Coulson's Big Break Came From Thor Writers

Sometimes good things happen for all of the wrong reasons.  That's kind of the case when talking about Clark Gregg's Agent Phil Coulson.  Originally written as a throw away character that was only to appear in the first Iron Man movie, a strange sequence of events led to him becoming one of the most beloved characters in the MCU.

Zack Stentz, one of the two writers for the first Thor movie (the other writer being Ashley Miller) recently sat down with Kevin Smith for his Fatman on Batman podcast to talk about being tasked by Marvel to do a re-write for the film, and only being given a few weeks to do it.  Here's what he had to say:

“This was a page one re-write, based very loosely on story beats that they gave us… there were beats that they had, and beats that they didn’t have, and we were kind of working them together. At one point it was like ‘Okay we want S.H.I.E.L.D. to be in there’ and they’re like ‘We can’t have S.H.I.E.L.D. as the bad guys!’ ‘No, not the bad guys, just the people opposing Thor; they’ll be the good guys by the end, trust us.’

“And then they’re like ‘Well, you can have S.H.I.E.L.D., but Sam Jackson’s holding us up in negotiations so we don’t know if we can have Nick Fury. And we’re like ‘Well, how about that Clark Gregg guy from the first Iron Man, he was great and he popped! Can we have Coulson?’ And they’re like ‘Coulson, Coulson, Coulson… oh him! Yeah, you can have him.’… They ended up giving him a bigger role in Iron Man 2 because they liked how he was popping in Thor. Clark Gregg actually sent us t-shirts as a thank you.”


So Samuel L. Jackson holding out in negotiations is responsible for Clark Gregg's rise in the MCU.  See what I mean by good things happen for all of the wrong reasons?  Even though it was his charisma and talent that made him memorable to the writers, it was Jackson's contract negotiations that actually led to his becoming a main player.  Funny how things work out.  Oh, and Gregg's not the only MCU character that should be thanking Stentz and Miller.  Stentz went on to say:


“You want to know who owes us and hasn’t said ANYTHING? Part way through [the script] there’s ‘the SHIELD Sniper takes aim’ and we identify ‘Barton’. And [the producers said] ‘But if we get Hawkeye, we’ll have to get a real actor.’ And then they realized we can just shoot the A-Side, and then when we cast for The Avengers we’ll just go back and shoot a thing with that actor. So, Jeremy Renner: You’re welcome!”


It sounds like some clever camera shots were made to Renner's Hawkeye to get into the film before making an appearance in Avengers.  Like I said, funny how things work out sometimes.