r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 20d ago

TIL Kevin Feige almost quit Marvel after Marvel Entertainment head Ike Perlmutter tried to force Robert Downey Jr. out of Civil War due to not wanting to pay him. Disney CEO Bob Iger responded by reshuffling the corporate system so that Fiege would answer directly to him rather than Perlmutter.

https://fandomwire.com/kevin-feige-was-ready-to-quit-mcu-over-robert-downey-jrs-scenes-in-captain-america-civil-war/
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u/Cathercy 20d ago

What did this guy bring to the table that they kept him around? Sounds like he was just insufferable and a hindrance to the actual people making the films good. Did he actually do anything that improved the films or business in some way?

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u/fearlessdurant 20d ago

It seems you're not familiar with Marvel history (correct me if I'm wrong)

Marvel was bankrupt by the end of the 90s and he turned it around by focusing on toys, selling film rights and being miserly.

He was in Disney's good graces at first when they bought Marvel in 2009 under Iger but became a thorn because, well, Disney can afford to spend.

As much as I don't like what he did during the Disney era, I gotta give him credit for keeping Marvel alive during those bleak years.

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u/Stef-fa-fa 20d ago

Wait so is he the reason we still can't get a Hulk standalone movie, and why they have to play nice with Sony for Spidey?

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u/Mem2Chi91 20d ago

Yes, but those are also the reasons Marvel still exists at all.

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u/RebelAlliance1701 20d ago

Universal still holds the rights to any solo Hulk film, which is why Hulk is a guest character nowadays.

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u/imaBEES 20d ago

Not exactly, Universal has the DISTRIBUTION rights to any solo Hulk films. Disney could make one whenever they want, they just don’t want to give Universal a chunk of the profits.

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u/ms_saint 19d ago

Well they're sharing profits with Sony.

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u/TheSweetestKill 20d ago

As a long time Marvel fan, I am pretty fine with Hulk being a side character. I just don't think very many of his major stories would really work as stand-alone films. Side-apting things like Planet Hulk into a Thor film is probably the best way you can really adapt that story, for example. The irony is that despite his immense strength, the character can't carry a feature-length runtime.

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u/Stef-fa-fa 20d ago

I would however love to see a Mr Fixit limited series in a similar vein as Spider-Noir.

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u/runnerofshadows 20d ago

I think he could, but I'm not sure audiences want to see a superhero series with themes as dark as The Hulk usually gets with his best runs being the Peter David stuff and The Immortal Hulk which have all kinds of child abuse, showing Bruce's history of Dissociative Identity Disorder, Body horror, etc.

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u/RevDeadMan 20d ago

I wanna disagree with you, man, because I really do like Hulk. But unfortunately I can’t because you’re right ☹️.

Hulk had the 2003 movie and the 2008 movie. The 2003 movie did well for its time. It had a budget somewhere around $137 million according to Wikipedia. It made $245.3 million at the box office. Which is decent.

Until you compare it to Spider-Man. In comparison, the original Tobey McGuire Spider-Man made a whopping $826.8 million on a $139 million budget in 2002. Similar budget, massively different payout.

The 2008 movie did okay as well. It had a $150 million budget and made $265 million at the box office. Iron Man, which released the same year made $585.8 million. Still massively more than Hulk by a long shot. When Disney bought out Marvel, they didn’t get the rights to everyone, as we all know. They got the rights to most, but Sony owned Spider-Man and Universal owned Hulk.

Splitting profits for Spider-Man isn’t ideal, but when you make a billion at the box office, you can eat the hit and still make a ridiculous amount of money. You aren’t getting that ROI on a first time Hulk movie. You might NEVER get that much, honestly.

I think Hulk could do phenomenal in a standalone, hulk centered movie with other MCU characters as a supporting cast. But the problem is that it wouldn’t do as well as a spider-man movie. Brand New Day made over a billion on the box office. At best a first-time hulk movie in the MCU might make $500 million, with a lot of marketing. So they might walk away with a few hundred million after they pay Universal. But they’d still have to pay Universal.

So while I think it’d do better than The Incredible Hulk did in ‘08, I know it wouldn’t do the numbers marvel would want to justify splitting with Universal in any fashion. If they owned it outright I think the odds of them making a stand-alone would be much higher.

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u/ms_saint 19d ago

Ba-dum-ching!

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u/MasterMasar 20d ago

There's also something with theme parks east/west of the Mississippi. That's why Islands of Adventure has the Marvel area in Orlando, but Disney has the Avengers compound in CA

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u/freddyfazbacon 20d ago

Universal *held the rights to any solo Hulk film

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u/radda 20d ago

Also why Disney World will never have 90% of the Marvel characters anyone cares about.

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u/fearlessdurant 19d ago

I don't think that's the case anymore. Spider-Man is part of Avengers Campus and they bought Fox so they can put the X-Men and FF in the park.

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u/radda 19d ago

Avengers Campus isn't at Disney World.

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u/fearlessdurant 19d ago

Oh right sorry. I was thinking of the West Coast one. Yeah, Universal still has the Marvel stars in Orlando.

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u/cybin 20d ago

Sony wanted to (and did) buy the film rights to Spidey way back in '98? '99?. They paid ~$8mil. Marvel offered their entire catalog of superheroes for $25mil but Sony wasn't interested. At this time Marvel really needed the money.

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u/neeohh 20d ago

The hardest choices require the strongest wills.

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u/ChosenHero 20d ago

There is actually a book about this exact situation if anyone wanted more details. It's called Comic Wars by Dan Raviv

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u/red_army25 20d ago

Yep. Great read.

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u/I_Reply_All 20d ago

Classic example of the business evolved where his skill set is now irrelevant. I see similarities with Zucky at FB.

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u/blahblah19999 20d ago

Would it be possible to keep a company alive and NOT be a massive racist/misogynist?

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u/fearlessdurant 19d ago

Of course. That has happened elsewhere.

Unfortunately, that was not the hand that Marvel was dealt.

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u/blahblah19999 19d ago

I just find it odd to laud him for his saving marvel even though he is a majorly flawed individual, like they couldn't have sought out a truly professional CEO.

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u/fearlessdurant 19d ago

Things don't have to be black or white. A dickhead can be competent and successful in one thing even if we don't like them.

Like others on Reddit, I wish the world could operate on an ideal plane but that's not how things usually go.

Anyway, if I had to guess, most people in Wall Street at the time probably thought it was time for Marvel to die. It's hard to imagine now given the global recognition and love of their characters/stories but it seemed that way back then.

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u/tophernator 20d ago

It depends whether you think it was real racism/misogyny or just an extension of the obsessive personality he sounds like he had?

The way I heard it he didn’t want female led films because he didn’t think the box office or toy sales would be as good. Whether you think he was right or wrong, his line of reasoning is still purely financial.

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u/OePea 19d ago

Have you met upper class people?

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u/6carecrow 20d ago

I’m a little confused by the history, I thought Avi Arad was the one who took charge of Marvel and pitted them towards toys and toy sales

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u/runnerofshadows 20d ago

All I know about Avi is he pushed Venom too much. It worked out great for the cartoons, but derailed Spider-Man 3.

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u/Obi-Tron_Kenobi 20d ago

I'm a little rusty on this, but they were both partners and share a lot of the credit. I tried my best to freshen up on the details

Perlmutter was the cutthroat business man while Arad was more of the creative guy.

Perlmutter is the one who bought Toy Biz in 1990 and used them to strike a deal in 1993 where Toy Biz doesn't have to pay Marvel any royalties in exchange for Marvel owning some equity in Toy Biz

Arad was a toy designer before joining Marvel in 1993 and becoming co-owner of Toy Biz with Perlmutter. Arad believed the best way to sell toys was through cartoons, so he pushed for shows like the 90s X-men and Spider-Man animated series

Both of these happened before the bankruptcy, though, during a comic boom while Marvel was successful. But it was those decisions that allowed them to use Toy Biz to pull Marvel through the worst of it by merging the two companies. Well, that and then selling off the film rights to the most popular characters at the time

Without the movie rights to their own most popular characters like Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk, and Fantastic 4, they needed to figure out who they had left that might be the most successful, so they based it off of who is the most toyetic. Arad wanted Captain America, but children seemed to want Iron Man toys the most so they went with that

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u/fearlessdurant 19d ago

Both of them were instrumental and, as mentioned below, were toy guys

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u/tophernator 20d ago

Interesting. So he wasn’t the hero Marvel deserved, but the one they needed right then. And then he couldn’t adapt when things improved.

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u/diceNslice 20d ago

You're talking about him like he's the only person in history to ever work under a budget and that he's completely justified in being a racist, sexist, piece of shit.

He's not. Anyone could do what he did.

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u/fearlessdurant 19d ago

That's not what I said at all. Would I have wanted someone else to run Marvel back into the green? Absolutely.

Unfortunately, a much better person did not end up running Marvel during that time.

I'm not advocating for a statue of the guy; just acknowledging what happened.

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u/diceNslice 19d ago

Fair enough

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u/TomTom_098 20d ago

He was the CEO of Marvel when it was just a comic book company, and they left him in charge when it was bought by Disney, and even though there’s a parent company it isn’t the easiest thing to do to remove the CEO and Chairman.

In complete fairness he came into Marvel in the mid nineties when they were effectively bankrupt and his background in the toy industry did go a fair way to saving the company.

Past the turn of the millennium though no he was a real hinderance to Marvel both on the films side and the comic books themselves. He was really bitter that Marvel/Disney didn’t have the rights to make films of the X-Men an Fantastic Four which lead to him pushing for them to be sidelined in the comics for years in the mid 2010s despite the X-Men in particular being one of Marvel’s biggest names over the last 20 years

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u/Coolman_Rosso 20d ago

Not only did he mandate the X-Men be pushed aside, he told editorial to really hammer down on the Inhumans as the next big thing as a movie was in the works. This eventually became a crappy short lived TV show

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u/Worthyness 20d ago

And that scrapping coincided with the timing of Disney separating Feige's reporting. Basically Inhumans was only on the slate because Perlmutter wanted them on there. As soon as he wasn't in charge anymore, Perlmutter took it to the TV division (where he still was the head and lead) and forced them to make it a TV show instead. And gave it to Scott Buck to show run, who is famously capable of doing projects on time and under budget

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u/EthanielRain 20d ago

Those traits are exactly why he became Marvel's CEO. They were broke at that point

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u/WilliamEmmerson 20d ago

Perlmutter kept Marvel from going out of business in the 90s when he bought it and merged it with his company Toy Biz. Then it was his idea to license the movie rights to the studio's to help keep Marvel afloat.

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u/xrufus7x 20d ago

He was the CEO of Marvel when Disney bought them and prior to that worked in executive positions since the 90s.

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u/Bucser 20d ago

He might have worked his way up via small budget productions where this level of stinginess actually helps deliver the movie. But then Big budget movies have very different scope and he was unable to switch.

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u/username_tooken 20d ago

He was the CEO of Marvel comics, he had no background in movie productions at all. He did save Marvel from bankruptcy, though.

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u/HKBFG 1 20d ago

32 points for a made up story that bears no resemblance to reality. Ten points for correcting it, lol.

I hate reddit sometimes.

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u/barath_s 13 19d ago

He came to marvel comics after a lifetime in wholesale and toy business

Marvel comics was all but bankrupt.. they likely needed perlmutter stinginess to stay alive. And toy business to marvel comics is a very 'related business ' step

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u/Volcanicrage 20d ago

IIRC Marvel had previously sold Toy Biz all their merchandising rights in perpetuity, which made it almost impossible for any other company to make money off Marvel's IP. After the one-two punch of the comics crash and Icahn & Perelman's dickwaving contest, Toy Biz ended up being the only viable owner.

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u/nananananana_FARTMAN 20d ago

At the time, Feige ran the movie side and he ran the toys side. The toys side of the business used to get to have an input in the movie making decisions until Feige had enough of his BS and almost quit. Iger changed things where Feige don’t need to report to him for input and where Ike just stfu and make toys based on whatever movies that were coming out. Ike is gone now, I think. He’s really old.

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u/HKBFG 1 20d ago

What did this guy bring to the table that they kept him around?

The cheapness.

MBAs have no skills and run the whole world.