Exclusive Sit Down with Kevin Feige #AvengersEvent

Are you enjoying the Avengers Event interviews so far?? Only one more day before I can talk freely about MARVEL’s: Avengers Age of Ultron.

I have been trying to hard not to give out any spoilers. Even with my husband asking me if his theories are true. So far, I’ve been good and haven’t revealed anything. Yes, I’m patting myself on the back. It was tough! 😉

This is the second time I’ve interviewed Kevin Feige. Kevin is THE President of MARVEL Studios and Producer of Age of Ultron. To be able to sit and chat with him about all things MARVEL is pretty awesome.

Take a look and get all your questions answered about Age of Ultron and what’s next in the MARVEL universe!

Film Producer and President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige

Why is there no end-credit scene?  What’s the story behind that?

Why is there no end-credit scene?  Well there’s a mid-credit scene, as we call it, and we’ve always really said it’s not a fast and hard rule that there must be something after the credits, and Joss was a firm believer that we shouldn’t do something that seems like we were toping the scene at the end of it, and that his version of the story really culminates where it does at the end of the film and with the mid-credits.  And everything we were thinking of just felt like an add-on that wasn’t worth doing.  But that’s one of the reasons why he wanted to get it out there so people didn’t sit there for seven minutes and go, what?  

With the movies and S.H.I.E.L.D., how many people are on the team that keep everything straight?

Well there’s a television division; there’s a studio division and there’s a solid brain trust of seven or eight of us at the studio that oversee each of the films.  And then beyond that, of course, dozens and then hundreds, and then thousands, eventually, on each production.

How many years is there in-between the movies.

I’m not sure we ever directly say it, but we always sorta thought it.  It’s between six months to a year after- probably a good year after the events of The Winter Soldier. 

Are we gonna see Spiderman make an appearance in Civil War?

Well, you know, you’ve heard the announcements- we’ve teamed up with Sony to bring Spidey into our universe and doing a new Spidey film in 2017, but I think we’re being less than specific about where we’ll see him first.

In general, sometimes people dread spinoffs and sequels, but how does it feel to actually have a fan base that can’t wait for the next release from the studio?

Well, it feels great, obviously … At Marvel, their big story is about everyone that goes back fifty years and through hundreds of comic issues.  So for us, it’s all just exciting … And what’s really exciting is that the comic fan base was one thing- it’s the solid foundation of everything we do, but now it’s increased dramatically with the film base and with the film fans and it gives us a certain amount of pressure and sleepless nights to deliver on expectations each time but it’s also knowing that people are so excited for what’s next.  And we often have to go, never mind what’s next- take a look at this- [LAUGHS].  Take a look at this because we do want each of the films and Age of Ultron’s our eleventh Marvel Cinematic Universe film. 

And we want each of them to stand alone whether you’ve seen the other ten films or not.  We believe each film works as a beginning, middle, end into and unto itself.  And we worked very hard to do that.  All we’re interested in is making one singular great movie at a time.

Do you have somebody in the Marvel Universe that you really want to bring into the stories or anything that you haven’t yet?

Of characters?  Well, I used to say Guardians of the Galaxy to that question.  I used to say vision to that question; I used to say Falcon; I used to say Doctor Strange a lot and obviously we’re deep into that with Benedict Cumberbatch now.  We start filming in November.  So it’s really been amazing.  Now, it does come down to very individual and specific characters, but if I say too many of them, it’ll give away exactly what we’re doing with Guardians 2 or with the future ones.

But it is a testament to the Marvel comics and how deep its bench is that there’s still hundreds of great characters that we haven’t even touched yet.

What was it like to bring in Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch into this movie?

It was great.  I mean, they’re key Avengers characters in the books.  They have a great backstory that we really wanted to explore and they have a great relationship, the two of them, that we really wanted to explore together, and it was one of Joss’s very first notions- probably second notion after Ultron, to bring them in, who have a very different viewpoint of the Avengers who come into the team from a very different angle than any of the other characters.

The other characters were sort of assembled together by Nick Fury in the first movie and Thor obviously came into the mix because of the presence of Loki and now having characters come in from a totally different side- which is also a very Marvel thing to do.  There are a lot of Marvel characters who start on the other side of a disagreement, or the other side of an argument or the other side of the law that through a great Marvel redemptive arc become heroes.  And we wanted to do that in an Avengers movie.

Were you big into Marvel comics as a kid, and did you have a favorite character when you were little?

I was more into movies as a kid.  I had a lot of favorite movies.  I remember a story in particular when I was in the backyard with a bunch of friends of mine when we were, I don’t know, say eight years old- ten years old.  And we were playing super heroes, and somebody had chosen Batman, somebody had chosen Superman, and somebody had chosen Spiderman and I remember going, well, I’ll be Iron Man.  I’ll play Iron Man because I’d seen him in the reruns of the old ’60s cartoon.

And some kids didn’t even know who he was.  I was like, he’s cool.  He’s Iron Man.  Trust me. So that was fun bringing him to life after some kids didn’t hear of him when I chose him in the backyard thirty-two years ago.

Alliances Featurette

Meet Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch Featurette