Between filming and post-production for The Avengers, Joss Whedon took a brief break—to film another movie. The result is the tiny-budgeted Much Ado About Nothing, shot at Whedon's own house with a digital camera over 12 days. Despite, or perhaps because of, the project's simplicity, critics are charmed:
- In the New York Times, AO Scott calls the film "perhaps the liveliest and most purely delightful movie I have seen so far this year." It "draws out the essential screwball nature of Shakespeare’s comedy," and is actually "a better vehicle for Mr. Whedon’s sensibilities" than today's superhero movies are.