A new rumor claims that Marvel Studios cleaned house and fired all activist producers.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – APRIL 11: Kevin Feige, President, Marvel Studios speaks onstage during the Walt Disney Studios presentation at Cinemacon in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 11, 2024. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
This latest rumor comes from Film Threat founder Chris Gore during an appearance on The Critical Drinker’s YouTube channel.
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Gore stated, “I do know people who work at Marvel. They have cleaned house. They quietly, months ago fired all the producers that could be labeled activist.”
He continued, ‘Unlike Lucasfilm. Lucasfilm is lost. They’re lost. They are doubling down on all the nonsense. You will never get anything good out of Lucasfilm and Star Wars. That’s it.”
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – APRIL 11: Kevin Feige, President, Marvel Studios speaks onstage during the Walt Disney Studios presentation at Cinemacon in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 11, 2024. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
In contrast, he said, “Kevin Feige recognizes… basically, he said that we tried it, it didn’t work. He’s talking about Phase 4. It didn’t work. No Kang. None of these side characters that don’t have the legacy of classic characters. And if Deadpool and Wolverine proves anything, you’ve heard that phrase ‘male and pale is stale,’ that was spoken aloud across studios, but if you look at box office this year, I would say male and pale is money. And that’s the phrase that I think people should more adopt.”
Gore also noted, “Additionally, they fired people that don’t know the comics. … But it’s going to be a sea change that will take years. Years. That’s why they are announcing this now. ‘We know we screwed up and failed, but look at what’s coming.’ So we’re going to get two bad movies, two bad TV shows, and maybe a good Fantastic Four film.”
THE FANTASTIC FOUR. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
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Marvel Studios did make a huge change at the end of last year on its television show side. The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit shared that the company was “revamping its development process. Showrunners will write pilots and show bibles. The days of Marvel shooting an entire series, from She-Hulk to Secret Invasion, then looking at what’s working and what’s not, are done.”
Marvel’s head of streaming, television, and animation Brad Winderbaum informed Kit, “We’re trying to marry the Marvel culture with the traditional television culture.”
He added, “We need executives that are dedicated to this medium, that are going to focus on streaming, focus on television because they are two different forms.”
(L-R): Charlie Cox as Daredevil/Matt Murdock and Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk/Jennifer “Jen” Walters in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. © 2022 MARVEL.
In April, Kit and Aaron Couch at The Hollywood Reporter noted that Marvel Studios was hit with some lay offs.
The duo reported that “around 15 people … including junior level employees in production and development” were laid off.
(L-R): Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, and Teyonah Parris as Captain Monica Rambeau in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo by Laura Radford. © 2023 MARVEL.
More recently, Kevin Feige has admitted that characters introduced in Phase 4 were unlikely to show up in the company’s upcoming Avengers films. He told Gizmodo, “I rarely speak in absolutes like that, right? The notion of never ever seeing somebody again, we’ve got Tim Blake Nelson in a movie coming up next year, right? So I never talk in absolutes like that.”
However, he then admitted, “But the truth is, you know, we’re going to tell a story in these Avengers movies, and there won’t be room for 100,000 characters in it. So choices will have to be made, that’s for sure. But that doesn’t mean you won’t ever see anybody ever again.”
Xochitl Gomez as America Chavez in Marvel Studios’ DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS. Photo by Jay Maidment. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.
He also told Inverse that it was unlikely Eternals would get a sequel, “There are no immediate plans for Eternals 2.”
However, he did note that Marvel does plan to reference the events that took place in the film moving forward, “There are, and I think you’ve seen maybe in a trailer we’ve released recently, an acknowledgment of some of those events. Certain giant things came out of the ocean.”
(L-R): Sprite (Lia McHugh), Druig (Barry Keoghan), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), Karun (Harish Patel), Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Ikaris (Richard Madden) in Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
As far as employees who do not know comics being excised from the company, it’s unclear how accurate this claim is given Jac Schaeffer is the showrunner of the upcoming Agatha All Along series and she’s notorious for being clueless about Marvel’s source material.
Schaeffer infamously told Inverse in 2019, “I’m not interested in adhering to comic canon that is discriminatory in any way or that violates my values system.”
Jac Schaeffer via American Film Institute YouTube
In the same interview she admitted she wanted to use the Marvel Cinematic Universe to “make, big positive statements.”
She said, “I wasn’t a huge superhero movie fan before starting to work [at Marvel], but now that I’m doing it, there’s just so much opportunity to make big, positive statements.”
“Especially something like Captain Marvel and Black Widow, to have these female-centered stories — I just can’t not be involved in that,” Schaeffer added.
Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in Marvel Studios’ WANDAVISION exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
Schaeffer also indicated she hired the writers room for WandaVision based on gender quotas informing Inverse that the makeup of the room was “incredibly intentional, and it was very much supported by Marvel.”
The writers room featured eight staff writers with four of them being women.
To this point she also stated, “I choose to be a part of projects that are about positive representation. We need to see women, we need to see people of color, we need to see nuanced experiences, and we need to see different perspectives on screen.”
Schaeffer continued, “I choose to work with people who are interested in changing perspectives for the better, and putting a world on screen that is something we can aspire to and have conversations about, and moving in a direction that will create a world I hope will be better for my children.”
Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Television. © 2024 MARVEL.
Schaeffer also noted she wanted to tone down the violence in superhero films. She said, “I would like to see alternatives to violence in superhero movies.”
“Maybe I would qualify that by saying, alternatives to glamorizing guns and weaponry,” she admitted. “That’s one of the reasons that I love Captain Marvel — it’s all about inner power. And the destruction is not at the expense of human life.”
The showrunner also indicated she wanted to feature more morally “gray” characters as well, “My kids are really obsessed with ‘good guys vs. bad guy. Sometimes I explain [to them], ‘Every good guy can be a bad guy’ and vice versa. It’s complicated, but that’s sort of lost on them. That’s one thing that I think can be explored more in the future — I would hope that there are ever-increasing moves toward the gray and toward complexity.”
Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) in Marvel Television’s AGATHA ALL ALONG, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Television. © 2024 MARVEL.
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On top of Schaeffer, Nate Moore is still at the company as well. Moore is the Vice President of Development and Production at Marvel Studios. Feige credited Nate Moore pushing Eternals to the top of the company’s production list because of its focus on identity politics.
Feige told Variety, “Well, the notion of switching up the genders, sexualities and ethnicities of the characters from the comics, was baked in initially — that was part of what Nate Moore was really advocating for in moving “Eternals” to the top of the list for us to start working on. What exactly the makeup was between when Nate put together his internal discussion document, which is how we always start on all of our projects, and what she came in and did, I don’t recall exactly.”
(L-R): Karun (Harish Patel), Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Sprite (Lia McHugh), Sersi (Gemma Chan), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Thena (Angelina Jolie), Gilgamesh (Don Lee) in Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
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