Say goodbye to Marvel’s Creative Committee
Part of the reason the Marvel Cinematic Universe follows a certain storyline is that Marvel franchise is overseen by the Marvel Creative Committee, a mixture of comic book writers and Hollywood executives. According to reports, the Creative Committee is now disbanded.
For those who haven’t following the latest patch of news, Marvel Studios was recently taken away from Marvel Entertainment, and was widely seen as a power fight between Disney chairman Alan Horn and Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter. Apparently, Disney Won.
What is the Creative Committee
According to Birth Movies Death, it appears the Creative Committee consisted of Kevin Feige, Brian Michael Bendis, Joe Quesada, Alan Fine and Dan Buckley. Every so often, the group of would weigh in on each and every Marvel movie. Now the group has to find another job because, the Creative Committee is no more. In other words, Disney can make whatever Marvel movies they like and Marvel itself doesn’t have much of a vote.
So what does this all mean? Well, the Creative Committee was originall formed to keep the storyline and tone of the films close to the comic books. Creators who worked on those characters for years had a say in how they would be portrayed in the film. For instance, they will would be consulted for dialogue, plot points, and general issues of connections to Marvel Comics’ long history of other characters.
After seven years and twelve films, the committee at Marvel is no more.
Is this a bad idea?
Many people argued about how bad the Creative Committee was. What is interesting is if you take a poke through Google and see what people are saying over the past year regarding the Creative Committee. The Financial Times praised the group meanwhile, TheWrap complimented on the Creative Committee’s decision to make Guardians of the Galaxy funny. And when Edgar Wright left Ant-Man, issues with the creative committee were never released or made public. If anybody became the scapegoat for the fall out, it was Kevin Feige. The Birth Movies Death article also claims it was Perlmutter, and only Perlmutter, responsible for the lack of Black Widow in Avengers merchandise.
Over the years I’ve heard many stories of the Creative Committee giving notes that are pedestrian, motivated by ‘save the cat’ story logic and sometimes a drag on creativity. One Marvel creative talked to me about battles with the Creative Committee where they focused on details of nit-picky science that ignored the general tone of the script itself. The notes that drove Edgar Wright off Ant-Man came from the Creative Committee.
So what’s next for Marvel?
Ultimately, this means that Marvel Studios is going forward as an independent entity separate from Marvel Comics. That in turns means that Phase 3 of their films will be, in a way, a new wave of of movies and a test to see how the newly independent studio will handle the billion dollar franchises going forward.
Source: Birth.movies.death.
