Marvel Studios prides itself on resurrecting minor characters who are seemingly no longer part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But one actor who will probably never return is Ray Winstone, who played Dreykov in 2021’s “Black Widow” and who is candidly shared that he was not a fan of the Marvel process.
“It was fine until you have to do the reshoots,” Winstone told the Radio Times. “Then you find out that a few producers have come down, and your performance is too much, it’s too strong… That’s the way Marvel works. It can be soul-destroying because you feel like you’re doing great work.”
In fact, he was so disillusioned with the process that he asked them to recast the role. “And you end up doing it again because you’re contracted to do it. Otherwise you end up in court,” Winstone said. “It’s like being kicked in the balls.”
Marvel Studios projects are made in a way more akin to animation, where scenes and entire sequences are futzed with and redone up until the very last minute, in an effort to make the best possible movie. This can put a strain on the production – not only the cast but below-the-line folks like art directors and visual effects artists. But there is a method to the madness; the movies have brought in nearly $30 billion worldwide since the MCU launched in 2008, and films like the beloved “Thor: Ragnarok” ended up being greatly improved (and changed) during the additional photography process.
Winstone, who is appearing in two Netflix projects this month (Guy Ritchie’s new series “The Gentlemen” and the Milly Bobbie Brown-led fantasy film “Damsel”), clearly did not enjoy the test-and-adjust period that almost every Marvel Studios film goes through.
“The Marvels,” which finally released this past fall after multiple delays, went through several extensive rounds of reshoots, to the point that director Nia Da Costa left pre-production early to work on another project, something that Winstone surely wishes he could have done.
