When Kevin Feige last took the stage at San Diego Comic-Con in 2022, the thousands of attendees at Hall H greeted the studio executive — currently the chief creative officer of Marvel and president of Marvel Studios — with the same eruption of deafening cheers they’ve used to welcome Tony Stark or Steve Rogers. After the roar of the crowd finally died down, one fan even repurposed an indelible line from 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” to scream at Feige, “We love you 3,000!”
In the history of the film business, you can count on one hand the number of studio executives who have elicited this kind of rock star adulation — and it’s easy to understand why fans feel the way they do. Starting with 2008’s “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk,” Feige’s vision to bring the interconnected storytelling of Marvel comics into live-action filmmaking with the Marvel Cinematic Universe has employed dozens of directors and writers, hundreds of actors and thousands of artisans; the films have grossed more than $29 billion worldwide.
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And now, on the eve of the premiere of “Deadpool & Wolverine” — the 49th title within the MCU across film and TV — Feige is receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame July 25.
It’s an accomplishment that the 51-year-old Feige never imagined he’d achieve when he was a kid from New Jersey visiting Hollywood on a family vacation. “You don’t expect to get a star on the Walk of Fame when you’re a behind-the-scenes person,” he says. “That’s all my dream ever was — just to be a name in the credits of a movie, to have a spot in this industry, in this town that I love unabashedly, with no cynicism at all. The notion that there’ll be my name on that street for forevermore is extremely, extremely meaningful to me.”
Feige talked to PvNew about how he first envisioned his professional life in Hollywood, what he most enjoys in his job and whether he sees himself running Marvel for the rest of his career.
Do you remember when you first realized you wanted to make movies?
Yes, I was very young, probably 10 years old. In the lead up to “Return of the Jedi,” George Lucas was on the cover of Time magazine. That’s when I realized that actual human beings made these things.
You’ve talked about the journal that you kept as a kid of the movies you saw. Do you still have it?
I wouldn’t call it a journal. I’d call it a couple of loose sheets of lined paper that I turned into a chart with the date, the movie and the sound system. That was my summer job in my preteen years, charting what movies I went to see and how many times. I think three times was the max until “Back to the Future Part II,” which I saw seven times in a theater. Or “Phantom Menace,” which I saw 13 times — but never mind that. I think I still have the summer of ’89, which is a pretty impressive summer.
When you started to want to make movies, what did you imagine was the pinnacle of success?
Being in Los Angeles and driving onto a movie lot every day doing anything at all. [From] trimming the hedges on a movie lot to being George Lucas and creating universes, I would have been happy anywhere in between.
It does sound like the top of the pyramid for you was — to perhaps invent a word— that Lucasian pinnacle of creating universes?
I like that, “Lucasian.” Yes. I always liked the world-building and being able to return to characters. I was always excited for sequels. I was never cynical or rolling my eyes the way people still do today for some reason, even though there’ve been sequels since the ’30s and they’re an absolute pillar of the industry. To me, those were always what I enjoyed most, the notion that something I loved was returning and it would expand on what I loved about it.
When did you first learn about the Hollywood Walk of Fame?
I thought maybe it was a repeat of “I Love Lucy,” when she came to Hollywood. I’m sure it was on television, but also, I made one or two trips from New Jersey to Los Angeles when I was a kid, and we did go to Hollywood. I very much remember walking down the Walk of Fame and seeing names I recognize, but just as importantly — this is where my star comes in — seeing names you don’t know who the heck these people are or what they did to deserve a star. I wanted to learn about them, which is obviously much easier today than it was pre-internet. Sometimes, they were actors, but many times they were behind-the-scenes people, which is what I was always very interested in.
So, what does it mean to have one?
It means a lot. It means that literally you’re going into the foundation of Hollywood history. I really liked the idea that these are names that — as the projects people make come and go in relevance or in memory — you can go to a place in Hollywood and still see the people that made this town what it is.
As you mentioned, there is a very small list of producers who have become household names. When did you begin to realize that you were becoming one of them?
I’m not sure I realize that now. But I will tell you that I have an oddly pronounced last name that my entire life — in restaurants, in school, roll calls— was always mispronounced. I do remember, a number of years ago, strangers coming up to me and pronouncing it correctly, and thinking, “That’s weird! How do they know that?” So that might have been my first clue.
From everything I’ve observed about you, you don’t seem temperamentally oriented around being famous in this way. How do you navigate it and how it affects your job?
Being famous?
Yeah. People chant your name at Comic-Con. You’re getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I think it’s safe to say you’re a famous person.
I’ve been around famous people and see what it’s like for them when they walk down the street, and that is something that they have to navigate. I always feel like, if somebody recognizes me, they’re probably pretty cool, right? Because they’re probably like I was when I was a kid, learning about how things are made and the person who makes something as opposed to the face up on the big screen. So, my encounters with quote-unquote “fame” are almost always extremely positive and nice.
I don’t need to get to the front of the line or go into the back door or get a good table at the restaurant. I don’t care about any of that stuff. But I was going into a meeting —this was many years ago, I’m not going to tell you what the meeting was — and I was a little nervous about it, because I had to sell somebody on something. I stopped at a Starbucks first, and a stranger came up to me and said, “Oh, hey, I just want to let you know that I really love everything you do and appreciate your work, and it’s really meant a lot to me, thanks.” I said, “Oh, thanks very much!” And I thought, “The person I’m going to have a meeting with, I don’t think that happens to them.” That’s all the little ego boost I need from any sort of fame.
In the early stages of your career, especially when you were working with Lauren Shuler Donner in the late 1990s, what did you pick up about how to be an effective producer that you’re still applying to your work today?
To me, what Lauren was especially good at was —how do I put this? — being the person that needs to talk to everybody about everything. Oftentimes, a director has something sensitive that they want to say to an actor, or an actor doesn’t feel great about something about a script; it’s the producer’s job to make sure everybody’s concerns are heard in a way that isn’t just about massaging egos but is solely about making and then improving the film itself. I remember Lauren having conversations about hairdos with cast members on some of the early films we worked on and being surprised at how sensitive it was. I don’t have hair. I don’t think about hair much. But seeing that it all came down to the producer to make sure that all of these little items and all of these gigantic items, day to day, are dealt with is so that the movie can proceed. It was very inspiring to me to see that.
It was mainly because I worked with Lauren that I started to see the impact that producers could make, which I think was clear in the ’30s and ’40s and early ’50s but had sort of fallen away over the years. And not to go back to the “Lucasian” discussion, but George was the producer on “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.” That is very much what I have found myself doing over the past 15 years — the notion of the creative producer is something I think had gone away for a while, and I’m proud to show that it still very much exists.
You’ve said that finding the right actor to play Captain America was one of the biggest early challenges for Marvel Studios. What other, more recent creative dilemmas are you particularly proud of helping to resolve?
Internally at Marvel for many years, it was thought that “The Avengers” was too big of a concept to do in live action. Maybe we could do an animated film someday. Working with Amy Pascal and Tom Rothman [at Sony Pictures] to get creative oversight of Spider-Man into the MCU and getting two colossal studios to work nice together —those are big examples.
But the truth is, a producer’s day-to-day job is all the little things. I get excited by the tiniest of victories, whether it’s a creative hurdle sitting around a conference room table with a creative team coming up with a solution for a scene or being in the cutting room and participating with ideas that lead to something that you then screen for millions of people. I think the sign of really loving what you do is when you are enthusiastic about the big ones, but also just the small day-to-day solutions.
Your job has grown from overseeing 2008’s “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk” to a full feature film slate to movies and television and the rest of the Marvel storytelling enterprise. How much of that has affected your day-to-day experience?
I always love being in the weeds. And the more [responsibility] you have, the less time you have to spend in the weeds. So, we’ve navigated that; I think that’s clear. We’ve talked about that over the last couple of years, to scale back so that we all have more time to do what we really love, which is be in the weeds.
Is this the last job you’ll ever have?
If you mean making movies in Hollywood that go around the world and touch people? I hope so, yes.
I meant being the chief creative officer of Marvel.
That I don’t know. But it’s what I get to do in this job that I hope I get to do [forever]. We had [the “Deadpool & Wolverine”] cast in Asia the last couple days, they’re now in Europe, and I love seeing the response to them. It’s a singular thing that this industry can do on a global stage. I hope to be able to be a part of that for the rest of my days.
