The Marvels director Nia DaCosta has compared her experience working on the big budget Captain Marvel flop to her time helming the upcoming 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. The big difference, she said, was actually having a “solid script” to work with.
DaCosta lead development on The Marvels from an early stage, and has spoken in the past about her initial ideas for the film. But despite ultimately being credited, alongside others, with penning the film’s script, DaCosta has now said her time on the project suffered as a result of its writing.
“Making the 28 Years Later sequel was one of the best filmmaking experiences I’ve had,” DaCosta told The Hollywood Reporter. “One of the issues I had with Candyman and Marvels was the lack of a really solid script, which is always gonna just wreak havoc on the whole process.”
Launched to mixed reviews in November 2023, The Marvels is notable for being the lowest-performing film in the entirety of the MCU. Its theatrical run finished on just $206.1 million, well under the production’s $374 million budget. A sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, it earned just a fraction of that film’s $1.13 billion haul.
At just 105 minutes, The Marvels is also one of the shortest films in the MCU, something fans have blamed on last-minute changes to the movie’s story in post-production and entire sequences being cut. Noticably, one section of the film set on a planet whose inhabitants communicate through song was heavily trimmed, with Captain Marvel herself spending just a few minutes there before the plot pushes on.
DaCosta originally had some very different ideas for the film, including a time travel narrative and the introduction of popular Marvel Comics character Adam Warlock. But the director has previously said that both ideas were nixxed by Marvel as time travel was already a focus in Disney+ series Loki, while Adam Warlock was set to debut in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
The final version of the film credits DaCosta as one of several writers, alongside Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, who previously worked on episodes of Wandavision and Loki, respectively. Additional material was also provided by Zeb Wells, a writer on Robot Chicken and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Marvel boss Kevin Feige recently discussed the studios’ habit of changing film scripts during production, a practice called “plus-ing” that is currently underway once more during the ongoing filming of Avengers: Doomsday. “I’ve never been satisfied with a movie we’ve released,” Feige told The Hollywood Reporter last month, in an interview that discussed the mixed fortunes of Marvel Studios over the past few years.
“There’s plus-ing happening every day on the Avengers: Doomsday set right now,” Feige added, “and it is amazing to watch because what those filmmakers, those actors, both the ones that are playing these characters for the first or second time and the one playing them for the 10th or 12th time, are the best in the world at it, and know these characters so well. So if they have an idea, you want to listen to it and you want to adjust to it and you want to improve it. I wouldn’t want to change that.”
It’s a different approach to the one now practiced by Superman director James Gunn, who has said that DCU movies will shoot with a final version of the script already in place, and seemingly 28 Years Later director Alex Garland as well.
“Alex Garland hands you a script, and you’re like, ‘This is amazing,'” DaCosta said, continuing her comparison between her past and future projects. “You don’t really have to change it, although I did, I basically asked for more infected. [Laughs] That was, like, my big contribution.”
As for Captain Marvel herself, after the Marvels’ poor performance, fans have been left with questions over what the future might hold. The character is expected to appear in Avengers: Doomsday, though Marvel itself is yet to announce actress Brie Larson’s involvement, and there are seemingly no plans for a third Captain Marvel movie. Meanwhile, DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple launches January 16, 2026.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
