Collider recently caught up with The Falcon and The Winter Soldier writer Derek Kolstad for a deep dive into what it's like to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It goes without saying that there's a lot of secrecy, but we've now learned that it's not only Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige who weighs in with script notes and the like.
Kolstad reveals that he received "15 pages of single-spaced notes" after handing in his script for the show's third episode, and explained that they come from a group known as "The Parliament."
"It's probably 12 to 15 people, and all of their notes are compiled," Kolstad explains. "And by the way, the cool thing about their notes, to the assistant's credit, there was nothing in those notes that was repetitive or conflictive. And if it was conflictive, it would be like, 'Okay, these are conflicting notes.' And you're like, 'Oh, thank god.' I think they referred to the heads of Marvel as The Parliament."
"There's 15 of them or whatever [who] meet at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, so it was their notes. But for the most part, man, you loved finally getting a draft in. They're like, 'Hey, great job, it's going to go to production, a lot of it is going to change,' and you're like, 'Yup, good luck, man!'"
If you're going to work at Marvel Studios, it sounds like you'd best get used to micromanagement!
That's to be expected when the MCU has found such great success, and those who have been there longer than Kolstad likely get a little more leniency. Regardless, the writer had nothing but good things to say about his interactions with this group of unnamed executives and creatives.
"Everyone in that room is already a fan, and in certain capacities, even if you're younger and you don't know the comic books, the video games, a cartoon or anything else, [for a] number of people I talk to now, the MCU was their Star Wars. And so in that room, you can bandy about, 'Wouldn't it be cool if...' And there's a small possibility it happens. And in The Falcon and the Winter Solider, it happens a couple of times. And I love that."
Unfortunately, we don't know who makes up "The Parliament," though Stephen Broussard, Eric Carroll, Nate Moore, Jonathan Schwartz, Trinh Tran, and Brad Winderbaum are all likely candidates. Feige once had to bow down to Marvel Entertainment's "Creative Committee" at the behest of Ike Perlmutter, something that led to a lot of the not-so-great things we saw in those early Marvel Studios titles.
Clearly, this is his own, much better version!