Avi Arad played what's been described as a significant role in the formation of Marvel Studios, but he left the studio under a cloud and has since remained part of Sony Pictures' efforts to bring
Spider-Man and his supporting characters to the big screen (with plenty of mixed results).
During a recent interview, the producer was asked to elaborate on why he left and it definitely sounds like he butted heads with some of the names who are now synonymous with the MCU.
"I’ll tell you now, it was only my choice [to leave] because one day came when I said, ‘I think I’ve had enough of this,'" Arad said. "The company was growing with the CEO of this, and the CFO of that, but it was basically [a situation in which] we were doing everything but now there’s way too many people for me to deal with."
"And everybody wanted to make movies. Everyone. I mean, you name it, the people who were cleaning the place wanted to read the scripts," he continued.
"The time came when, for me, it was time to move on. There are a lot of theories behind it, but it really doesn’t matter. I tried correcting some of them and it always looked like an aggressive posture by someone who is begrudging." In 2014, Arad penned a scathing open letter in which he attempted to take credit for the entire MCU slate and accused Kevin Feige of taking his credit.
It's hard to imagine Arad being remotely happy that Feige is now in control of the live-action Spider-Man, but
Into the Spider-Verse was obviously a huge hit and it seems as if he's enjoying working in that realm and developing all of those villain-led spinoffs. In fact, he's hoping to bring Sam Raimi back into the fold and has a message for the filmmaker.
"I would love to see what kind of animated Spider-Man movie we’d get from Sam Raimi so if he sees this, ‘Call me Sam!'" We know he butted heads with Arad over
Spider-Man 3 so there's a very good chance that call will never actually be returned...
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