Even though we’ve only seen a few visual hints of him so far, Marvel is so confident that audiences will flip for The Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron they’ve already got him booked for another feature, as confirmed by actor Paul Bettany to News Australia.
“That’s the really great thing about the Marvel gig for me,” Bettany said. “I have never known if I have had a job six months out ever in my life. And now I know that they have plans and I can be even more judicious about the stuff that I do outside of that work. I can wait for the right thing and feel really attached to it.”
Although no specific project is named, it seems likely that The Vision would have a role to play in Captain America: Civil War given how intrinsically his origin is tied to Tony Stark and his A.I. J.A.R.V.I.S. (also voiced by Bettany). Robert Downey Jr. is set to reprise his role as Stark/Iron Man in an antagonistic capacity for the sequel, which will shoot from April through August in Atlanta and Los Angeles. Those dates certainly line up with “six months out.”
Despite literally being on the MCU bandwagon from the beginning – voicing J.A.R.V.I.S. since 2008’s Iron Man – Bettany admitted to doing the movies for some easy voiceover cash, only immersing himself in the Marvel movies after taking on the critical role of The Vision.
“I did a lot of research — and my research was watching all of the films,” says Bettany. “I realised they are so interlinked and I wanted to understand the universe I was in. So I did and it was a really amazing, fun experience. Everybody made me feel really at home and I have no bad stories — they are really funny people and really creative. I have never seen sets that big in my whole career. I have never seen set pieces like it — we were in a set that felt like a town.”
Avengers: Age of Ultron stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, James Spader, Cobie Smulders, Thomas Kretschmann, Paul Bettany and Stellan Skarsgard. The Joss Whedon-directed film will debut in theaters on May 1, 2015.