Marvel’s Creative Committee comes crumbling down

The shake-ups continue over at Marvel Studios. Not too long after a power shift that now has the superhero juggernaut reporting directly to Disney and not Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter comes word that the Marvel Creative Committee is also experiencing its own share of changes… and by changes, I mean it is totally gone.

The group made up of Joe Quesada (former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and the current Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Enterprises), Brian Michael Bendis (Marvel Comics writer), Dan Buckley (Marvel Comics publisher), Alan Fine (Perlmutter's longtime friend who came into Marvel after their shared Toy Biz days), among others, were responsible for trying to help shape Marvel's properties as they made their way to the big screen. They offered up ideas and notes and thoughts on the best way to execute these movies.

Now while you could easily look at this group of creative individuals and say this brain trust could only be an asset, that's where you'd be wrong. Having too many cooks in the kitchen can often be problematic, and that seems to have been the case with this Creative Committee. Often their ideas provided more obstacles to overcome, "giving notes that are pedestrian, motivated by 'save the cat' story logic and sometimes a drag on creativity."

In addition, they never operated in the most timely fashion, making development a slow and arduous process, not to mention the fact that there was numerous minds that needed pleasing every step of the way. Want someone to blame for Edgar Wright walking away from ANT-MAN all this time later? Look no further than the Creative Committee and their contributions to how they felt that film should be, not how Wright envisioned it.

All that is in the past now though, and that could mean more creative freedom for filmmakers walking into the Marvel Cinematic Universe system as well as for Kevin Feige and his team, who now can stand on their own in making decisions instead of having to answer to this restrictive board. You won't see this really take effect for a few movies, as CIVIL WAR is already well into taking shape and DOCTOR STRANGE is deep into pre-production. But moving ahead after that, the reins may not be so tight as they once were as we navigate our way through Phase Three and beyond.