Producer and President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige
Kevin Feige is not only the producer of the new Captain America: The Winter Soldier but also the president of Marvel Studios. How amazing is it that I got to sit down with the president of Marvel Studios for an interview? Amazing! I have to admit, I’ve never kept up with Marvel, the Avengers… nothing. After being able to pre-screen Captain America: The Winter Soldier I am completely obsessed with all of it. Yes, the movie was that good!
Kevin Feiger is a producer most notably known for Spider Man (2004, 2007, 2012) and X-Men (2000, 2003, 2006) trilogies, The Avengers (2012), Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 3 (2013). Of course, he is also known for the amazing Captain America and Thor films. In 2009 Kevin Feige and CEO of Marvel Studios, Avi Arad, won the AFI Awards for movie of the year for Iron Man (2008). His movies have been nominated and won an extensive list of awards.
Of course, we know Guardians of the Galaxy comes out in theatres August 1st and Feige said they are currently in the cutting room working on it. They just recently released the teaser trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy and of course, it looks amazing. They are also starting on filming Avengers Age of Ultron which will be their next movie up in May of 2015. In a few weeks they will start filming Ant-Man with Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd which comes out in July of 2015. They are in talks for movies coming out in 2016/2017 but Feige let us know it’s too early to talk about those. I mean when does this man sleep?
Here’s the awesome interview me and some other bloggers were able to have with Feige.
Q: Are there any challanges incorporating the Comics onto the Big Screen?
Kevin Feige:
That was one of the reasons to do it. It has never been done before which is, you don’t get a chance very often to do something in this business that’s never been done before, 100 years of Cinema. It’s been shared Universe from its inception essentially in the Comics. And when it was sort of Character by Characters, Studio by Studio, that was impossible but when we became our own Studio and had, got the financing to do that, the first idea was make a great Iron Man movie. The second idea was wait a minute, we can begin to tie these together.
The biggest challenge is making it that continuity and interconnectivity to broaden the Universe, broaden the — the Audience as opposed to make it feel like a Club, making it fold in on itself and say Oh you need to know everything that’s going to — to see any of these Movies. We work very hard to make each of the Movies feel like a stand-alone Movie, but at the same time connect in to — to everything else. I wouldn’t say that’s the biggest challenge but that’s — that’s been our Mission Statement and that’s what we try to stick to.
Q: Is it intentional that you always incorporate older Superheroes?
Kevin Feige:
We just believe that’s the best way to bring the Villains into it. It’s more personal in this Movie than in any other Movie because of who the Winter Soldier but that’s just how Comics work, you know? It’s a wonderful way to link a Hero to Villain. And that’s what we’ve done.
Q: Where you worried about the controversy around bringing back The Winter Soldier?
Kevin Feige:
You know, the Comic Fans always knew sort of two things how peak characters die and come back to life in Comics, in like in Soap Operas, like in any sort of Fiction all the time. But there are two Characters in the Marvel Universe that are never gonna come back to life, Uncle Ben and Bucky Barnes. About 10 years ago or 12 years ago, a Comic Book writer, Ed Brubaker went to publishing. I didn’t have anything to do with it but he went to publishing and said, I have an idea to bring Bucky Barnes back. I’m sure they’re like what are you talking about? You can’t do that. They pitched the idea and it was great. It was The Winter Soldier idea and it was done so well and you’re right, I think fans went no, you can’t– Oh that’s great, we love that. We just took the successful blueprint that they had already done and brought it into this movie.
Q: Is there any hope to get other Characters with other Studios?
Kevin Feige:
No, they’re busy making, SONY’s busy working on Spiderman movies, Spiderman II is coming out very soon. Fox is working very hard on X-Men and they’ve got an X-Men movie coming out very soon, and we clearly spending a lot of time doing our two movies, two movies a year. I don’t want to say never say never necessarily but I don’t know that that would happen any time soon, and we’re certainly not planning for it.
Q: Can you tell us about the casting process?
Kevin Feige:
Sometimes it’s auditioning Actors. Frankly, with Anthony Mackie, that’s a case where we knew who we wanted. That’s who the Russos wanted. We thought he’d be great and he agreed, and then he was great, which was nice. Mr. Redford’s Agent called saying do you have anything that might be good for him and we went Holy Mackerel, we sure do. We’re working Three Days of the Condoresque, uh, Captain America. And we made some adjustments, to that Character to increase his stature and to make it worthy of Robert Redford playing it.
Often times, it’s just meeting with people and finding people who are interested. Michael Douglas, on Ant-Man and Paul Rudd, both were sort of first choices in terms of the Characters they’re playing for us. When somebody like Robert Redford or Anthony Mackie or any of our Actors sign up, that’s a big responsibility for us, the Film Makers. We have to bring our best to the script, production and the final product because they’re going to bring their best to the movie.
Here’s a great YouTube interview with Kevin Feige with Screen Rant. Check it out below!
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier releases in theaters everywhere on April 4th!