The Russo Brothers Explain Why AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY Didn’t Have a Finished Script When Filming Began

Making a $200 million-plus movie without a finished script sounds like the kind of decision that should make a studio executive break out in a cold sweat.

Yet that’s howJoe Russo and Anthony RussoapproachedAvengers: Doomsday, and the directors have now explained why they’re comfortable figuring out parts of the movie while the cameras are already rolling.

For the Russos, the screenplay isn’t necessarily a locked blueprint. They prefer to leave room for the cast, rehearsals, and discoveries made during production to influence where the characters go.

Joe explained: “We’re improvisation-based, rehearsal-based directors. We like to see what the actors bring to the characters, and sometimes you don’t get the actors until a few days or few weeks before you shoot them. And a lot of the time, that’s when the magic happens.”

I understand the thinking. Actors can absolutely discover something unexpected once they’re performing a scene together, and directors should have the freedom to recognize when an actor has found a better way into a character.

Still, shooting a movie as massive and expensive as Avengers: Doomsday without a finished screenplay seems like an unnecessarily risky way to work.

Having a completed script doesn’t prevent improvisation. It doesn’t stop actors from bringing new ideas to their characters, and it doesn’t mean the filmmakers can’t rewrite scenes when they discover something better.

It simply gives a gigantic production a solid foundation before hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to shoot it.

That’s what makes this approach worrisome. Marvel movies of this size require enormous amounts of coordination involving actors, sets, visual effects, stunt teams, locations, schedules, and countless other moving parts.

Starting production while major pieces of the story are still evolving feels less like creative flexibility and more like inviting expensive problems that could have been worked through earlier.

The Russos obviously know their way around an Avengers movie. They previously directed Avengers: Endgame, and they’re returning for a film that has the difficult job of bringing several corners of the Marvel Cinematic Universe together.

Doomsday will feature multiple groups of heroes from different universes, including the Avengers, the Wakandans from Black Panther, the Thunderbolts, aka the New Avengers, from Earth-616, the Fantastic Four from Earth-828, and the original X-Men.

That’s a of a lot of characters and storylines to juggle, which makes having the screenplay nailed down beforehand seem even more important.

The movie is also arriving at a time when Marvel Studios has had its share of creative fumbles, putting additional pressure on Doomsday to help get the MCU moving in a stronger direction.

When Anthony was asked about the film potentially restoring some order to the franchise, he explained that the Russos aren’t approaching the project as if they need to fix everything Marvel has done.

“It’s part of the unique challenge. The thing that Joe and I have always appreciated about our collaboration with Marvel is: Our job isn’t to answer for the entirety of the MCU. We intersect it in a very specific way. It’s that intersection which is where we can make sense of things.”

That’s probably the right mentality for tackling something this enormous. Trying to repair or explain every corner of the MCU would be a losing battle. The Russos need to concentrate on making Avengers: Doomsday work as a movie first.

Hopefully their evolving-script method pays off. These guys have successfully handled massive Marvel productions before, so they’ve earned some confidence.

But filmmaking on this scale is already incredibly complicated, and going into production without a finished screenplay still seems irresponsible when more than $200 million is potentially riding on the result.

Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to hit theaters on December 18 as part of Phase 6 of the MCU.

Source: AP