Marvel Studios Will Shoot Down Your Spy Drones, Samuel L. Jackson Confirms
Some Marvel fans will do anything for a scoop, and paparazzi still seem to be stalking movie and TV sets, hoping to get photos of actors in their costumes. These photos are eagerly anticipated by a certain stripe of super-eager information collectors who want to know everything and anything about a TV show prior to its release. This isn't all fans, of course, but there are enough photo-seekers and information extractors to run an entire subset of the entertainment journalism industry ... and to be utterly bothersome for actors and producers. Most viewers, it seems, would prefer to wait for the studio-mandated advertising to learn about costumes and plot details, while others prefer to remain completely clueless about a pop property until they can actually see it.
Regardless, the information extractors continue to plug away, trying to sneak as many photos as they can, and in these constantly evolving technological times, paparazzi have become resourceful. Thanks to advances in drone technology, some spies can now fly miniature cameras onto TV sets from miles away, filming and taking pictures remotely. Yes, they are just that eager to see what Samuel L. Jackson might look like as Nick Fury on the set of "Secret Invasion."
Marvel Studios, of course, is quite aware of paparazzi drones, and have already implemented a solution. As Jackson revealed in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, he saw some of the drones ... and Marvel had them all shot down. Furthermore, the drone pilot was located and arrested.
Sadly, Jackson didn't reveal how the drone was shot down, or if Marvel studios employs a fleet of sharpshooters specifically to handle spy drones on set. Do they have one of those cool pneumatic net guns, I wonder?
'They got him.'
Jackson was succinct, saying merely that Marvel "shot one down. [...] And they followed one back to where the dude was. They found him and, yeah, they got him."
A warning to paparazzi: Marvel is prepared.
Naturally, any actor or crew member working on a project for the Marvel Cinematic Universe has long been used to set secrets and spoiler avoidance. It's entirely likely that actors have to sign contracts wherein they swear not to reveal plot details or character cameos in order to preserve the franchise's many surprises. As such, actors have to be very, very cautious in interviews as to what they reveal and what they keep secret. Actor Don Cheadle, also part of the EW interview, joked that Marvel would simply hold up photographs of his "Avengers: Endgame" co-stars Mark Ruffalo and Tom Holland with a warning: "Don't be like these guys." This is a reference to those actors' tendency to accidentally let plot and script details slip. Ruffalo's slip-ups have been compiled in online videos, as have Holland's.
The combative push-and-pull between the paparazzi and the Marvel marketing department is long and fierce. Many are the stories of stolen scripts, secret pages, and black market auctions. The need to spoil these movies is compulsive and intense in some people, and it seems others are willing to pay a great deal of money to have a movie spoiled. Jackson even had a script stolen back during the time of the first "Avengers" movie.
The decoys
Jackson recalled all the details, saying:
"There are worse examples than [Ruffalo and Holland]! [...] I remember when we got ready to do 'Avengers,' someone printed out a copy of my 'Avengers' script that had my watermark on it, and put it online for sale. I was shooting in Canada and Marvel came to Canada. It had been printed in the production office ... They found out who it was, dude quit, left the country. They set up a fake buy for the script, dude didn't show up. It was crazy."
These sort of shenanigans has led Marvel Studios to go so far as commission alternative scripts to some of their movies, leaving out decoys for the spoiler hunters. Entire scenes and alternate endings are set to the page and distributed with no intention of actually filming them. In 2018, the Mary Sue reported on a decoy script for "Avengers: Infinity War" that was going to feature the character of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) fleeing the movie in an escape pod. In the final cut of the film, Loki was killed (though an alternate timeline version would escape in "Endgame" and head off to his own series on Disney+). Sometimes even the crew will get multiple versions of a script before they know which version is the correct one, and they'll remain in limbo until someone tells them what to film.
The MCU will likely continue to play by these rules, even as their films are no longer the surefire hits they once were. Just know that if you have a drone, Marvel will shoot it down.