Ray Winstone Reveals How Difficult It Is to Shoot a Marvel Movie: “I Was Contracted, So I had To Do It”

British actor Ray Winstone, known for movies like “The Departed,” was at the Sarajevo Film Festival receiving the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award for his long career in cinema.

While there, he talked about how much the film industry has changed over the years. Winstone said he feels it has “become a business” and pointed out the difference between big blockbuster movies, like Marvel films, and what he calls “cultural films.” “It’s all about selling tickets,” he said.

“We see what’s happening in Hollywood with Marvel and all that kind of stuff… There is room for it, and it’s fun, but it takes away from getting cultural films made, which are best for the actors, [and] are really good acting parts. It’s getting more and more difficult to do that. If you’re not on social media now, they might not even consider you for a movie because they want a fanbase to come with that.”

Winstone also shared his own experience in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, playing the villain Dreykov in 2021’s “Black Widow.” Dreykov is a cruel and manipulative figure who runs a secret program turning young girls into assassins called Black Widows. Winstone said the early days of shooting were exciting.

“I worked with this amazing director, Cate Shortland, and we worked on what my character was going to be. He was like a pedophile running around all these girls, and they’d become black widows. We used to get applauded on set. It was probably the best thing I’ve done for a really long time,” he explained.

But things changed after principal filming. Winstone described being asked to do reshoots for the entire movie. “Then I come home after finishing the job and get a call saying we need to do some reshoots,” he said. “I say: how many scenes? [Cate] says ‘all of them.’ So I said she should recast [the role], but I was contracted, so I had to do it. I go back, they do my hair all nice, put me in the suit, and I couldn’t do it. I’d already done it. I thought, ‘I’m not doing it now. I’ve done it. That’s how it’s going to be.’ That’s rejection, you know? There’s nothing worse than doing something, leaving it on the floor, and then being told it’s not right.”

Reshoots are common in the MCU, known for making big changes after principal photography. Movies like “Avengers: Endgame” and “Thor: Ragnarok” and even one of the recent releases like “Captain America: Brave New World” had major reshoots to fine-tune scenes or add new moments to please fans and fit the larger universe.

In fact, Marvel reshoots had become sort of a meme in the community and can be a pretty good indicator of what fans can expect.

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