A Marvel Insider Spills the Beans: What’s Really Going On with Feige and Chapek

An insider from Marvel has reached out with key pieces of information that help explain what is going on… and why Bob Chapek allows it.

The following article is based on a Marvel insider who has reached out to WDW Pro. As a result of their communications, portions of the conversation have been paraphrased by That Park Place writer, Manú López, in order to go so far as to protect the writing style of the insider. We are providing as much of the message as possible with minor redactions to protect identities. While we can vouch for the validity of this source we cannot vouch for their opinions. Please keep in mind that the source is providing their opinion on behind-the-scenes stuff at Marvel and Disney — we do not necessarily agree, condone, or promote (nor the opposite) any statements within this message.

Portions of this message may include potential spoilers for future MCU movies.

Message begins now:

Good job on the toy sales. It matches up with what I know too. I can’t say anything about Cap but I can tell you the new stuff isn’t selling. Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors… that’s what all this is with Eternals, She-Hulk. The public doesn’t care. So now we have the big sellers and they’re making money but we’re stuck playing with our backup rosters because => reasons.

Let me explain the reasons.

What is going on right now with Marvel is the same thing that happened with Star Wars. It’s a vicious loop. It all comes down to two big factors > China and ego.

On the China side. Marvel is dead in China. Not the brand. The sales. The Chinese government wants to play hardball, wants to cut off the MCU from their box office. It’s all politics and propaganda. They want the biggest movies made in China, playing in China. But that was the big driving force behind Marvel strategy for a decade. We were supposed to get to finish Infinity Stone saga, saturate western markets, then growth was in Beijing. Now we’re locked out. Same as Star Wars but different reason. Lucasfilm mismanaged Star Wars in China, made it all too hard to get into for an audience that was new, so that killed the market. For Marvel, Beijing has a vendetta against us. We got too big and the communist hand has slapped us down. So now we have to find a new place to grow. That’s why we pushed hard into “diversity.”

I’ll explain the quotation marks.

Diversity at Marvel doesn’t mean what you think it means. It isn’t races and religions and disabilities. Diversity is equal with representation. So the idea was that after Black Panther, we could put into representation on everything to make up for the China loss. Not all of it. But too, we aren’t supposed to represent everything and everyone. We don’t do Christians or Jews, we don’t do strong male white leads in heroic spots. It’s not that those are bad at Marvel going forward, it’s that we’re told we already have the market for those groups. Why make more of something when you can slow burn your big stuff for those demographics and parents keep buying it at the same rate?

Lately tho – and this is why I wanted to reach out to you with more than I can usually give – representation and diversity are political. That’s why I am worried, along with others, that this is going down the Star Wars blackhole. They don’t mean to make it political, they just are political and don’t know it. They don’t leave their bubbles. Instead of doing new stuff based on race or sex, we have to do it based on behaviors. Then in meetings, we’re told behaviors are representations. It’s not enough to have diversity based on background, we have to have diversity based on the way people act. Why do you think She-Hulk is how it is? They’re trying to create a new Marvel market for neo feminist women. We’re trying to grow in every direction all at once and have the belief the old fans will stick with it through all of this.

But that isn’t the case. They know it and can’t hide it. The flops have been gigantic embarrassments. People aren’t turning to Disney+ to get the Marvel shows the way it was planned. Same time, they aren’t willing to change because this is a Feige strat and it is all about his ego.

Why do I say that? Feige has been running the Marvel playbook based on Stan Lee’s stuff, Joss Whedon stuff, Favreau, Russos, you name it. Feige got the credit but he also wants more. He doesn’t want to be known as the greatest IP manager of all time. He wants to be known as the greatest studio head ever => creative, financial, everything.

But the Feige strat is failing. Everyone knows it. Your toy expert knows it. Our partners know it. But then people when the phones are away will ask, “why aren’t you adjusting — why don’t you go back to what works?” That comes down to ego. Feige thinks he can hold out long enough to build the new markets with all the DEI on screen, then he thinks he can buy back the old fans with a huge spending spree for multiverse stuff. They’re bringing everybody back they can get. Anybody who worked on anything Marvel + more. Money is being thrown at the problem like crazy (maybe not RDJ tho, that relationship is soured). And you know what? It will work. It will work for a while. They’re putting bandages on the boat. When Jackman Wolverine shows up through a portal, fans will go nuts like for Spider-Man. But then what? That’s the Star Wars problem. We’re going to blow everything on getting the fans back but the holes will still be there. After we spend all this money, all this investment, Feige will still push DEI and new stories so he can change his legacy.

It won’t work in the long run.

Now you might ask why Bob Chapek is letting this happen. He came down hard on Lucasfilm and Pixar. The people working there are at their lowest morale. Very little coming to theaters, their creative control dropped. So why not the same for Marvel? Run of the mill analysts don’t understand it either. Bob and Kevin dislike each other, so why does Marvel still push farther and farther.

Two points.

1. Bob Chapek says he wants to get the company out of politics. Company policy is coming. Everybody knows it. But Bob doesn’t want out of politics the way you guys think. I like your stuff on the site but your people have it wrong on Chapek. He wants Disney out of policy but he wants to go hard at the representation we talked about. Only one direction though. It’s $$$. They already have the white market, the Christian market, the moderates market. And they don’t boycott. At least they didn’t. Strategy might change now that we’re seeing a drop. But even if he wants Disney out of politico sausagemaking, he still wants into the alphabet issues — he wants into behavior stuff. That’s where they believe the new markets are. They want minority Disney+ ratios up. They want single women merch sales up.
2. Feige is using what we “lovingly” call the KF-C model to protect himself from Bob Chapek.

KF-C

If you really want to know how Bob is kept hands-off on Marvel even though Thor came in under our desires, Strange had a big drop-off, etc, you need to know the thing looking you right in the face.

Fiege has a Chapek at his side.

Bob’s son, Brian Chapek, has been accelerated up the company. He was a major producer on Thor 4. It pisses off so many people at the studio because it’s blatant nepotism. But it keeps Bob at bay. And Brian is totally on board with everything Feige is about. Not to be mean but Brian isn’t the sharpest. He’s nice but he’s nowhere close to good enough to be where he is right now. But Feige is grooming him to support what Marvel does and then daddy Chapek doesn’t want to go against junior. But then too Feige doesn’t let junior get big enough that he is any sort of threat at Marvel. They do stuff like make Baby Thor be Bob Chapek’s grandson to keep everyone happy.

We’ll end the message there for now. There’s a little bit more, some of it harder to scrub of identifying material. Hopefully we can get a follow-up from the source on some questions we have and we can run an additional article in the near future.

For now though, it is very interesting that this source claims the Marvel push into what many claim is “woke” is nothing more than a growth strategy thinking that traditional and conservative fans won’t abandon the MCU. It’s also extremely eye-opening that Mr. Feige may be using Chapek’s own son to create a hedge around the studio to protect against criticism.

If you have any insider information regarding The Walt Disney Company, Marvel, or any other entertainment companies, which can be obtained legally and ethically, please feel free to reach out to WDW Pro at wdwpro@protonmail.com. We welcome all inquiries but may be unable to respond to each and every request.

So what do you think? Let us know in the comments below. And, as always, keep reading That Park Place for all the latest news that should be fun.