Source: SlashFilm
Why Marvel’s Kevin Feige Banned The Avengers Director Joss Whedon From The MCU
By Joe Roberts Oct. 4, 2024 8:00 am EST

Meanwhile, Feige didn’t seem all that thrilled about the show either, mostly because he was concerned about continuity issues. The Marvel Studios head told Buzzfeed: “They had said early on, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about doing this show about the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ And Joss said, ‘I think I might do this.’ I said, 'That’s cool. God bless you. But you should know that we’re destroying S.H.I.E.L.D. in ‘Winter Soldier.’ You guys do whatever you want. But know that that’s what we’re going to do.'”

In short, “Winter Soldier” depicted the dismantling of S.H.I.E.L.D itself, which put Whedon and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” in a difficult position. While some reports have claimed the show’s writers and producers had always been working on the show with this event in mind, according to “The Reign of Marvel Studios” (via GameRant) Feige was not happy with how Whedon handled the crossover. This was the first of many things that led to the Marvel Studios head banning Whedon from the MCU.

However, as recounted in the book (via MSN) it wasn’t the committee that broke Whedon, so much as the editing process on “Age of Ultron,” which he described to members of the press as “dark,” “weird,” and “horrible.” Whedon’s comments, apparently, transgressed a rule that Kevin Feige had in place, i.e. don’t tell the press about your problems.

For Feige, it seems the notoriously controlling creative just wasn’t a fit for a franchise that required constant collaboration to ensure the overall continuity made sense. …, Feige outright banned the man from the franchise, with the authors writing, “Apparently everyone in MCU history was on Feige’s call list — except Edward Norton, the franchise’s first Bruce Banner, and Joss Whedon, whose ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ characters remained in limbo.”