Marvel Studios may not have another movie coming out until next May, but things are very busy behind the scenes right now. This started when it was officially announced that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige would no longer be reporting to Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, and instead will be in direct contact with Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn. What's interesting, though, is that this has possibly led to another major shift - specifically the disbandment of the group known as the Creative Committee at Marvel.
This very interesting story comes to us from Birth.Movies.Death., which has heard from unnamed sources that the Creative Committee is all but completely done in the movie department at Marvel Studios (they may continue to have roles to play in the television side of things). This group includes a handful of notable names including former toy executive Alan Fine, comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis, Marvel Comics publisher Dan Buckley, and Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada. With this team out of the way, the big creative decisions for the future of the Marvel Studios films will now be left to the team of Kevin Feige, and fellow producers Louis D'Esposito and Victoria Alonso.
Exactly how we can expect these changes to be reflected in future movies is obviously unclear at this point - but Birth.Movies.Death. definitely suggests that this is a positive move. The site lists a number of problems that the Creative Committee presented for various productions, including nit-picky notes and an unwillingness to think beyond basic script structure. Only making matters worse is that all of the people in the group are busy individuals, so their suggestions would come late and actually slow projects down.
Even going beyond the work of the Creative Committee, the shake-up at Marvel Studios may wind up changing other elements of the company as well. For example, the site says that Ike Perlmutter is the one who has always stood against making toys for female fans, and with him moved aside there will be more opportunities for Black Widow action figures.
The report says that we may not see these behind-the-scenes changes reflected within the next year and a half, as both Captain America: Civil War and Doctor Strange are already too far along in development - but there are plenty of other projects in the works that may be built in a very different fashion than what we've come to expect. So while Marvel has always talked about developing and changing the way comic book movies are made, we may wind up seeing something spectacular arise from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the new Spider-Man, Thor: Ragnarok, The Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Inhumans.
