Marvel has pitched Captain America: The Winter Soldier as a '70s-style conspiracy thriller. If that translates onto the screen it could take Cap off in interesting new directions in his second solo outing. Rest assured, however, that he's coming straight back. Disney chief Robert Iger confirmed in an investors' conference call that there'll be direct connective tissue linking Cap 2 with Avengers: The Age Of Ultron.
"I’ve really been impressed with the early buzz that we’re seeing for the Marvel films", enthused the Mouse House's head cheese.
"Captain America 2 is just huge", he went on, "and it takes the Captain America story to incredible new levels". He added that it "will set critical events in motion" that lead into Avengers: The Age Of Ultron and possibly Agents Of SHIELD, too.
The scuttlebutt from early test screenings is that the post-credits sting will see [spoiler warning: highlight text to reveal] Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), two Age Of Ultronites, show up and strutt their stuff. Could that be what Iger's referring to? Here's the trailer to scour for clues.
Things are predictably rosy in the Disney garden just now. Iger shared the corp's year-on-year revenue gains - up 8.5 per cent to $12.30bn, or "a shitheap of money" in layman's terms - while cheery investors were busy sipping from flutes crafted with jewels served by gold-plated robot butlers (we assume). The outlook is even brighter on the movie side of the business with Star Wars, **Avengers: The Age Of Ultron **and Ant-Man all in various stages of production or pre-production.
First up is **Captain America: The Winter Soldier **which lands on British shores on March 26. Fingers crossed he finds a dry bit to land the Helicarrier.