Given how incredibly successful the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become, it's easy to forget what a risk they were taking with their very first film. Crafting a shared universe which would unite all their heroes in movies which Marvel would make themselves was quite the absurd idea at the time, and although it obviously worked quite well for the studio, it could just as easily have gone the other way. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige spoke with Entertainment Weekly about a variety of Marvel topics, including if they had a backup plan if IRON MAN or any other of those initial Marvel movies had failed.
"As we develop stories and develop scripts, you have to deal with the realities of deal making, and the realities of schedules, and the realities of budgets," Feige said. "We always have A, and B, and C plans. That doesn’t mean the B or C plan wouldn’t have worked. It just meant it would have been different." That said, the Marvel honcho said that they were basically "all-in" by the time THE AVENGERS rolled around, and had the films leading up to the team-up movie flopped, Feige said that there was little they could have done, but added that, "the marketing probably would have been different [for Avengers] and maybe the way the film was cut together or recut with additional scenes would have been different, but it was all-in on that one." Each of the Avengers had successes with their own standalone movies, and Marvel could have very easily continued only making sequels to those movies, but Kevin Feige told EW that they specifically didn't want to do that as "there's an embarrassment of riches in the comic books," such as BLACK PANTHER, which has become Marvel's latest runaway success. A sequel to BLACK PANTHER is obviously in the works, and Feige teased that they already have a pretty good idea of where they want to go with it.
Nothing specific to reveal, other than to say we absolutely will do that. One of the favorite pastimes at Marvel Studios is sitting around on a Part One and talking and dreaming about what we would do in a Part Two. There have been plenty of those conversations as we were putting together the first Black Panther. We have ideas and a pretty solid direction on where we want to head with the second one.
Marvel Studios may find themselves adding even more characters to their toy box should Disney's deal to acquire 20th Century Fox go through, but Kevin Feige said that they haven't begun making any plans for those newly acquired characters just yet. "It’s all about getting Infinity War finished and out, starting Captain Marvel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Untitled Avengers, the next Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3," Feige said. "These are the ones that are keeping us busy. When and how that deal with Fox finishes and comes together and we’re told, “Hey, now you can start working on it. Now you can start thinking about it,” is when we’ll actually start thinking about it. I will say just the notion of having what, frankly, most other companies with [intellectual property] have all along, which is access to all of their characters, that would be fun." It will still be some time before the deal goes through, but it's hard not to be curious about what Marvel could do with the X-MEN and FANTASTIC FOUR back under their roof.
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR will hit theaters on April 27, 2018.