Marvel Producer Explains How MCU Parliament Decides Which Movies Are Made

Marvel Studios is actively running the largest film franchise in Hollywood and now, the Kevin Feige-led outfit essentially has its own streaming platform to use in Disney+. With no signs of the franchise stopping anytime soon, the immediate future looks as bright as ever for the production house. In 2022 alone, Marvel has at least eight different projects set for release between film and television. With such a high content output, some have wondered who exactly decides what heroes and teams the live-action superhero universe will introduce.

As it turns out, it’s entirely up to the respective members of the Marvel Studios Parliament and their own personal wants. Speaking with Murphy’s Multiverse, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings producer Jonathan Schwartz says they go around the room of long-time Marvel producers and reveal the characters that interest them the most and see how they can fit them all in on the larger Marvel Studios picture.

“It’s not really a genre thing or a speciality thing. We all sort of go off together and talk about who wants to do what and what’s coming up, and we all kind of end up working on stuff we’re excited about,” Schwartz told Murphy’s Multiverse in support of Shang-Chi. “I just like martial arts movies and Shang-Chi felt like the right character to bring a martial arts movie to life, and so that was that I put my hand up and said I wanted to do Shang-Chi. That’s more or less the way it tends to happen, there’s a character we all want to do, or there’s a character one of us one of us wants to do, and we just talk about it and divide it up and things generally work out where people get to work on things they’re excited about.”

The Parliament is made up of Schwartz, Nate Moore, Trinh Tran, Brad Winderbaum, Eric Carroll, and Stephen Broussard. Schwartz added the camaraderie between the members of the group allows for a relatively smooth decision-making process.

“There definitely is a camaraderie for a lot of us who have been around for a long time just throwing ideas back and forth […] It’s great when you have people who have been through the process, and who you trust, and whose creative taste you trust, and everyone’s taste is different, and that’s part of what’s really useful about it. Not all of us see movies the same way, so we’re all able to bring something a little bit different,” the producer concluded.

Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and produced by Kevin Feige and Jonathan Schwartz, with Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, and Charles Newirth serving as executive producers. David Callaham & Destin Daniel Cretton & Andrew Lanham wrote the screenplay for the film, which is now in theaters.

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