While talking to Buzzfeed, Whedon expressed a desire to create a universe that truly belonged to him again. Coming from the guy who gave us Buffy, Angel, and more, the prospects of that sound pretty exciting...
Whedon: "The biggest thing for me is that I need to do something that I create myself. It’s been way too long since I created a universe. The last thing I did before The Avengers was [directing an episode of] Glee, and in between I did Much Ado About Nothing. So I haven’t created my own universe for over five years. That feels wrong. You know, my own universe might be a book of haiku. I’m not necessarily saying I’ve got a grand scheme."
So what might this new universe entail? Nothing definite, but Whedon threw out some ideas that are crazy, awesome, and unlikely to actually happen...
Whedon: "I will say that when I was thinking about, Well, if I wasn’t going to do Avengers 2, what would I want to do? — of course the first thing I thought of was “turn-of-the-century female Batman.” Not Batman actually. But, you know, something cool. One person. Can’t stress that enough. Movie about one person — not a team, not 10, just one. But [I would] do a nice sort of hard action movie that combined all my favorite things. Something that would be the love child of Sam Fuller and Edward Gorey. You know, I’ve had many thoughts since then. Oh, I could do this! Oh, I could do that! But it is my instinct to want to tell those stories."
At this point it's looking like Avengers: Age of Ultron will be Whedon's swansong from the MCU, and we'll have to wait and see how that affects the universe as a whole. He's such a strong creative influence that it is bound to have some kind of impact. Chances are the Russo Brothers will be directing Avengers: Infinity War, while there's nobody on board to direct Captain Marvel, perhaps the one film many thought Whedon would be best suited to given his comments about the lack of female superhero movies. When asked about it he didn't seem too interested...
Whedon: "Captain Marvel I don’t know as well. There have been a few [versions] of her. I have the first issue of Ms. Marvel, back when she was that, and had the Farrah hair. My only issue with her is that she always felt sort of on top. She was very driven. A winner. I always like to dig into the soil of things to find my heroes, if I can."
