Samuel L. Jackson Says We'll See A SHIELD Film After The Avengers

When Samuel L. Jackson was signed to a nine-film deal by Marvel, you had to bet that part of the attraction of the deal was that he'd eventually get a pretty big role, if not a star turn, in one of the studio's projects.

So far, Jackson's Nick Fury has been a small part of the Iron Man films, and we know he won't appear in Thor. But he will be in Captain America, and is likely to be a big part of The Avengers. Going beyond that, Jackson says we should expect a S.H.I.E.L.D. movie to follow Marvel's team picture.

Jackson talked to RadioBigBoy (via CinemaBlend) and said specifically,

The Avengers should start shooting some time next year, and then some time after that there'll be a big S.H.I.E.L.D. movie.

That sounds pretty definitive, but until it comes from Kevin Feige, mark it as 'relatively definitive,' or maybe just 'hopeful.'

So what would the S.H.I.E.L.D. movie be? Hopefully a slightly smaller picture that focuses not on the backstory of the agency, but of the strings it pulls in the background to get things done. Perhaps it would be a sort of espionage picture in the Marvel vein, something to break from the big superhero pattern of the other films.

As for characters, unless one of them is offed in the next couple films, we've already got Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow. (You've got to figure that one or two of these secondary characters are going to get killed sooner or later; got to have some sense of danger, even though this is death-averse Marvel.) By the time Thor, Captain America and The Avengers are all said and done, we'll probably have a few other possibles as well. And the film could be a launch pad for other secondary Marvel characters.

Finally, Jackson also speculates in the interview that we'll see a lot of War Machine in future Marvel movies. No surprise there, as the character seems to be primed to have a real part in The Avengers, at the very least.