The Marvel One-Shots were a series of MCU short films that were included on the Blu-ray releases.
All told, there have been five in all. One of them connected The Incredible Hulk to everything that was going on with SHIELD and the Avengers Initiative (The Consultant), another led to an entire TV series (Agent Carter), and the most recent one, All Hail the King, brought back major actors from the films to set up some very interesting possibilities for the future.
That tradition stopped though when Captain America: The Winter Soldier was released without one in 2014. Then Guardians of the Galaxy followed suit. And now, we’ll be getting Avengers: Age of Ultron on Blu-ray in a few months, and from the sound of it, there likely won’t be a One-Shot on that one either.
So what happened? Where did all of the One-Shots go?
We’re not really sure why exactly Marvel decided to suddenly drop the One-Shots. It’s possible that they became too expensive, or too difficult to coordinate alongside the billion other movies and TV shows in development, or according to James Gunn for the Guardians release, it simply wouldn’t fit on the disc.
In any case though, it sounds like there won’t be any new One-Shots in the immediate future. In May, Marvel big cheese Kevin Feige told CBR that there are “no active plans for the One-Shots to return.”
There is hope though…
Could One-Shots return in the future?
Collider reports that at a recent Ant-Man press junket, Kevin Feige expressed an interest in bringing ’em back, although that’s not entirely his call to make:
I’m disappointed too! Frankly, and I think it would be great to see more one-shots. We’ll see… You look at me as if I’m the only person who controls that decision; I wish that were the case. But I think when the opportunity arises we would do it, we would jump on it. There is a backlog of ideas for one-shots that we haven’t done yet.
That’s not exactly what we wanted to hear, but it is optimistic. Considering how huge of a story Marvel’s Phase Three will be, I’d love to see more short-form/digital content to bridge the gap between all of the films and TV series. Infinity War is going to be by far the most expansive story the MCU has told so far, and they’re going to need every second of screentime they can get to cover it all.
And on a personal note, I’m still holding out hope that short films could be attached to the front of the MCU features (a la Disney).
