The budget of Captain America: Civil War is said to have prompted several big changes behind the scenes at Marvel.
Earlier this week, we reported an interesting industry story: Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios and showrunner-at-large of the MCU, has broken free of Marvel Studios CEO Ike Perlmutter, after reportedly suffering under his domineering leadership for several years.
In fact, one source even claimed that Feige was considering leaving Marvel Studios, before Disney CEO Bob Iger approved a significant restructuring.
Feige will now be reporting directly to Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn, who also deals with the leaders of Lucasfilm and Pixar.
But according to The Hollywood Reporter, we can expect more behind-the-scenes shuffles at Marvel.
The catalyst for the changes, THR has learned, was Captain America: Civil War, which recently wrapped up its gigantic shoot in Atlanta.
Unsurprisingly, Civil War‘s huge cast and scope meant a sky-high budget, which Perlmutter did his best to decrease — or, as one insider put it, “New York wanted to scale it down.”
This “New York” also included a creative committee, which, despite an initial report from Heroic Hollywood, THR says has not been disbanded, although it will have significantly less control over the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward.
Related: In the wake of Fantastic Four: Is the superhero movie a director’s or a studio’s medium?
The committee, which included President of Marvel Entertainment Alan Fine, comic book publisher Dan Buckley and chief creative officer Joe Quesada, apparently held a significant amount of power, offering critique of Feige’s creative decisions since the very beginning.
After the power reshuffle, they’ll continue to oversee the TV production side of the studio: Jeph Loeb, head of Marvel TV, still reports to Perlmutter.
How will the Marvel power shake-up affect you?
Devin Faraci at Birth Movies Death believes that the committee will have no control over the MCU whatsoever. While this conflicts with THR’s report, Faraci’s write-up still includes some interesting thoughts about how the Marvel changes might impact us as consumers, for example with regard to merchandising:
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.
Insiders are hoping that Marvel’s reputation of being “cheap” and “aggressive” when it comes to actor contracts and product rights might loosen due to this restructuring. Time will tell!