Kevin Feige had big plans for Loki from the very start, and he told Tom Hiddleston all about them before Thor ever came out!
Hiddleston is at the Zurich Film Festival this week, where his new Everest movie Tenzing opened the festival and he's being honored with its Golden Eye Award. Speaking there, per Variety, he looked back on an early conversation with the Marvel Studios president, who told him Thor wasn't "the only film you're going to be in."
Then Feige laid out the whole plan: "Well, we've made an 'Iron Man' film, we're going to make a 'Thor' film, we're going to make a 'Captain America' film, and then we're going to make an 'Avengers' film, which is Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, the Hulk and Hawkeye forming a team."
As Feige put it, in the first edition of the first Avengers comic, "the villain is Loki, and we want you to be the villain."
That comic is The Avengers #1 from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, cover-dated September 1963. (The quote as Variety ran it says 1967, but it's a 1963 book.)
Trying to get back at Thor, Loki tricks the Hulk into wrecking a train track, and Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Wasp and the Hulk himself end up banding together to stop him.
Captain America isn't even in that first issue! Cap didn't join the team until #4.
Hiddleston also thanked the late screenwriter Don Payne for building out Loki's "complex" backstory, and he looked back on "a very vivid, happy, immediate, fast friendship with Chris Hemsworth that had both of us feeling like we were the two luckiest guys in the world."
"I never expected to be playing the character for this long," he said. "But he's a brilliant character of such depth and dimension."
Fifteen years later, that "only film" line looks like a HUGE understatement! Hiddleston has played Loki in six movies, from Thor through Avengers: Endgame, and he's headlined two seasons of his own Loki series on Disney+.
Hiddleston is also back for Avengers: Doomsday, which hits theaters December 18th. All he'd say about it in Zurich was "it is coming."
This weekend is a big one for Loki fans. Avengers: Endgame Encore officially opens in theaters September 25th, and as we covered in our breakdown of the new ending and post-credits scenes, the God of Mischief is part of the new material.
Tenzing is Jennifer Peedom's Apple Original Film about Tenzing Norgay (Genden Phuntsok) and the 1953 first ascent of Mount Everest. Hiddleston plays New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, with Willem Dafoe as Colonel John Hunt and Caitríona Balfe in the cast. Zurich hosted the film's European premiere, following its world premiere at Telluride and a stop at TIFF.
"I've been compelled by Everest for as long as I can remember," Hiddleston said. According to Variety, after reading the script, watching Peedom's 2015 documentary Sherpa and meeting the director, he signed on and climbed to Everest's base camp alongside Peedom, Phuntsok and a high-altitude medical specialist.
Tenzing arrives in select theaters October 9th and will stream globally on Apple TV starting October 16th. You can check out the official trailer below!
What's your favorite Loki moment? Were you a fan of the way that Loki season 2 ended? How do you think they'll bring him back for Doomsday?!
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