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Higher, faster... freer? The Marvels director Nia DaCosta impressed by MCU's creative freedom
Even though we're still in Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — we’ve got the Disney+ shows and Eternals coming up this year and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder coming out early 2022 — Phase 5 is ramping up. One of those Phase 5 movies is The Marvels — the sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel.
We don’t know much about what The Marvels will be about. We do know it's currently in production in London and that Brie Larson will be back as Captain Marvel, along with Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, and Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan. We also know that Nia DaCosta (Candyman, Little Woods) is directing, and she recently shared what her experience of working in the MCU is like compared to her previous movies.
"It's a lot less traumatizing to work on for sure," she told Entertainment Weekly with a laugh when asked how working on The Marvels compared to the heavier subject matter of her previous films. "But this movie also deals with specific, personal, sometimes sad things. But no, it's been nice to work in a different world for sure."
DaCosta’s statement was pleasantly surprising — the MCU is a very large world but also one that has had directors leave over creative differences. Edgar Wright, for example, was originally supposed to direct 2015’s Ant-Man but left the production, with Peyton Reed picking up the project. In more recent history, director Scott Derrickson — who directed Doctor Strange — left Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness due to creative differences.
DaCosta, however, doesn’t appear to have the creative problems that some MCU directors of past have faced. "It's amazing," DaCosta said. "[It's] more [freedom] than I've had on anything. It's great because we're all just comic-book nerds who want to make a great comic-book movie."
We’ll have to wait a bit, however, to find out what creative choices DaCosta makes — The Marvels doesn’t come out in theaters until Nov. 11, 2022.
