why some of these important people were not signed on as quickly as possible is a fair question, and while I think some of them are being saved for Secret Wars (like Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, partly because Holland is going to be busy for the next few months), others are clearly the result of difficult contract negotiations.
ComicBookMovie.com has an interesting theory as to why they’re playing hard to get: Marvel announced the big money they shelled out for Robert Downey Jr., and the old guard see blood in the water. I’m a bit surprised about some of them, like Famke Janssen; I love her, but I don’t see her being able to demand big bucks, especially at this stage of her career. But Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Chris Evans, Benedict Cumberbatch, and some of the others? They can absolutely put the screws to Marvel and Disney, even Evans, whose career hasn’t exactly lit up Tinseltown since he hung up his shield; it could very well be a tug-of-war between him and Marvel over who needs Captain America more. Since production was set to start soon – and has started now – I assumed we’d hear more casting announcements over the past few weeks, but it may be a while before we know all the heroes Doctor Doom will face next year.
Let us know what you think of the incomplete script and possible casting for Avengers: Doomsday in the comments!
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