The Big Picture

In The Marvels, Carol Danvers’ powers become entangled with those of Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau, challenging them to work together to save the universe. Mary Livanos has had a long journey with the MCU and is thrilled to be part of The Marvels as an executive producer. The new movie promises to provide the biggest picture of the cosmic MCU thus far.

In Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, Brie Larson returns as the “cosmic Avenger,” and it would be tough to find anyone more excited to be part of this sequel than executive producer Mary Livanos. Like Carol Danvers, Livanos has had quite the journey with Marvel, one that reflects a significant amount of passion and determination.

In 2019’s Captain Marvel, Carol discovered her true identity and freed herself from the tyrannical Kree. Her revenge against their former ruler, the Supreme Intelligence (Annette Bening), had unexpected consequences and, in The Marvels, fans will learn what’s been keeping her away from Earth for so long. While on a mission to a wormhole suspiciously linked to a Kree revolutionary, Captain Marvel’s powers inexplicably become entangled with her niece, Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan’s (Iman Vellani) Ms. Marvel.

During her interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Livanos marvels at how far she’s come since interning on Short Term 12. Having worked as manager of production and development on James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and many other major MCU projects, Livanos is well-versed in the vastness of the brand’s universe and believes that The Marvels is going to knock that “scope and power” out of the park. They also discuss “the most daunting” sequence that ended up being a blast to film, how DaCosta’s direction guided challenging scenes, if we’ll get a third Captain Marvel movie, and if long-time and newcomers can both enjoy the movie.

Check out all of this and more in the video above or in the interview transcript below.

Marvels Carol Danvers gets her powers entangled with those of Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau, forcing them to work together to save the universe. Release Date November 10, 2023 Director Nia DaCosta Cast Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Iman Vellani, Zawe Ashton, Teyonah Parris Rating P3-13 Runtime 105 minutes Main Genre Superhero
PERRI NEMIROFF: I was doing some IMDb stalking and I noticed that your first credit is on one of my favorite films of all time, Short Term 12.

MARY LIVANOS: Yes!

You were an additional set production assistant. Is it just one big old coincidence that you wound up crossing paths with Brie later on?

LIVANOS: Truly. Like, could be entanglement. Unclear. When I was interning for Marvel Studios back in, I think 2012, I met a producer and then interned on Short Term 12, and I did lock-ups and took out the garbage and saw Brie from afar. It’s synchronicity. It’s really cool.

Look at you now! Also, I feel like that movie, in particular, is just one big old good luck charm because look at how many people who were affiliated with that movie are making next-level stuff now.

LIVANOS: An incredible movie, and so character-driven and so well written. Good character work is at the heart of anything that’s great.

It’s so true. So true.

Image via Cinedigm

I want to recap some of your Marvel journey for our viewers because it just seems to me like you keep going up and up and up. Manager of production and development on Guardians [of the Galaxy Vol.] 2, production and development executive on Captain Marvel, co-executive producer and supervising producer on WandaVision, and now full-blown EP on The Marvels. What does it mean to you to be an executive producer on this film, and what’s the next goal? What’s the next step?

LIVANOS: Oh my goodness. It’s a total dream come true. I, in high school, had Marvel and Stan Lee on my vision board. I love these characters. Whenever I was interning and making my way through the industry, whenever anyone asked where I wanted to end up it was always Marvel. And Captain Marvel was incredible to work on. I love these characters so much. I mean, there’s nowhere to go beyond this. I mean, it’s really truly the dream. I’m just so lucky to be able to work with the characters in this universe.

Just curious, what does your vision board look like now?

LIVANOS: Oh my gosh. That’s a great question. It’s just posters! Just a lot of posters. Posters around the office. I grew up a big Buffy [the Vampire Slayer] fan, I love Kill Bill, I love Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. Just a cluster of favorite movies. I’m a fan.

Name-dropping all the right titles there. I like it.

LIVANOS: I’m so glad!

Image via Disney

I wanted to touch on something you said in our press notes. You said that this movie paints the biggest picture of the cosmic Marvel universe that we have seen yet. To put that into perspective for our viewers, can you pinpoint something that’s been done in a past MCU cosmic movie that you all take to the next level here?

LIVANOS: I worked on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. Of course, space and the scope of space is so huge in those films. What we really wanted to do in this film was catch up with the cosmic Avenger, Captain Marvel. And of course it’s been theorized what she might be up to, and we really do get to catch up with her in this film and come to understand where she’s been [and] who she’s connected with. Of course she’s incredibly powerful, but the only thing perhaps more powerful than Captain Marvel is the scope and power of the universe itself, and that’s actually what she’s up against in this film, which is why it’s so important that she has the other two Marvels with her because she can’t be expected to shoulder the burden of the universe all on her own. Together, a team is more than the sum of their parts.

To get into some specific scenes or locations, of everything you needed to do in this movie, going into production, which did you think would be the most challenging of the bunch, but then ultimately, was that indeed the most challenging or did something else catch you by surprise?

LIVANOS: Oh my gosh. What a great question. I think Aladna, the musical planet …

I’m so excited to see that!

LIVANOS: [Laughs] … was perhaps the most daunting, and it took months and months of choreography and planning and designing. I mean, the costumes alone, my gosh. Lindsay Pugh, our costume designer, just crushed it. There was so much practice and time poured into that sequence, and then, of course, when filming, it was just a blast. The whole crew was dancing. Everyone came and just did an incredible job.

There’s a lot of things that I’m really looking forward to in this film, but that might be close to the top of the list.

Image via Disney

Another thing from our press notes, you called Nia an incredibly visual-dynamic storyteller and put an emphasis on how good she was at action. Can you pinpoint something in the script that she took to the next level with a really inventive idea as an action director that surprised you and inspired you to say something like that?

LIVANOS: The first big sequence in which all of the Marvels find themselves entangled, where they are all apart and find their way together as a team, was incredibly difficult – incredibly difficult to write, incredibly difficult to storyboard. Nia had a huge hand and led the charge on all of that. There was so much to track. The experience as a viewer is just an all-around good time. It’s smooth, it’s action-packed, it’s fast, and I think audiences will really love being along for the journey.

Even cut up in trailers it’s already playing well, so I’ve got high hopes.

Here’s a big question, but an important one – what were the conversations between you and Nia and the whole team like in terms of making sure that this movie continued important story threads that Marvel has set up thus far, but also that it stood on its own two feet and was still accessible for someone who isn’t caught up on everything, or maybe is using The Marvels as an on-ramp?

LIVANOS: For sure. I think what’s great about this movie is if you are a huge fan of the comics, if you’re a huge fan of the MCU, if you’ve seen the incredible Ms. Marvel show, if you’ve seen WandaVision, if you saw the first Captain Marvel movie, there is so much to follow, so many threads to pick up with this film that really pay off. But, at the end of the day, if you’re less familiar with the storytelling thus far, this is about three people really meeting for the first time and coming together. Just like any movie, you meet new characters and get to know them and get caught up to speed, and this movie does it with extreme dynamism, so I’m excited for people to enjoy it whether they’re huge fans or new fans.

I love it. I’ll end with this one here. We are now conditioned in the MCU to assume that any specific character’s movies are going to wind up being a trilogy, so is that the case here? Were you thinking of The Marvels as the second chapter of Captain Marvel’s trilogy story?

LIVANOS: This certainly is the second chapter in the Captain Marvel story. This team-up has long been in the works. It was a decision to make Monica the age that she was in the first Captain Marvel movie because we knew that we wanted Carol and Monica to share the big screen together. And, of course, when Ms. Marvel came into the mix, it’s a no-brainer. She’s the perfect lens through which we can examine Carol as a character. So, I mean, it’s really amazing to bring them all together on screen. And, as for additional installments [laughs], I can neither confirm nor deny anything because Marvel security is always watching, but I, as a fan, hope to see more.

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