Joe Russo Defends Avengers: Doomsday’s Unfinished-Script Gamble
The Russo brothers began filming Marvel’s next Avengers movie before its screenplay was complete. Joe Russo says the moving target gives actors room to create, while cast accounts reveal how unusual the process has been.
Avengers: Doomsday began filming before the Russo brothers had a finished screenplay, and Joe Russo now says that uncertainty can make room for “magic.” In interviews reported by AP News and carried by outlets including Yahoo Entertainment, the director described a process built around rehearsal, improvisation and seeing what actors bring to a role. For a film with Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom and a cast that includes Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and the Fantastic Four, that is a meaningful choice about how a very large production gets made.
The movie reaches theaters on December 18, 2026. Until then, the clearest story is not a plot detail. It is the way the story itself has been taking shape.
Joe Russo Calls the Script a “Living Organism”
Joe Russo told AP News that the brothers do not treat a screenplay as a sealed set of instructions. “We always view the script as a living organism,” he said. He and Anthony Russo favor rehearsal and improvisation, and they want to see what performers discover once they are in the room together.
That approach depends on timing. Russo said some actors arrive only a few days or weeks before their scenes are shot. Their work can change what the directors think a character should do. In his telling, the late discovery is not a breakdown in the plan. It is the point at which the plan gets better.
There is a human calculation inside that idea. An actor does not bring the same thing to a scene when every gesture has been fixed months in advance. A rehearsal can reveal a comic pause, a sharper reaction or a sadness nobody wrote down. The director has to notice it, and then make space for it.
Photo: DavidPMaynard · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Sebastian Stan Describes Scattered Scenes on Set
Sebastian Stan, who plays Bucky Barnes, offered a more practical picture in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche. He said the production did not have a script when he was working on it and that the cast was shooting scattered scenes in a process that kept changing.
Stan also said producers did not want performers to read the entire screenplay because journalists might ask them about it. That detail makes the secrecy around Doomsday part of the working method, not only a publicity concern. The people on set were being asked to perform pieces of a story while holding back information about the whole.
