Kevin Feige has spent the last 13 years turning Marvel Studios into one of the most powerful names in entertainment. There isn’t a franchise out there that matches the Marvel Cinematic Universe in popularity or box office success. The MCU could have gone out on top, concluding the story with the biggest theatrical earner of all time, but Feige and his team are showing no signs of slowing down. The producer and Marvel Studios head is still every bit as excited about the franchise’s future as he was back in 2008.
The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a new book from Tara Bennett and Paul Terry that details the behind-the-scenes creation of the MCU. In the book, Feige talks about his experience building the Marvel film franchise and what keeps him going more than a decade into the project, saying that he’s as “excited now as [he] was on day one.”
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For Feige, it’s a all a “testament to the characters, and to the audience.” The producer is energized by the reaction of the fans, mainly because he’s such a Marvel fan himself. The book even notes that, at the end of the day, “Feige is a fan first.”
Like the rest of us, Feige shows that fandom by buying merchandise and collectibles from his favorite properties. He explains in the book that seeing people purchase merch from movies shows just how much they love it, because it’s the best way they can be a part of the experience.
“I love buying merchandise, [but] the only reason you would want to do that is if the show or the movie was so powerful and you connected with it so much that you wanted to expand the experience… and every time we’ve followed our instincts, the audience has come with us,” Feige said. “Also, it’s a testament to the eighty years of publishing, and to the way the characters have grown and evolved that Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby] and Steve [Ditko] and everybody created and even conceived in a way to allow them to grow, change, and evolve.”
There is no end in sight for the MCU right now, with numerous movies and TV shows in development or production. Eternals arrives in theaters on November 5th, followed by the Hawkeye TV series on Disney+, which premieres on November 24th.
