Joss Whedon tweets The Avengers

Thanks to Buffy and Serenity, Joss Whedon is geek royalty, and he’s a huge superhero fan as well.



After writing screenplay after screenplay that never got made, he fled to television in 1997 with Buffy, an exodus many writers these days are gladly taking because in TV the writer is king. Now he’s returning to the big screen, writing and directing The Avengers, which hits theaters May 4.

To give fans a taste of what’s coming, Whedon held a live chat on Twitter with Samuel Jackson, who plays Nick Fury, Tom Hiddleston, who plays the villain Loki, and Clark Gregg who plays Agent Coulson.

This was a preview before the big Superbowl commercial for the film, and as The Hollywood Reporter tells us, Whedon didn’t need to prepare as many would have before taking on this project, because as a major comics fan, he had read all of the The Avengers already.

As for tackling their roles, Jackson said “There’s a lot of Nick Fury in me already,” and when taking on Loki, Hiddleson took a deeper view of his character: “He doesn’t want revenge so much as identity. Belonging. Purpose. Self-esteem. The biggest challenge was magnifying his menace without losing touch of his emotional truth. Keeping his chaos honest!” And Clark Gregg, playing Agent Coulson tweeted that he’s got a much different dynamic in The Avengers, “Diff[erent] heroes, more layers to Coulson’s world / powers revealed.”

The Reporter has also confirmed The Avengers will have an  Imax 3-D run, much like Marvel did with Iron Man 2 and Thor. 

As Greg Foster, who is the chairman and president of Imax Filmed Entertainment explaind, “The Avengers is a perfect film to kick-off our 2012 summer slate and we anticipate this limited Imax engagement will be a must-see for fans around the world.”