See, this is why you don’t tell Sam Jackson anything.
In a short conversation with the Wall Street Journal, Jackson confirmed a casting rumor that has been persistent for the last few months. He was talking about “Avengers: Age Of Ultron,” and said, “I know we’re shooting in London, that James Spader is Ultron and going to be the bad guy, and that we added Ms. Elizabeth Olsen, but I don’t know what she’s doing.”
He doesn’t specifically say that she is playing The Scarlet Witch, but that’s the role she’s been circling for a while now. Olsen and Jackson are both in the Spike Lee remake of “Oldboy” that comes out at the end of November, and she’s been in the mix for this part basically since Whedon first mentioned that Wanda Maximoff would be part of the “Avengers” sequel.
The Scarlet Witch is one of the two characters who falls into a very strange grey area where she can appear in Fox films as well as movies made by Marvel Studios, although apparently they can’t use the word “mutant” if she shows up in “The Avengers.” That is such a strange bit of legal weirdness to have to navigate as a storyteller, but it seems like both Bryan Singer and Joss Whedon have designs on her for very specific reasons.
She has a very specific, rather unusual power. There are plenty of superheroes who can fly or who have super-strength, but she may be the only one who alters probability. It seems like that covers such a broad range of possible effects that she’s almost a get-out-of-jail-free card for writers, which might explain why we’ll see the character in two different films in the next two years.
If you’re in a rush to see Olsen and Jackson together, “Oldboy” will be in theaters November 27, 2013.