Marvel Studios Facing New Era in Massive shakeup

[Walts Ghost]

Kevin Feige Gets A New Boss As Disney Restructures Marvel Studios

Ike Perlmutter is the reclusive billionaire behind Marvel. He's an Israeli immigrant who came to America with $250 in his pocket and ended up amassing an empire; he ended up in control of Marvel in 1997 after he and Avi Arad, who had been partners in the toy company Toy Biz, fought off a bunch of other business dudes like Carl Icahn and Ron Perlmutter. He wasn't a comic guy, he wasn't even a toy guy - he was a spreadsheet guy. In 2005 he became CEO of Marvel and in 2009 he got $800 million in cash from Disney ($590 million in stock) when the company acquired Marvel. Not bad for a guy who started his career selling beauty products on the street.

Ike has overseen all of Marvel - Studios, Television, publishing, animation, etc - until today. Today Disney restructured Marvel Studios so that Kevin Feige, who runs the studio, reports directly to Alan Horn, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. For Feige this has to be a huge relief - every story I have ever heard about Perlmutter has reiterated how difficult he is, how mercurial he is and how hard he is to keep happy. High level people at Marvel have told me that Perlmutter is exactly the level of rich where he can and will make decisions that seem crazy to everyone else, and more than one Marvel staffer has told me that they thought the biggest threat facing Marvel Studios was Ike capriciously firing Feige.

Perlmutter is famously cheap - Marvel's press junkets have been catered by Subway in the past - and has been known to get involved on all levels, from blockading diversity in Marvel's on-screen superheroes to getting the girlfriends of his billionaire pals roles in Marvel movies. I know that Feige has been deeply frustrated working under Perlmutter, and that for many Marvel staffers part of the job was making sure Ike didn't randomly torch the whole thing.

What does this mean for you, the nerd watching these movies? Probably not much; I don't know how much looser Marvel gets with the purse strings, as it's decisions like keeping Ant-Man at a fairly low budget that allowed the movie to be a success. It could mean that Feige has more leeway in his hiring of filmmakers, but it probably won't have much of an impact on the already-planned Phase Three. The question this shift raises is what happens to Feige when his current contract, due to be up in 2019 I believe, expires. If you had asked me this question last year I would have told he was going to leave Marvel, having created a cultural revolution that has changed the way everybody makes movies.... and being sick of dealing with Ike. Now? I've always heard whispers that Feige truly craves the Lucasfilm throne, and this move could help get him closer to being the guy chosen to take over Star Wars after Kathleen Kennedy steps down - which could be in a few years or in a decade or more. Nobody knows.

The short of it - this feels like a move that gives Feige a little breathing room as he gets through Phase Three and considers Phase Four. If Kennedy doesn't leave Star Wars by the end of the decade I might expect Feige to stick around for a whole other phase. Of course that kind of longterm prognostication is foolhardy, at best.

In the meantime Ike will maintain control over all other areas of Marvel, including the television division. There has always been a distance between Studios and Television and I wonder if it only grows wider now. Time will only tell.

And for Kevin Feige? I imagine he has to be feeling pretty good right now, as Marvel Studios moving closer to the corporate bosom only solidifies his power in Disney.

The Marvel Creative Committee Is Over

This week we learned that Disney restructured Marvel Studios so that it no longer sat under the purview of... eccentric billionaire Ike Perlmutter. Ike, known for penny pinching to a frankly absurdist degree, as well as a guy given to the sorts of outbursts that prompt lawsuits, was a dark cloud hanging over Marvel's day to day operations. But getting away from Ike isn't the only big move that has happened at Marvel recently.

Yesterday my friend El Mayimbe of Heroic Hollywood reported on Periscope that there has been a shake-up of the Creative Committee at Marvel, and I can now confirm that. Not only has there been a shake-up, I believe that the Creative Committee is actually finished altogether, although some version of it may continue to live on at Marvel TV, which remains under Ike's control.

What was the Creative Committee? It was a group of people who would gives notes and thoughts on Marvel productions as they made their way from script to screen. Some of the guys on the committee included Alan Fine, who came with Perlmutter to Marvel through Toy Biz, Brian Michael Bendis, who is a prolific Marvel Comics writer, Dan Buckley, publisher of Marvel Comics and Joe Quesada, former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and the current Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Enterprises.

On paper that sounds like a great line-up of talent, but it seems as if in practice it was often a source of frustration. Over the years I've heard many stories of the Creative Committee giving notes that are pedestrian, motivated by 'save the cat' story logic and sometimes a drag on creativity. One Marvel creative talked to me about battles with the Creative Committee where they focused on details of nit-picky science that ignored the general tone of the script itself. The notes that drove Edgar Wright off Ant-Man came from the Creative Committee. What's more, the Creative Committee was often very tardy with their notes, making movie development a much slower process. All of the Committee members have other, very important jobs, so you understand why that would be the case, but it was a pain for filmmakers. And that's before taking into account the political divisions within Marvel that also created friction with the Creative Committee.

Now that the Creative Committee has been dissolved and now that Ike is out of the picture, Marvel Studios is facing a real new dawn. It won't be evident on Captain America: Civil War or maybe Doctor Strange, which is already deep in pre-production, but everything coming afterwards could reflect a new energy at Marvel. Key creative decisions are now being made by Kevin Feige, Louis D'Esposito and Victoria Alonso alone. Any drag or difficulty caused by the Creative Committee is over, and any skinflint choices and bizarre decisions made by Ike are out of the way (trivia: I understand the reason there are no Black Widow toys is specifically because Ike, with a background in toys, believes girl toys do not sell and thus vetoed them again and again. One guy was the roadblock.), and now we're going to see Marvel Studios operating at full power as it goes into Phase Three. I don't think this means we're going to see Captain Marvel suddenly get a $300 million budget - I think Marvel understands that reasonable frugality is what has allowed Ant-Man to become a success - but I think we're going to see happier actors, more dynamic creative visions and a Kevin Feige who could be leading Marvel well into the next decade. More than that, I think the doors to diversity have opened in a big way, especially post-Ike.

When they write the book about Marvel Studios this is going to be a big chapter.