Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige Clarifies Why Marvel Films Always Go Back For Reshoots


The word reshoots has had a somewhat negative connotation to it. The casual movie fan hears this word and then assumes the worst while a movie is in post-production and prepping for its release. How this term became so negative is unknown, but in today's film making process it's a big part of post-production.

Marvel Studios is known to go back for reshoots for each of their films. Fans used to be worried when they heard about reshoots but this is normal for the studio. Studio president Kevin Feige discussed reshoots with BadAssDigest.com.

"I’m reading [JW Rinzler's Making of Star Wars books] the part in [Return of the] Jedi where George [Lucas] is finding the movie in the [editing] cut. It happened in Empire [Strikes Back], and it happened in Star Wars. You’ve heard about those famous early screenings where people were like, ‘Poor George. His career is over.’ That brings great solace to me when we screen our movies for the first time and they’re terrible and they’re a big mess. I remind myself to get calm and proceed."

Feige continued about how Marvel Studios functions in post-production.

"Post [production] is my favorite part, because it’s easiest to find what’s wrong with the movie when you’re watching the movie. 
"We always build in two weeks [of reshoots] because the hardest thing about the additional photography is the actors’ schedules [and] wrangling the actors. So we just build it in [to the production schedule]. We’ve done some movies that have three days of reshoots, some that have fifteen days, twenty days if not more. Sometimes we know what we need by that point and sometimes we’re wrangling them anyway. There’s a shot in Thor: The Dark World we call the Three Continent shot. It’s one shot, with three different actors in it, that was done on three different continents. 
"Additional photography is invaluable. Sometimes it’s to fix something that’s not working, but most of the time on our movies it’s two-fold: sometimes a better or more exciting idea will come along, or more often something will come out of the movie - because it’s too long or the movie is stronger without a particular beat or scene or shot, and you need connective tissue."

So when you hear that Avengers: Age of Ultron (or any other Marvel Studios film) goes back for reshoots — because it will — there's no need to think the worst case scenario. Reshoots for Marvel Studios is a means to only make their films that much better before its theatrical release.