Johnston Talks Up Prep For First Avenger: Captain America

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By Eric Eisenberg
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With The Wolfman set to come out on the 12th, Joe Johnston will be making the rounds promoting the film over the next couple of weeks. Universal may have a problem, however: people are infinitely more excited for Johnston's next film, The First Avenger: Captain America, than they are for a remake of the classic monster movie. The director will certainly be asked about the lupine flick, but news outlets are going to do their best to squeeze out as much as they can about next summer's blockbuster, and Film Journal is no exception.

The site recently interviewed Johnston, and while 90% of the article is about his latest film, they were able to pull some teeth and get the director to spill any details he could. He obliged:

"We're in prep," Johnston says. "Rick Heinrichs is production-designing and we're set up down in Manhattan Beach [California]. It's the part of the process that I love the most," he enthuses. "We have eight or ten really talented artists, and we all just sit around all day and draw pictures and say, 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this?' It's that phase of the production where money doesn't matter: ‘Let's put all the greatest stuff up on the wall and [then later] see what we can afford.'" The film, he says at this early stage, will begin "in 1942, 1943" during World War II. "The stuff in the ’60s and ’70s [comic books] we're sort of avoiding. We're going back to the ’40s, and then forward to what they're doing with Captain America now."

Prep? Really? I understand that post-production on The Wolfman has been a bit of a nightmare, but the film was announced months ago and is scheduled to get going in June (to compare, Thor will be sent to theaters only two months before First Avenger and started filming with a full cast last month.) I'm not saying that they shouldn't be focusing on the look of the film, in fact, quite the opposite: it's going to take many man-hours to make Captain America look normal in what, let's admit, is a rather goofy costume. But it may be time to start not only posting pictures on the wall, but perhaps start the casting process and the millions of other details that need to be taken care of during pre-production of a major film. Chris Hemsworth was chosen to play Thor seven months before the cameras started rolling. So I will ask the real question that all those journalists really want to know: who is going to play Cap?

Eric Eisenberg
Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.