Changes are coming to the Marvel landscape. About a month ago, it was announced that Kevin Feige has been placed in creative control of all things Marvel– the movies, TV, and even comic books. This comes after Feige helped guide Marvel Studios into the billion-dollar hit-making machine that it is today, with ‘Avengers: Endgame’ clawing its way to become the highest-grossing movie of all time.
This, of course, came after Marvel Studios was broken away from Marvel Entertainment whose Isaac Perlmutter was notoriously frugal with budgets and opposed Feige’s vision of diversity. Perlmutter only approved films for ‘Black Panther’ and ‘Captain Marvel’ in exchange for an ‘Inhumans’ movie that would benefit the TV division, where the Inhumans were incorporated into ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Rather than lose Feige, Disney emancipated the film division, allowing Feige to call his own shots. ‘Black Panther’ and ‘Captain Marvel’ both got made, and went on to gross over $1 billion each, and ‘Black Panther’ became the first comic book movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. The TV division moved ahead with ‘Inhumans’ and it was a disaster.
RELATED: Kevin Feige Takes Control As Marvel’s New Chief Creative Officer, Will Now Oversee All Films, Television, And Comics
With all of the changes taking place, Feige is opening up about the behind the scenes scuffles, although he remains diplomatic. When asked about the diversity issues, he replied:
“That’s part of it. There’s a lot of sides to the story. You can pick up [Disney CEO] Bob Iger’s book The Ride of a Lifetime to learn more, but it made sense at that time. We had made ten movies or more that managerially, there was another way to go.”
Appearing on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chat podcast, he stated:
“In terms of markers, as you were saying, another one I’d say was very important for Marvel Studios and for me personally was when Bob Iger hired Alan Horn because Alan Horn is such a tremendous leader and such a tremendous mentor.
“He came on just before or just after Avengers 1 came out and has been so supportive in what we’re doing and also has great guidance. He reads every draft and watches every cut. He’s not as versed in the Marvel lore as we are, which is important because we want to police ourselves and not get too far down in the weeds that we distance ourselves from our audience and he and Alan Bergman are great eyes for that.”
It sounds as though Alan Horn has helped keep the Marvel Studios output from getting too fanboyish and keeping the films accessible to the widest audience possible. It works! Fanboys and girls are thrilled with the movies just as much as folks that have never picked up a comic book.
And now Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios are set to conquer TV with a slate of programs arriving via Disney+. Here is what fans can look forward to:
‘Black Widow’ – May 1, 2020; ‘The Eternals’ – November 6, 2020; ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ – late 2020; ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ – February 12, 2021; ‘WandaVision’ – early 2021; ‘Loki’ – early 2021; ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ – May 7, 2021; Untitled ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ sequel – July 16, 2021; ‘What If…?’ – mid-2021; ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ – November 5, 2021; ‘Hawkeye’ – late 2021; ‘Ms. Marvel’, ‘Moon Knight’, and ‘She-Hulk’ – TBA.
