Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige Doesn’t Think Audiences Will Grow Tired of Superhero Movies

The FPS Review may receive a commission if you purchase something after clicking a link in this article.

Image: Marvel

Critics of superhero films believe that they’ll go away eventually, but the boss of Marvel Studios, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn’t agree with that. Speaking for a recent episode of The Movie Business Podcast (via Variety), Kevin Feige contested the idea of comic book movies being a “fad,” suggesting that they will be around forever because of the flexibility of the medium and how there is so much that can be adapted, from multiple genres.

“I’ve been at Marvel Studios for over 22 years, and most of us here at Marvel Studios have been around a decade or longer together,” Feige told podcast host Jason E. Squire, an author and professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. “From probably my second year at Marvel, people were asking, ‘Well, how long is this going to last? Is this fad of comic book movies going to end?’”

“I didn’t really understand the question,” Feige continued. “Because to me, it was akin to saying after ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘Well, how many more movies can be made off of novels? Do you think the audience will sour on movies being adapted from books?’ You would never ask that because there’s an inherent understanding among most people that a book can be anything. A novel can have any type of story whatsoever. So it all depends on what story you’re translating. Non-comic readers don’t understand that it’s the same thing in comics.”

Feige goes on to point out how there are a ton of stories that Marvel Studios has yet to tell thanks to the massive catalog of Marvel comics in existence, which date back to 1939:

There’s 80 years of the most interesting, emotional, groundbreaking stories that have been told in the Marvel comics, and it is our great privilege to be able to take what we have and adapt them. Another way to do that is adapting them into different genres, and what types of movies we want to make.

I found that if we tell the story right, and we adapt them in a way that the audience still — knock on wood so far — is following us along 22-plus years later… we can [make] any types of movies that share two things: the Marvel Studios logo above the title and a seed of an idea from our publishing history.

Feige has been with Marvel since 2000 but has since been elevated to not only president of Marvel Studios, but also chief creative officer for Marvel Entertainment, Marvel Comics, Marvel Television, and Marvel Animation. Some of his latest projects include Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a third Ant-Man film that will expand on Marvel Studios’ next big antagonist, Kang, and two Avengers movies, including Secret Wars, set for release in 2026.

Join the discussion in our forums...

Tsing Mui
News poster at The FPS Review.

Recent News