Marvel Studios
 | |
| Formerly | Marvel Films |
|---|---|
| Company type | Subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment |
| Industry | Television |
| Genre | Superhero |
| Founded | December 7, 1993 |
Key people | Kevin Feige |
| Products | [[List of movies based on Marvel Comics publications |Movies]] and television series based on Marvel Comics |
| Brands | Marvel Cinematic Universe |
| Parent | Marvel Entertainment Disney |
| Divisions | Marvel Studios Animation Marvel Music Marvel Television (since 2019) |
| Website | marvel |
Marvel Studios, LLC is an American film and television studio and a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios. The company was founded as Marvel Films by Marvel Entertainment Group. The division was formerly headed by Avi Arad from May 13, 1993, as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, until October 1998, when he took on other duties within the company such as executive producer for the studios’ film output. Marvel Studios produces the Marvel Cinematic Universe films and series, based on characters that appear in Marvel Comics publications.
History[change | change source]
Partnering with Lionsgate Entertainment in 2004, Marvel plans to enter the direct-to-DVD market with eight animated films with Lionsgate handling distribution.
Marvel entered into a non-recourse financing structure with Merrill Lynch Commercial Finance Corp. that is collateralized by certain movie rights to a total of ten characters from Marvel's vast vault. Marvel gets $525 million to make a maximum of 10 movies based on the company's properties over eight years, according to the parameters of the deal with Paramount in September 2004. Those properties were: Ant-Man, the Avengers, Black Panther, Captain America, Cloak & Dagger, Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, Nick Fury, Power Pack, and Shang-Chi.
In 2005, Michael Helfant joined the studio as President and Chief Operating Officer. In November 2005, Marvel gained the film rights to Iron Man from New Line Cinema. In 2006, Marvel revealed that it had regained the film rights to The Incredible Hulk. In April 2006, Paramount Pictures acquired the rights to Thor from Sony Pictures Studios. That year the film was announced to be a Marvel Studios production. Lionsgate Entertainment subsequently dropped the Black Widow motion picture project it had since 2004, giving the rights back to Marvel.
In March 2007, David Maisel was named Chairman and Kevin Feige was named President of Production as Iron Man began filming. In 2008, Marvel Studios signed a lease with Raleigh Studios to host its headquarters and production offices and film the next four movies on the studios' slate, including Iron Man 2 and Thor, at their Manhattan Beach facilities.
In 2009, Marvel attempted to hire a team of writers to help come up with creative ways to launch its lesser-known properties, such as Black Panther, Cable, Iron Fist, Nighthawk, and Vision.
On December 31, 2009, The Walt Disney Company purchased Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. Both Marvel and Disney have stated that the merger would not affect any preexisting deals with other film studios for the time being, although Disney said they would consider distributing future Marvel projects with their own studios once the current deals expired. On October 18, 2010, Disney bought the distribution rights for The Avengers and Iron Man 3 from Paramount Pictures.
In June 2010, Marvel set up a television division headed up by Jeph Loeb as Executive Vice President.
Beginning with Thor: The Dark World, the Marvel Studios logo was given a makeover and its own fanfare by composer Brian Tyler. According to Feige, this was to symbolize Marvel as its own entity within The Walt Disney Company since Thor: The Dark World would be the first movie to only feature the studio's logo without any other.
On February 9, 2015, Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios announced a deal that would introduce Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, allowing Spider-Man characters to appear in Marvel Studios films, as well as Marvel Studios characters in Sony Pictures films. Under this deal, Sony would co-produce the new Spider-Man series with Marvel Studios, while Sony would still finance, own, distribute, and have final creative control over the projects. This set Spider-Man to show up in one Marvel Studios film (Captain America: Civil War) before his MCU solo-film debut in Spider-Man: Homecoming. This caused the release dates of Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther and Captain Marvel to be pushed back.
In August 2015, after the release of Ant-Man, Disney and Marvel underwent a reorganization, with Feige no longer reporting to Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac Perlmutter, but to Walt Disney Studios CEO Alan F. Horn.
Beginning with Doctor Strange, Marvel Studios redesigned its logo a second time, this time with fanfare by Michael Giacchino. Spider-Man: Homecoming featured a re-imagined fanfare of the classic Spider-Man theme by Giacchino.
In September 2018, Marvel Studios announced the development of multiple limited series for Disney+, including Loki and WandaVision. In October 2018, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was announced for the service, while What If...? was announced in March 2019, Hawkeye was announced in April 2019 and Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law were announced in August 2019. In December 2020, four more series and a special were announced at Disney Investor Day: Secret Invasion, Ironheart, Armor Wars, I Am Groot and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. In November 2021, four more series were announced at Disney+ Day: Echo, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, Spider-Man: Freshman Year, and Marvel Zombies. On June 16, 2022, Wonder Man was announced for the streaming service.
It was also announced that Marvel Studios will be working on the revival of X-Men: The Animated Series, titled X-Men '97, which will be Marvel Studios' first non-MCU series.
On July 23, 2022, it was announced at San Diego Comic-Con, that Daredevil: Born Again, Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars were in development.
