Kat Dennings insists she’s not part of Avengers: Doomsday, but she did confirm that Marvel body-scanned her, so, she jokes, her character could theoretically appear in any future Marvel project.
“I’m in the [Marvel] universe, and as you know, I can’t tell you anything, but I am not in [Doomsday],” the Shifting Gears actress, who first appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2011’s Thor, recently told Entertainment Tonight. “I mean, I’m not in it. And I’m telling you right now, I’m not in it. If I were in it, which I’m not, I couldn’t tell you, but I literally am not. I’m sure they already filmed it. I was here, I’m not in it.”
She added, though, of Marvel, “They did scan me, so to be honest, they could put me in anything they want at this point. Who knows? I’m in the system!”
Dennings starred as quirky scientist Darcy in several MCU projects, including 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder and the Disney+ series WandaVision. She most recently voiced the character in four episodes of the animated series What If…?
Amid the rising use of AI in Hollywood, body-scans have become more commonplace for actors. Charlize Theron revealed in a video posted to X in May 2022 that she underwent a scan for her role as Clea in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Nicolas Cage, who appeared as Marvel character Ghost Rider in the 2007 film of the same name, spoke out against the practice in an interview with the New Yorker last year. He shared that he underwent scans for Prime Video’s Spider-Man Noir and another upcoming project.
“They have to put me in a computer and match my eye color and change — I don’t know,” Cage said. “They’re just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital AI. … God, I hope not AI. I’m terrified of that. I’ve been very vocal about it. … And it makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up? Is it going to be replaced? Is it going to be transmogrified? Where’s the heartbeat going to be? I mean, what are you going to do with my body and my face when I’m dead? I don’t want you to do anything with it!”
VFX supervisor Stephane Ceretti discussed Marvel’s scans during an interview with Earth’s Mightiest Show in 2018, saying at the time that the scans are for costuming purposes.
“In most Marvel films, we scan all the actors in their costume with other costumes so that we have a really good 3D scan of everything,” Ceretti said while discussing Ant-Man and the Wasp. “So it’s all built based off their real sizes, and we have to recreate the costume to make sure that they wrinkle correctly.”
Avengers: Doomsday will be released in theaters on Dec. 18.