Marvel Studios Very Nearly Sold The Film Rights To 'Captain America' And 'Thor' To Warner Bros. And Sony
Former Marvel President David Maisel has taken part in an exposé, revealing his role in the creation of the MCU and how he saved two of The Avengers from being left out of the 2012 movie!
The Hollywood Reporter has published a very interesting and in-depth interview with David Maisel, the former boss of Marvel Studios who claims that after working with them from 2003 to 2009 (and becoming the founding Chariman in 2007), his contributions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe are now being overlooked. In fact, he's pretty much taking credit for the idea of Marvel making their own movies, describing Kevin Feige as a "a relatively junior executive giving script notes to studios" when he was brokering a half billion dollar deal to make this world a reality. Of course, Feige has never claimed to be the one responsible for founding Marvel Studios, but it's his vision which has given us the MCU we have today regardless of where he was when people like Maisel and Avi Arad were around and talking about giving Iron Man armour which disguised itself as a toaster!
Regardless, there are lots of interesting reveals in the piece which you can read by clicking on the link below, but perhaps the biggest is the news that the then Marvel Studios head managed to save Captain America and Thor being sold off to other studios. Apparently, deals were in works which would have seen Steve Rogers head to Warner Bros., while the God of Thunder would have ended up at Sony following the success of their Spider-Man movies. "If I had gotten there three months, six months later, those deals would have been done," he alleges "And there would be no chance to bring all these characters together." Needless to say, had those deals gone down, The Avengers would have been a very, very different movie! Maisel also confirms that Universal still hold the distribution rights to The Hulk while Marvel owns the character, so a solo movie remains unlikely.