‘Endgame’ Directors Set to Produce Stan Lee Documentary
Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo have a little something extra up their sleeve when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe–or, more specifically, the co-creator of the characters upon which the Marvel Cinematic Universe is based. The duo, best known for Marvel films Captain America: Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, is preparing a documentary based on the life of longtime Marvel editor and comicbook emissary Stan Lee, who passed away in November of last year.
Even though he’s gone from this world, Stan still graces the Marvel films in pre-filmed cameos, the last of which will be in Endgame.
We love Stan Lee and I think it’s incredibly special that Endgame will be his final cameo. We are fascinated by the life of Stan Lee and we are actually developing a little something that has to do with his work in the history of Marvel, but we are not ready to present it or talk about it yet. It’s more of a documentary.
-Anthony Russo, Avengers: Endgame co-director
Stan helped create virtually every character being used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point, and those he didn’t co-create, he had editorial control over. Lee left Marvel in the 1970s, relocating to Hollywood, where he laid the groundwork for what would eventually become a cinematic juggernaut. He’s been cameoing in Marvel properties since the 1960s when he narrated the Marvel animated TV shows.
This, of course, is not the first documentary about Stan’s life. There have been others, most recently With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story was produced, detailing Lee’s life. There have been several biographies as well, including the prose tome Excelsior! and the graphic autobiography Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir, penned by Stan Lee himself, along with co-writer Peter David and artist Colleen Doran. It will be interesting, given the plethora of information available about Stan and his life, to see what new material or presentation the Russos will come up with for their fledgling project.
Rich Davenport graduated from Concordia University in St. Paul Minnesota with a B.A. in Mass Communication. He is a lifelong comicbook reader, a film fan and a hardcore video gamer. He also makes a lot of funny faces in pictures, much to his wife’s chagrin.
