With the successful launching of the “Iron Man” franchise in 2008, the first hints for what would be Marvel’s most ambitious new franchise to date began to surface— bringing together its beloved characters in one film for “Marvel's The Avengers,” the holy grail of the Marvel Universe.

The idea for “Marvel’s The Avengers” first surfaced during the production of “Iron Man” when producer Kevin Feige had a notion that S.H.I.E.L.D. could be part of both “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk.”

“We started looking at the list of characters in the Marvel Universe that hadn’t been taken by other studios: Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and Black Widow,” says Feige. “And I thought, ‘Isn’t that interesting; all of these characters happen to form one of the most popular comic book series—‘The Avengers.’

“When the idea of a Nick Fury cameo started coming up, we called Sam Jackson and he thought it was a cool idea,” continues Feige. “It was his enthusiasm about it that led us to shoot that end credit scene and what he says to Tony Stark in the scene, ‘You’re part of a bigger universe, you just don’t know it yet.’ The line was also Marvel telling that to the audience as well.”

The producer adds, “Audiences loved the cameo and the buzz about Nick Fury began. We did it again two months later on the ‘Incredible Hulk’ and the reaction once again told us ‘The Avengers’ is going to work. Our plan then became to build it one Super Hero at a time because it was really important that we introduced all of the characters first in their own franchises before putting them together in ‘The Avengers.’ We also hired filmmakers on ‘Thor’ and ‘Captain America’ who were open to the idea that they were playing in a shared sandbox.”

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