Kevin Feige Almost Quit Marvel Over ‘Civil War’ Disagreements
It seemsCaptain America: Civil Warcaused its own lower-case civil war at Marvel Studios. A new report says Marvel Studios presidentKevin Feigethreatened to quit over disagreements with Marvel Entertainment CEOIke Perlmutterabout the ballooning budget of the film, leading to the corporate reshuffling we heard about earlier this week. Read all about the Kevin Feige Ike PerlmutterCivil Wardrama after the jump.
If you’ve been following along with ourCaptain America: Civil Warcoverage, you know it has a huge cast. Just about everyone who’s ever appeared in an Avengers movie is on board, including heavyweightsChris EvansandRobert Downey Jr.and new Spider-ManTom Holland. In fact,THRnotes it’s been nicknamedAvengers 2.5for its sprawling cast and scope.
But a cast that large comes with a correspondingly large budget, and Perlmutter wasn’t too happy about that. The CEO is famous for his frugality, which he applies to everything from talent contracts to office supplies. In fact, it might be theonlything he’s famous for among typical Marvel fans, since he has preferred to stay out of the spotlight and let Feige serve as the public face of the franchise.
Perlmutter and the Marvel Creative Committee — which includes Marvel Entertainment presidentAlan Fine, Marvel Comics writerBrian Michael Bendis, Marvel Comics publisherDan Buckley, and Marvel Entertainment CCOJoe Quesada– tried to “scale down"Civil War. Feige wasn’t having it, and considered leaving Marvel altogether before Disney CEO Bob Iger agreed to change the corporate structure so Feige would no longer answer to Perlmutter.
Civil Warwas only the final straw in the long-simmering tensions between Feige and Perlmutter, however.Bleeding Coolreports it was the relative failure ofAvengers: Age of Ultronthat gave Feige the leverage to push Perlmutter out of his way, and lessen the influence of the Marvel Creative Committee. While the film made money and got decent reviews, it didn’t do as well on either front as Marvel had hoped.
(Interestingly, they also claim the committeedidn’t have much sayover that film, and thatit was Feige’s choicesthat necessitated extensive, pricey reshoots. If all of the above is true, that’s some masterful maneuvering on Feige’s part.)
As we’ve said before, it’ll be a while before really feel the consequences, good or bad, of the Feige / Perlmutter split. For all the differences between the two men, their partnership has yielded 12 massively successful, mostly very good movies. Lots of fans (us included) are hoping it’ll meanmore creativity and diversityfor the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but we’ll have to wait a couple years to see how it actually plays out in practice.
One expected result is better deals for the talent. Marvel is notoriously cheap, but industry insiders are hoping that with Perlmutter no longer calling the shots, they studio will loosen up a bit. That could have huge ramifications for the franchise going forward. In the past, Perlmutter’s legendary frugality has led to Don Cheadle replacing Terrence Howard as Rhodes, and almost led to Iron Man beingcut outofCaptain America 3(what is now calledCivil War) entirely.
