Kevin Feige Explores the Potential Impact of ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’—Could a Superhero Renaissance Be Coming?

In 2008, Marvel Studios released Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. While the film achieved critical and commercial success, it is now primarily celebrated as the inaugural installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the largest interconnected cinematic narrative ever. Since then, the MCU has become a staple of modern commercial cinema. Despite a recent dip in numbers, it continues to perform well.

The mastermind behind this expansive project is producer Kevin Feige. His creative vision and leadership have been crucial in shaping the MCU and defining the current superhero movie genre, making his insights highly influential.

In a recent interview with Deadline, Kevin Feige addressed key questions about the upcoming Comic-Con and discussed the potential impact of the soon-to-be-released ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ movie, which may usher the MCU into a new era.

As mentioned, Kevin Feige recently gave an exclusive interview to Deadline. In the interview, he addressed several important questions about ‘Deadpool & Wolverine,’ discussing the film’s potential impact and whether it could spark a “superhero renaissance,” leading to a new era of successful superhero movies. Here’s what he had to say:

DEADLINE: There’s a lot of news about how big Deadpool & Wolverine is going to open. This clearly is a renaissance for superhero movies of late. What’s needed to keep this fever up? I ask this in general of superhero movies. What’s needed to keep moviegoers re-engaged and back on a high point?

FEIGE: I’ve never been a big believer in superhero being a genre in and of itself. We made films that are based in graphic narrative format originally, but we make different types of movies, and I think the answer to that question is the same answer to movies in general: making engaging, entertaining films that have to be experienced in a theater with a crowd and is worth people getting into their cars and making the trip.

Of the many forms of entertainment that people can get scrolling on their screen in their pocket, we as a Hollywood industry need to make product that stands above all of that and that represents a destination entertainment that you can’t get anywhere else. … People have been going to movies this summer with Inside Out 2, and that is unbelievably exciting for us as it reminds people what a joy that can be going to theaters, and people seem very excited to see Deadpool and Wolverine onscreen.

I think the experience that it’s going to give to people and hopefully encourage people to go see it again and again, that’s our job. That’s our job at Marvel, that’s our job as the 100-year old Hollywood industry — to remind people that we have the best storytellers and can provide the best entertainment in the world. As we keep doing that in ways that engage, excite and grab onto the imagination and the psyche of the audience, that’s all we ever wanted to do, that’s all we tried to do. I think we have to keep evolving and expanding the ways we do that.

DEADLINE: Going back to the first Iron Man, he wasn’t an “A” Marvel character, he was a “B” character, yet the flame that started it all. And then you move to Guardians of the Galaxy. You know this universe more than anybody, but launching characters with unknown IP, is that harder now or is it a different economy of scale? Could you pull off another Iron Man and Guardians of the Galaxy in this day and age?

FEIGE: Yes. When we were going to Comic-Con in 2007, when we were bringing Iron Man there with Jon Favreau, one media outlet did a story that read “Marvel Calls Out the ‘C’ Team.’” People thought, ‘Well, are you going to be able to make anything of these characters that aren’t the major players if you don’t have Spider-Man or X-Men?’ People thought Marvel had nothing else. And we thought, “We have 8,567 other things.” The audience wants to see a great piece of entertainment. I said for a long time that the one-two punch for Marvel, pre-dating me, was Blade and then X-Men.

Blade was a character that nobody knew from the comics, or very few people knew. It wasn’t advertised as being from Marvel Comics. X-Men was the No. 1 bestselling comic for the 15 years before the movie came out. Both of them did extremely well, and that instilled in us the notion that it is less about how many issues did you sell or how famous was the animated show or the live-action series in the ’70s, but how engaging can you make the character, and how much of a new experience of a world can you bring to cinemas with that character. And that’s what we tried to do with Iron Man, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Source: Deadline

As evident, ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ holds significant potential, and we’re optimistic about its success both critically and commercially. A strong performance could encourage the MCU to pursue this bold new direction with more confidence.

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