In 2015, Marvel’s Avengers assembled to save the world from the rogue A.I. created by one of their own. Avengers: Age Of Ultron may have been focused on the hubris of Tony Stark, the home life of Hawkeye, and the angst of Captain America, but it was also the film where the team discovered Nick Fury – a.k.a. Samuel L. Jackson — was still alive and well. Yet despite helping to establish the Avengers base in upstate New York, Director Fury hasn’t been seen since. Not in Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, or Spider-Man: Homecoming. Not even in Captain America: Civil War. Whatever the former head of SHIELD is up to, it’s happening off-camera. And according to Samuel L. Jackson, it will continue to be happen off-camera in the foreseeable future.
Speaking to Yahoo about his upcoming film The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Jackson mentioned his annoyance at the lack of Nick Fury in the MCU.
“I wasn’t in the ‘superhero argument’ movie [‘Captain America: Civil War’], I’m not in ‘Avengers 3 and 4’. They’re shooting them now, and they haven’t called me yet. They wouldn’t let me go to ‘Black Panther’-ville, so it’s kinda like how you gonna make a black Marvel movie and not let Nick Fury show up in it?!”
Jackson isn’t wrong. It is kind of weird to have a Black Panther movie where Nick Fury doesn’t at least swing by to take the temperature of the region. It’s also odd Jackson wouldn’t have a role in Avengers: Infinity War, especially considering he was on the cast list that went out back in December of last year. Either Jackson or the cast list is lying, but we won’t know until the movie hits theaters in 2018 because if Nick Fury is going to show up in Infinity War, I doubt that’s the kind of thing Marvel would put in the trailer.
Of course, even if Director Fury doesn’t show up for the battle royale with Thanos, that doesn’t mean Jackson is done with the MCU. He’s next slated to appear in 2019’s Captain Marvel film. It’s set in the 1990s and we learned Fury will be part of Carol Danvers story during Marvel’s SDCC panel last month. At that time, Kevin Feige also confirmed Fury would be played by Jackson instead of recasting a younger actor. This means Marvel is going to have to break out their de-aging technology again. It could also mean Fury’s role is limited, as “young” versions of Robert Downey Jr., Michael Douglas, and Kurt Russell were used sparingly.
Whatever Nick Fury’s current role in Captain Marvel is, the story is still in flux. Just today Deadline announced that Geneva Robertson-Dworet is taking over scriptwriting duties from Meg LeFauve and Nicole Perlman. Perlman, you may recall, wrote the script for the first Guardians of the Galaxy. Why she left the project is unknown, but LeFauve left after being offered to direct another Disney project, Gigantic. Not much is known about Robertson-Dworet, but is the current writer du jour in Hollywood with projects such as Gotham City Sirens and Tomb Raider also on her plate. How much she’s being asked to tweak the Captain Marvel script is unknown, but as long as she doesn’t write Nick Fury out of the story (and maybe writes in Monica Rambeau) things should turn out just fine.
