Captain America: The Winter Soldier Writers Talk Civil War

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely on the new challenges

Appearing at the Television Critics Association winter tour to promote Marvel’s TV series Agent Carter, writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely naturally fielded questions about their work on the third Captain America film, subtitled Civil War. As old Marvel Cinematic Universe hands, they were fairly circumspect on what they could say, but did offer up some news on how they’re tackling the tricky storyline.

Civil War, of course, adapts the famous run of the comics that saw Cap and Iron Man going head to head over the issue of a government plan to force superheroes to register their real identities. While the film version won’t directly channel the storyline, it’ll be a huge influence. "It’s been on and off the table for a while, let’s put it that way, and it’s a challenge to do it and make sure that all the characters that we’ve established, and everyone’s established in the MCU are serviced and sound correct, right?” says McFeely. "Because there’s a difference between the characters in Civil War, which was written in 2006, 2007. The MCU doesn’t exist when it was written. There isn’t a Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Evans who has helped create the character so we need to make sure that that template gets adjusted and what have you in order to make sure it services these characters and not just sort of rip off their parts and make them look like them.”

Their work on both previous Cap films and now Agent Carter as well means there was, of course, a question on how Hayley Atwell’s Peggy will fit into any potential Civil War story, given her connection to Steve Rogers and her working relationship with Stark’s father Howard (played by Dominic Cooper in the series).

"As we have not started shooting, and I’m on my fourth draft of many, that question of who Peggy was to Tony Stark has been in and out all over the place so who knows," says McFeely. "So many things can shake out but we’ve had conversations and we pitched scenes. Some stay and some don’t. But we saw Peggy in Winter Soldier, so we know she’s around". Cryptic!

Captain America: Civil War, which will also introduce Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther, will be out in the UK on April 29, a week ahead of its May 6 debut in the States.

from Empire News