The Details On Marvel Studios Short Film ‘Item 47’

After ‘The Avengers’ hit theaters it was revealed that Marvel had a shot a short film in secret. The short film that will be featured on the Blu-Ray as well as receiving a screening during Comic-Con next week is titled ‘Item 47’. Now thanks to Entertainment Weekly we have details on the cast and just what the 12 minute ‘Item 47’ is about and how it is expanding the Marvel universe.

The film is the latest in the company’s series of shorts dubbed “One-Shots,” a comic book term for stories that wrap up in one issue. Lizzy Caplan (Party Down, pictured) and Jesse Bradford (Flags of Our Fathers) star as a down-on-their-luck couple who find one of the discarded alien guns from the finale to The Avengers — and proceed to make some incredibly bad decisions.

Item 47 refers to the gun itself, which S.H.I.E.L.D. would like very much to retrieve from the hapless young troublemakers. “The world is topsy-turvy now. There’s been an alien invasion, and things are crazy,” explains Marvel Studios co-president Louis D’Esposito, who directed the film himself. “So when this gun ­literally fell into their lap, this is a sign: We’re going to rob a few banks, we’re going to buy a boat, we’re going to the Caribbean, and all our problems will be solved.”

Two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (Maximiliano Hernández, returning from Thor and The Avengers, and Lost’s Man in Black Titus Welliver, making his Marvel debut) are given the job of cleaning up the mess and stopping this modern Bonnie and Clyde (not coincidentally named Benny and Claire.)

The goal was to show some non-superpowered people reacting to the aftermath of The Avengers. “Anything that expands the world and shows you the more human elements of it, that just makes the world more colorful and fun for the average viewer,” says Eric Pearson, who wrote the screenplay for Item 47, as well as the previous two One-Shots: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer and The Consultant.