A new Marvel One-Shot - Agent Carter - is set to be release at the San Diego Comic-Con. Starring Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger), it's supposedly a step up from previous short in both scale and style.Found as extras on Marvel Blu-rays, the shorts feature stories based in the same universe, but generally looking at things on a smaller scale, allowing for side characters to shine. There have been three so far - The Consultant, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer, and Item 47.
Entertainment Weekly spoke to Marvel co-president Louis D’Esposito about the absence of superheroes and super-villains from the One-Shots and he had quite a lot to say, touching upon some specific ideas
First he spoke about Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel:
"Let’s just say I knew I was going to direct Captain Marvel [as a feature], right? And we knew who was going to play her… That would make it easy to introduce her first in a One-Shot. But that’s a plan that requires a lot of coordination. And I don’t know if really we … if I’ve been thinking that far ahead. It’s difficult enough to find something that’s enjoyable, that we can tell with the budget limitations and in the time we have. Introducing a lot of complicated variables might weaken that."
He then mentions that he wanted to make a Loki one-shot but the potential cost got in the way. There have been characters from the films considered, plus one character many would love to see:
"We also thought about potentially … let’s say a young Nick Fury with Dum Dum Dugan… Or a Black Panther short, maybe, in that [One-Shot format]. It’s very complicated to do: who plays those characters? And designing the costume, getting it going … We tried… We were there in development, and we tried, but they were very difficult for all the reasons I gave. And we don’t want to do something that’s half baked because it’s not good for us and it’s not good for our fans."
With Marvel working on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., they do seem keen on further expanding the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Maybe we will see some of these ideas at another point.
Agent Carter will be included on the Iron Man 3 Blu-ray, set for release on the 24th of September.