Joss Whedon On Avengers Sequel And Loki

Joss Whedon has discussed the absence of popular villain Loki from the sequel to The Avengers.

The filmmaker, who is currently writing The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, explained to Entertainment Weekly why Tom Hiddleston's character would not feature in it.

He said: "Every movie is going to be a different villain. Loki's awesome, and he is awesome in Thor 2. But The Avengers is a different thing.

"I worked with Tom more than any other actor [on The Avengers], because he was the only villain and there were six heroes. And he was as great as anyone I've ever worked with, and I get why people loved the character. But it's an Avengers movie."

Asked if he'd considered killing off one of the Avengers, he said it hadn't been ruled out.

"I'd have to have a really good reason, a really great sequence for [Marvel executives] to go, 'We'll cut off a potential franchise, that's fine!' They know, as any good studio does, that without some stakes, some real danger, how involved can we get?

"We don't just rule it out across the board, but neither is the mission statement 'who can we kill?' We try to build the story organically and go, 'How hard can we make it on these people?'"

The sequel is set to start filming in London next year and will be released in 2015.