For over a year, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige searched for the right director to helm Captain Marvel, the studio’s first stand-alone superheroine film. Rumors flew about whom Feige had met with for the gig and director short lists were bandied about for months in the trades, but in the end, Feige went with a pick no one saw coming, signing Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to helm the studio’s next blockbuster.

That selection surprised industry onlookers, not simply because the directorial duo had been left off the leaked short lists, but because Boden and Fleck have a filmography that doesn’t immediately suggest big-screen superheroics. After breaking through with the Ryan Gosling drama Half Nelson, they’ve worked solely on small-scale films like Sugar, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, and Mississippi Grind, in addition to directing episodes of Looking and The Affair. What was it about them, I recently asked Feige, that piqued Marvel’s interest enough to set up a first meeting?

“We cast a pretty wide net,” said Feige. “It’s always based on people who’ve done things that we thought were interesting, at any level. We haven’t hired anybody who’ve never done a feature before, but what gets you in the room is doing interesting work in television and interesting work in features, both of which they’ve done. And then it’s about the conversation and the vision that we see.”

Once Boden and Fleck aced their first meeting, Feige kept calling them back until they landed the gig. “For us, what Anna and Ryan have done so spectacularly well in all of their movies, albeit on a much smaller scale than they’re about to do, is create a singular character journey,” he said. “The stories they’ve told have been so diverse, but regardless of the subject matter, they can dive into it and hone in on that character’s journey.”

That’s especially vital when it comes to Captain Marvel, who’ll be played by Brie Larson. Feige recently told Vulture that Captain Marvel will be, by far, the most powerful superhero in Marvel’s cinematic universe. But when you have an incredibly strong character who can fly, shoot energy bursts, and bat away Iron Man, Thor, and the Hulk like they were nothing, how do you find the right stakes to make her journey a compelling one?

“That’s a big part of the story line we’re putting together, and it’s certainly been a big part of the development conversation,” Feige admitted. It’s also where Boden and Fleck can really make their mark: Ultimately, the real stakes of the film have to do with who Captain Marvel is — a human pilot named Carol Danvers, granted superhuman abilities — rather than what she can do.

“Particularly for Captain Marvel, which is going to have a lot of spectacle, it ultimately needs to be about the three-dimensional, multilayered Carol Danvers character,” said Feige. “You have to be able to track her and follow her and relate to her at all points of the movie, regardless of how many visual effects and spaceships and bad guys are filling the frame. That’s what’s important.”

Rumors began popping up on the fanboy sites over the Independence Day holiday that Samuel L. Jackson was reprising his role as Avengers architect and recruiter Nick Fury in Disney/Marvel’s Captain Marvel. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and we hear it’s true that Jackson will be making an appearance in the movie.

The last time we saw Fury was in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Prior to that Fury was shot and hospitalized in 2014’s Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Marvel announced Brie Larson as Air Force Pilot Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel at last year’s Comic-Con. Half Nelson directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck boarded as directors of Captain Marvel in April. The movie, the first female-led superhero project under Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, is scheduled for release on March 8, 2019.

Danvers debuted in 1968 as a human companion to the original Captain Marvel (the space alien Mar-Vell), the sixth character to use that title in the comics. She developed super powers of her own in a mid-’70s storyline and was given her own title, Ms. Marvel, in 1977. She was named Marvel’s official Captain Marvel in 2012 in tribute to the original, killed off via cancer in a 1982 graphic novel, with the Ms. Marvel moniker going to Kamala Khan, Marvel’s first headlining Muslim character.

Marvel would not comment on the news.

Barring any trick post-credits scene, Marvel fans will have to wait longer than expected to see Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers meet the rest of earth’s mightiest heroes. Joe Russo, who directs Avengers: Infinity War and its sequel with brother Anthony Russo, confirmed that Captain Marvel won’t make an appearance in the film.

The ambitious effort will see Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), the Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and many more figures from this cinematic universe team up to fight the villainous Thanos (Josh Brolin). But when it comes to Captain Marvel, Russo told ComicBook.com at a press event following the Marvel movie panel at Comic-Con International in San Diego, “She’s not in Avengers 3.”

This doesn’t necessarily rule out Avengers 4, however. Infinity War will hit theaters on May 4, 2018, but the story will blend with the next Avengers installment (in theaters May 3, 2019) as a culmination of the entire Marvel universe thus far.