Chris Evans Says Marvel Sent ‘at Least a Dozen Pitches’ for Captain America Return Before ‘Doomsday’

Chris Evans reveals that he was eyeing a potential return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe long before coming aboard for “Avengers: Doomsday.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly out of San Diego Comic-Con, the star behind Captain America shares that he invited Marvel Studios to keep pitching him on ways that his character could reappear. After “Avengers: Endgame,” franchise producers Kevin Feige and Lou D’Esposito already had ideas on how to bring Evans back into the fold, including a storyline that would see Steve Rogers take on his alternate moniker, Nomad.

“When we finished ‘Endgame’ in 2018, Lou and Kevin took me to dinner and they were like, ‘We’d love to keep doing movies with Steve Rogers as Nomad.’ And I said, ‘Okay, well, what do you got?’” Evans said. “It was a great pitch. But, for whatever reason, it just didn’t feel right at the time. … I was a little precious. I wanted to preserve it. But I just said, ‘Please keep pitching.’”

“Avengers: Endgame” concluded with Captain America traveling back to his original time to marry Brit spy Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) in the years following World War II. It was a fan-favorite curtain call that gave Evans an off-ramp from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the actor continued to court a return.

“Over the course of eight years, I probably heard at least a dozen pitches. And they were all wonderful. It just never quite felt right. And you do start thinking… maybe it’s not right because it’s just not right,” Evans shared. Then he said he got a call from his team that Robert Downey Jr. was in talks to rejoin Marvel for “Doomsday.” “I was like, ‘Uh, oh. What does this mean?’ … And all of a sudden it felt right.”

Evans and Downey both appeared at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday to promote their Marvel returns. While Evans is returning as Rogers, the narrative circumstances behind the character’s reappearance remain a secret. Meanwhile, Downey is not reprising his role as Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man; instead, he’s playing Victor von Doom, the main villain of “Doomsday.”

“Avengers: Doomsday” will open in theaters on Dec. 18.