Disney CEO is Arranging a Meeting with Martin Scorsese

Disney‘s CEO Bob Iger is setting up a meeting with Martin Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese's criticism of Marvel movies has sparked a filmmaking debate. Now, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirms his team is currently in the process of setting up a meeting with the ‘Irishman' director.

In the TIME Businessperson of the Year profile of Bob Iger, the Walt Disney Company CEO addressed Scorsese's comments as “nasty” and claims they are “not fair to the people who are making the movies.” He adds, “If Marty Scorsese wants to be in the business of taking artistic risk, all power to him. It doesn't mean that what we're doing isn't art.” The CEO continues to say Disney and Scorsese are working on “arranging a get-together.”

Before this TIME profile, Iger responded to Scorsese's comments in an interview with BBC Radio 4. “I'd like to have a glass of wine with him. I like Martin Scorsese,” he said in early November. “Looking forward to talking with him.”

Scorsese's original comments were in an interview with Empire Magazine where the veteran director explained he does not consider the Marvel films as real cinema. “I don't see them. I tried, you know? But that's not cinema,” he admitted. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn't the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

The criticism of Marvel movies prompted the filmmaker to clarify his beliefs in an op-ed for The New York Times with Scorsese explaining that he has nothing against the people behind the franchise.

“Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen,” he wrote. “The fact that the films themselves don't interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger if I'd come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself.”

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Martin Scorsese Calls Marvel Movies Not Real “Cinema”