Edinburgh 'plays big role in Avengers: Infinity War'

It wasn’t the premiere we hoped for, but Edinburgh film fans got a sneak peek at some of the latest Marvel film last night, with the film’s director confirming the city gets some substantial screen time in Avengers: Infinity War

Article by Jamie Dunn | 11 Apr 2018

Edinburgh got a tantalising peek last night at what’s surely to be the biggest film of 2018 – Avengers: Infinity War (Part 1). A 20 minute clip of the film was shown to Edinburgh film fans, giving them a flavour of what to expect when the epic comic book adventure is released on 26 April.

The scenes we saw didn’t include any of those shot in Edinburgh last year, but the film’s co-director Joe Russo was in town to introduce the clip and confirmed that Edinburgh will play a significant role in the film.

“It was an amazing shoot,” Russo said of the five weeks he spent filming in the city. “When you do see the movie you will see about ten minutes of your beautiful city on film, shot as Edinburgh. It’s not shot as some other location, and some pretty important sequences happen here, so I think you’ll recognise a lot of your town.”

While the clip was a fun taster of how Russo and his brother Anthony are going to bring pretty much all of the Marvel Universe characters together into one movie, it wasn’t the full premiere treatment many fans had hoped for, with some literally petitioning for Marvel to hold a gala screening here. Russo confirmed that a full premiere was never an option in this particular case.

“Typically what we do with the film is that we do many premieres around the world, with Captain America: Civil War, we took it to six or seven different cities," explained Russo. "What’s unique about Infinity War is that there are so many secrets in the film that we didn't want to reveal any footage ahead of [its worldwide release], so we’re just showing you a very small amount of footage from the movie.

“The only place that the movie will play at full length [ahead of the release] is in Los Angeles three days before it opens around the world,” he added.

Russo went on to explain how he went to great lengths to protect these secrets, even from his cast; these lengths includes writing fake scripts for Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans and co. “Honestly, no-one knows what happens in the film apart from my brother and I and a few other people.”

Look out for our review of Avengers: Infinity War (Part 1) on 26 April, and our interview with Joe Russo, which will be online next week. To see Russo’s full intro to the screening, head over to the Scotsman’s website for the video.


Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 is released on 26 Apr by Disney