Former Marvel Studios Boss Says Board ‘Thought I Was Crazy’ for Casting ‘Addict’ Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man Over Timothy Olyphant
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director David Maisel might not be a name Marvel fans think of when they talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the entertainment executive recently stressed to The New Yorker that the “MCU wouldn’t exist” without him.
Maisel is Marvel Studios’ former president and the initial architect of the MCU, which Kevin Feige has since taken the reigns of as the company’s current president.
Feige’s name has become synonymous with Marvel’s success, which Maisel said has all but overshadowed his contributions. Or as Maisel put it, “It’s like a Thanos snap.” “Most people right now think Kevin started the studio,” Maisel said. “They don’t know me at all.” “David’s been sort of written out of the history of the studio, which I really think is weird,” Marvel Entertainment’s former chief counsel John Turitzin added to The New Yorker. “It was his brainchild.” As Maisel remembers, it was summer 2003 and he was an agent at Endeavor who longed to run a studio. “That’s when I thought, ‘Hey, if I can get a movie I can believe in, and every movie after that one is a sequel or a quasi-sequel — the same characters show up — then it can go on forever,'” he said. “Because it’s not 30 new movies.
It’s one movie and 29 sequels. What we call a universe.” That idea was the basis for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Maisel flew to Florida to meet with Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, Marvel Entertainment’s then-CEO, who liked the universe pitch enough to make Maisel the president of Marvel Studios.
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