The current discussion around ‘The Avengers 2‘ has shifted from the stars demanding higher pay to something equally inside baseball: the rights to the characters of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. In the pages of the comics, they’re mutants and Avengers, which has led to a pretty sticky situation. Fox, who has the X-Men rights, plans to use Quicksilver for the upcoming ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past.’ Marvel and writer/director Joss Whedon plan to use him for ‘Avengers 2.’ This conflict remained hidden when Whedon went on Late Night to chat about the characters with Jimmy Fallon.
Although Whedon doesn’t address the conflict directly, there’s something ever-so-slightly defensive about the way he talks about the characters, emphasizing that they are major ‘Avengers’ characters:
“There are new characters. I’ve already said that we’re going to have a brother-sister team, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, who were great mainstays of The Avengers when I was reading the comics as a kid.”
As much as both Fox and Marvel using Quicksilver feels like a “mine is bigger than yours” contest between the two studios, we certainly hope both parties take the high road here (at least in public). After all, audiences are smart enough to deal with the fact that there can be two superheroes in two different movies who can run really fast. As for casting, Whedon told Fallon that they hadn’t started thinking yet, not mentioning that Saoirse Ronan has been described as the “template” for the character.
Whedon also discussed why he wanted to add Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver to the roster and his answer is simple enough…more variety!
“Well, besides the fact that I grew up reading them, their powers are very visually interesting. One of the problems I had on the first one was, everybody basically had punchy powers. ‘I can hit,’ ‘I can also hit.’ Hopefully it didn’t get too boring. But coming into the second one, he’s got super speed. She can weave spells and a little telekinesis, get inside your head. There’s good stuff that they can do that will help sort of keep it fresh.”
‘The Avengers 2′ won’t arrive until May 1st, 2015. Expect this whole Quicksilver controversy to keep us occupied for the next year or so.
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