It’s remarkable how well-rounded Avengers: Infinity War ended up, considering how many characters the Russo Brothers were tasked with uniting — and that’s before you factor in the true arrival of Thanos. The big purple baddie was brilliantly realised in the MCU epic, and there’s good news for those who found the Mad Titan a compellingly complex character — there’s apparently a lot more where that came from.
According to Collider’s Jon Schnepp, who moderated a panel at Las Vegas Comic Con that included Thanos’ comic book creator Jim Stalin, there’s a whole extra 30 minutes of Thanos backstory that hit the cutting room floor, but that now looks set to make up an extended version of Infinity War. “Jim Starlin said, he found out that they’re actually going to put it into a special edition Avengers: Infinity War,” Schnepp revealed in a post-panel video{
There’s no confirmation from Marvel Studios on this yet — while previous home releases have included deleted scenes, no other MCU films have featured properly extended or alternative cuts. And with Avengers 4 still set to feature plenty of Thanos, it could be that some of this ‘deleted’ material could still make its way to the big screen in that instalment. Either way, file this one as rumour until Kevin Feige puts official word out there — but the more of Marvel’s best villain, the better.
UPDATE: Conflicting reports claim that extended scenes detailing Thanos’ backstory were written by the Russos, but excised before shooting. If that’s the case, the existence of footage that could make up an extended cut is in question — though it’s still possible that further Thanos origin scenes could be set to appear in the Infinity War follow-up. Marvel hasn’t yet commented on the rumours of an extended cut.
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