Dwayne Johnson Congratulates AVENGERS: ENDGAME And Teases A Meeting With Marvel Studios Boss Kevin Feige

In a lengthy new social media post, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson congratulates Avengers: Endgame for its successful opening weekend and teases a meeting with Kevin Feige. Is he putting Black Adam behind him?

By JoshWilding - May 01, 2019 12:05 AM EST

Filed Under: Avengers: Endgame

[WARNING: This Post Contains Spoilers For Avengers: Endgame]

Dwayne Johnson is a smart businessman and while the DC Extended Universe's fortunes are definitely looking up, Shazam!'s worldwide haul of $346 million pales in comparison to the business Avengers: Endgame has done this weekend. With that in mind, could the actor be considering making the leap from the long-delayed Black Adam to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Well, in the lengthy Instagram post below, Johnson sings the praises of Marvel Studios and Avengers: Endgame and promises to meet with Kevin Feige for dinner as soon as possible.

Apparently, both of their assistants have been trying to get them together for a while now and while I'm not sure which upcoming project the charismatic actor would be suitable for, I'm sure Feige would be glad to have him and Johnson would be extremely happy to land a huge MCU pay day (not to mention the critical acclaim that comes with their releases).

We'll have to wait and see how things pan out but Johnson and the MCU are a strong fit and it's hard to imagine Black Adam being a priority for Warner Bros. despite how great Shazam! was, especially as it hasn't made the biggest of impacts from a financial standpoint. What do you think?

View this post on Instagram

So cool to witness this historic global event and win for our business and the fans. Congrats Marvel & Disney! Can’t believe you killed Thanos! KIDDING. Congrats again! DRJ

A post shared by therock (@therock) on
Apr 28, 2019 at 4:01pm PDT

Click on the "View List" button for a spoiler-filled interview with
Avengers: Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely!

Why That Big Thanos Moment Happened So Soon

In the first fifteen minutes or so of Avengers: Endgame, Thor beheads Thanos, but it achieves absolutely nothing because he's already destroyed the Infinity Stones.

"We always had this problem," McFeely explains. "The guy has the ultimate weapon. He can see it coming. It’s ridiculous. We were just banging our heads for weeks, and at some point, [the executive producer] Trinh Tran went, 'Can’t we just kill him?' And we all went, 'What happens if you just kill him? Why would you kill him? Why would he let you kill him?'"

"It reinforced Thanos’s agenda. He was done," Markus adds. "Not to make him too Christ-like, but it was like, 'If I’ve got to die, I can die now.'"

"What If?" Comics Heavily Inspired The Movie

We know that an animated What If? series is coming to Disney+, but those comic books actually inspired a lot of what we saw in Avengers: Endgame. "Chris and I wrote a master document while we were shooting 'Civil War,' and one of the things we were interested in exploring is, remember the What If comics?" McFeely asks.

"Well, this is our what if. If you lost, Thor becomes fat. Natasha becomes a shut-in. Steve becomes depressed. Tony gets on with his life. Hulk is a superhero."

Markus continues: "Clint becomes a murdering maniac. When we were spitballing for 'Endgame,' we started with, Thor’s on a mission of vengeance. And then we were like, he was on a mission of vengeance in the last movie. This is all this guy ever does! And fails, all the time. Let’s drive him into a wall and see what happens."

Professor Hulk Was Supposed To Debut In Infinity War

We saw in the trailers for Avengers: Infinity War that The Hulk was supposed to factor into the final battle, but reshoots changed that and the Jade Giant was nowhere to be seen. Well, it turns out that the emergence of "Smart Hulk" was originally set to take place during the battle of Wakanda.

"There was a time when Banner became Smart Hulk in the first movie," Markus confirms. "It was a lot of fun, but it came at the wrong moment. It was an up, right when everyone else was down." Adds McFeely: "It happened in Wakanda. His arc was designed like, I’m not getting along with the Hulk, the Hulk won’t come out. And then they compromise and become Smart Hulk."

While scenes in the Gamma Lab Bruce mentions were written, they decided to jump straight into it with that scene in the pancake house.

Hawkeye's Family Very Nearly Died In Infinity War

"There was a time where we contemplated having that archery scene in the first movie, after the Snap," reveals Markus. "You snap, and then you pop up in Clint’s farm — what are we watching? — and that’s the first indication it had a wider effect. But he literally had not been in the movie prior to that point. It’s cool, but it’s going to blunt the brutality of what [Thanos] did."

Why We Didn't See More Of Captain Marvel

Despite the success of her solo movie, Captain Marvel's role in Avengers: Endgame is relatively minor and much of that boils down to the fact the superhero ensemble was shot before her origin story! However, McFeely offers up another explanation for why her screentime was relatively limited.

"Certainly, Captain Marvel is in ['Endgame'] a little less than you would have thought. But that’s not the story we’re trying to tell — it’s the original Avengers dealing with loss and coming to a conclusion, and she’s the new, fresh blood." Markus adds to that by noting, "She’s been in space nearly half her life. She has obligations."

The Living Tribunal Nearly Appeared In Infinity War

"We did try to put the Living Tribunal in the first movie," Markus confirmed when asked if there were any characters they weren't able to include across the two movies. "We wrote a scene in which he appeared during the Titan fight. And everyone was like, what?"

"Whoa," McFeely adds. "He’s got three heads. It would indicate a whole different level of architecture to the universe and I think that was too much to just throw in." It's easy to see where he's coming from but Markus was quick to say that, "The idea’s still in [Marvel Studios President] Kevin [Feige]’s court."

Why Does Avengers: Endgame Jump Forward By Five Years?

Unexpectedly, Avengers: Endgame jumps ahead by five years after Thanos's death, and the writers have explained why it was important to them for a significant amount of time to have passed by the time Earth's Mightiest Heroes formulated their plan to travel through time.

"We wanted it to be real and for a long time — both in movie time and in chronological time for the characters," Markus says. "You couldn’t end Natasha, Tony and Steve the way we do without knowing that they’ve done their time and this is taking them to the brink."

Iron Man Was Going To Travel To Asgard

Initially, the writers didn't want to revisit the events of The Avengers, and the first draft instead saw Iron Man head to Asgard to retreive the Tesseract according to McFeely. "[There’s] a moment in the M.C.U., if you’re paying very close attention, where the Aether is there and the Tesseract is in the vault. In that iteration, we were interested in Tony going to Asgard. He had a stealth suit, so he was invisible, and he fought Heimdall, who could see him."

That would have been very cool, but it wasn't the only change made. Thor was originally going to share a lot of screentime with Natalie Portman's Jane Foster, while "They went to the Triskelion at one point to get the [Tesseract], and then somebody was going to get into a car and drive to Doctor Strange’s house."

How Does Time-Travel Work In The MCU?

Doing away with the idea that travelling back to the past changes the future was a "necessity" according to McFeely, as "If you have six MacGuffins and every time you go back it changes something, you’ve got Biff’s casino, exponentially. So we just couldn’t do that. We had physicists come in — more than one — who said, basically, “Back to the Future” is [wrong]."

"Basically said what the Hulk says in that scene," Markus continues, "which is, if you go to the past, then the present becomes your past and the past becomes your future. So there’s absolutely no reason it would change."

How They Managed To Get Robert Redford To Return

Robert Redford played Alexander Pierce in Captain America: The Winter Soldier but he recently announced his retirement from acting, so how on Earth did Marvel Studios manage to get him to reprise the role for Avengers: Endgame?

"That was one where we thought, should it be Nick Fury?" McFeely reveals. "We also wrote a version for Maria Hill. That whole time, they’re announcing “Old Man With a Gun” as Redford’s last appearance on film. It’s the last time you’re going to see Robert Redford. And we’re going — [shoots conspiratorial look at Markus] [Laughter]"

The Final Battle Was Originally Even Longer

Markus reveales that "We wrote and shot an even much longer battle, with its own three-act structure," and that means there must be a lot of deleted scenes out there for us to enjoy somewhere down the line. However, it doesn't sound as if all of it worked!

"It didn’t play well," McFeely explains, "but we had a scene in a trench where, for reasons, the battle got paused for about three minutes and now there’s 18 people all going, 'What are we going to do?' 'I’m going to do this.' 'I’m going to do this.' Just bouncing around this completely fake, fraudulent scene. When you have that many people, it invariably is, one line, one line, one line. And that’s not a natural conversation."

"It also required them to find enough shelter to have a conversation in the middle of the biggest battle," Markus concludes. "It wasn’t a polite World War I battle where you have a moment."

Assembling A-Force

There's a very cool moment in the movie when the Marvel Cinematic Universe's female heroes assemble to take on Thanos. It's a little on the nose, but it works. How did the writers come up with it? "There was much conversation," reveals McFeely. "Is that delightful or is it pandering? We went around and around on that. Ultimately we went, we like it too much."

"Part of the fun of the 'Avengers' movies has always been team-ups," Markus agrees. "Marvel has been amassing this huge roster of characters. You’ve got crazy aliens. You’ve got that many badass women. You’ve got three or four people in Iron Man suits."

Why Hank And Janet Were Absent From The Final Battle

Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne were both absent from Avengers: Endgame's final battle, but why? "There were moments," Markus explains, "as they brought everybody back, where we’re like, technically, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer have [Ant-Man] suits. Do we bring them back? It became impossible to track the people we did bring back, but also, it’s just going to be an orgy."

Why Black Widow Had To Die

"Her journey, in our minds, had come to an end if she could get the Avengers back," McFeely reveals when asked why they decided to kill off Black Widow. "She comes from such an abusive, terrible, mind-control background, so when she gets to Vormir and she has a chance to get the family back, that’s a thing she would trade for."

"The toughest thing for us was we were always worried that people weren’t going to have time to be sad enough. The stakes are still out there and they haven’t solved the problem. But we lost a big character — a female character — how do we honor it? We have this male lens and it’s a lot of guys being sad that a woman died."

The Reason Natasha Doesn't Get A Funeral

Since Avengers: Endgame was released, a lot of fans have complained that while Iron Man gets a big funeral at the end of the movie, poor Black Widow appears to have been forgotten about.

Asked for an explanation, Markus says: "That’s partly because Tony’s this massive public figure and she’s been a cipher the whole time. It wasn’t necessarily honest to the character to give her a funeral. The biggest question about it is what Thor raises there on the dock. 'We have the Infinity Stones. Why don’t we just bring her back?'"

McFeely adds: "But that’s the everlasting exchange. You bring her back, you lose the stone." Wait, does that mean she was resurrected when Captain America returned it?

Was Hawkeye Ever Going To Die?

"There was, for sure," McFeely responds when asked if there was ever a draft featuring Clint Barton making the leap. "Jen Underdahl, our visual effects producer, read an outline or draft where Hawkeye goes over. And she goes, 'Don’t you take this away from her.' I actually get emotional thinking about it."

"And it was true,"Markus continues, "it was him taking the hit for her. It was melodramatic to have him die and not get his family back. And it is only right and proper that she’s done."

Did Iron Man Have To Die In Avengers: Endgame?

"Everyone knew this was going to be the end of Tony Stark," McFeely reveals before Markus adds: "I don’t think there were any mandates. If we had a good reason to not do it, certainly people would have entertained it."

"The watchword was, end this chapter, and he started the chapter," McFeely continues as Markus points out that, "In a way, he has been the mirror of Steve Rogers the entire time. Steve is moving toward some sort of enlightened self-interest, and Tony’s moving to selflessness. They both get to their endpoints."

Was There Ever A Version Where Iron Man Lived?

"No," Markus confirms. "Because we had the opportunity to give him the perfect retirement life, within the movie. That’s the life he’s been striving for. Are he and Pepper going to get together? Yes. They got married, they had a kid, it was great. It’s a good death. It doesn’t feel like a tragedy. It feels like a heroic, finished life."

Was Captain America Always Getting A Happy Ending With Peggy?

"From the very first outline, we knew he was going to get his dance," McFeely confirms. "On a separate subject, I started to lose my barometer on what was just fan service and what was good for the character. Because I think it’s good for the characters. But we also just gave you what you wanted. Is that good? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you, it’s satisfying."

"He’s postponed a life in order to fulfill his duty. That’s why I didn’t think we were ever going to kill him. Because that’s not the arc. The arc is, I finally get to put my shield down because I’ve earned that."

"A hero without sacrifice, you’re not going to get the miles out of that person that you need to for these movies," Markus continues. "That’s what makes them a hero, it’s not the powers." That's a great way of looking at it and it was a pretty perfect way to wrap up the hero's story in the MCU.

Avengers: Endgame May Mark The Writers' Marvel Finale

"I don’t know how to follow it up, that’s the problem," Markus says when asked if the writing duo is finished with Marvel Studios after Avengers: Endgame. "I’m not quite old enough to retire."

Where Did The Idea Of Time-Travel Come From?

"Kevin [Feige] at one point said, I would like to use the Time Stone, or use time as an element," McFeely reveals. "It let us spend a few weeks seeing what’s the kookiest thing we could do with time and not break the movie."

"We all sat there going, really? We’re going to do time travel?" Markus says. "It was only when we were looking at who we had available, character-wise; we hadn’t used Ant-Man yet. And there really is, in people’s theory of the Quantum Realm, a time thing in the M.C.U., right now, available to us, with a character we haven’t used yet. We have a loophole that’s not cheating."

Many thanks to The New York Times for the quotes used throughout this post.

AVENGERS: ENDGAME Composer Alan Silvestri On Why The Portals Scene Has Had Such A Lasting Impact

Recommended For You:

LAZARETH Interview: Asher Angel On How The Movie Made Him A Better Actor And His DCU Future (Exclusive)

DISCLAIMER: ComicBookMovie.com is protected under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) and... [MORE]

ComicBookMovie.com, and/or the user who contributed this post, may earn commissions or revenue through clicks or purchases made through any third-party links contained within the content above.

Do you have what it takes to write for us?

Want to contribute?

84 Comments

1 2 3

Kurne - 5/1/2019, 12:44 AM

As much as I don't like how he's taken (unnecessary) control over Black Adam, it would still be cool to see him in an MCU movie some day. Heck, it would have been cool if he was a SHIELD/Hydra agent years ago in TWS. I dunno why but I can really picture him in that movie.

TheDudeMan - 5/1/2019, 12:50 AM

Beta Ray Bill? Never been a big fan of the character but idk who else I could picture him as in the MCU?

Vandalore - 5/1/2019, 3:25 AM

@TheDudeMan - I like that idea.

Spock0Clock - 5/1/2019, 12:54 AM

Not a big fan of Johnson and don't want to see him try to throw his weight around Marvel Studios... but...

Spock0Clock - 5/1/2019, 1:04 AM

I just thought about the Starjammers (with Captain Marvel) going head to head with the Shi'ar Imperial Guard with a purple-skinned Rock doing the space-version of the People's Eyebrow and throwing down against Carol and legitimately salivated.

bkmeijer2 - 5/1/2019, 12:55 AM

To be honest, I like him to stay away from the MCU. I’m sure he is a likeable guy, but he always acts like he’s praising other people, while in reality he is becoming the cente point of attention.

I’m sure Armie Hammer would agree

Canary - 5/1/2019, 6:30 AM

@MalseMarcel - you nailed both Dwayne and Armie!

superbigguy32 - 5/1/2019, 12:56 AM

Tobiwankenobi - 5/1/2019, 2:08 AM

@superbigguy32 - would fit perfectly!

PantherKing - 5/1/2019, 1:23 AM

I guess Black Adam ain’t happening if he’s meeting with Marvel studios

WarnerBrother - 5/1/2019, 2:17 AM

@PantherKing -

Dwayne Johnson sees himself as his own franchise. He would happily be Namor and Black Adam
just so he could say he gets to be an anti-hero in both universes and gets to fight Superman, Shazam, and Black Panther.

He's a producer for Shazam and Black Adam. Feige would never give him that much power coming
off the street into Marvel which is producer/Feige driven. Johnson is just reaching out to see if he
can get in on the action and Feige sat down with him because you never know what role is out there.

I doubt Johnson would bail on Black Adam as a condition to come on board with Marvel unless
he was given the same degree of control WB has given him with the Shazam franchise. I just
don't see Feige doing that when it seems he's only now given ScarJo that power after 10 years
of working with him.

He's just seeing if there is a role with Marvel he could do.

SecretAgent008 - 5/1/2019, 6:02 AM

@PantherKing - He can do both

LiteraryJoe - 5/1/2019, 1:23 AM

Namor, Beta Ray Bill, or Hercules in Eternals.

dracula - 5/1/2019, 1:47 AM

@LiteraryJoe - doubt it would be hercules, they wouldnt want to confuse casual viewers who might think its connected to his crappy Hercules movie from a few years ago

GeneralZod - 5/1/2019, 5:31 AM

@LiteraryJoe - Beta Ray Bill, yes!!!

TheStrangeDoc - 5/1/2019, 1:43 AM

How about.... THE THING!

He'd mostly be motion capture. So he can easily be the Thing AND Black Adam.

He'd make an AMAZING Thing.

Kyos - 5/1/2019, 1:43 AM

I'm genuinely not sure I want him anywhere near the franchise, tbh. We kind of already had Ego in MCU...

Kevwebsz - 5/1/2019, 1:44 AM

dracula - 5/1/2019, 1:50 AM

@Kevwebsz - Probably not, dont want to confuse non comic readers, who might think its connected to his crappy Hercules movie

Feralwookiee - 5/1/2019, 1:52 AM

Don't get me wrong, he seems like a very likeable guy, but this dude is in EVERYTHING. He's Sam Jackson and Nick Cage all rolled into one. He's never met a script he hasn't liked and will take ANY role. More power to him for making his money, but I could do without him in the MCU.
He'd likely be offered a Drax-like role, which would be redundant at this point.

Atomicockroach - 5/1/2019, 3:16 PM

@Feralwookiee - Lol, Sam Jackson and Nick Cage are both marvel movie veterans, but I agree the Rock is not really needed in the MCU. I mean, not hating on the Rock, he's good in some things. Eh, I could see a minor role like Stallone had in GotG2, or a secondary villain like Klaw was, but cant really think of any major characters that'd fit him.
And wasn't he bashing Marvel back in the early days of the DC movies alongside Momoa and Snyder? Maybe I'm misremembering...

1 2 3

Related Headlines