You know Deadpool & Wolverine is a big deal if Kevin Feige is out there speaking about it. In the past, Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, would speak to the press for almost every Marvel project. Since Avengers: Endgame though, that’s been dialed back greatly. So that Feige was back at it for this massive release gives you just a hint of what is at stake for him and Marvel in general.
Chatting with io9, Feige discussed the impact Deadpool & Wolverine is going to have on the MCU, the way it incorporates Logan, and many teases of future projects, such as the next Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, Avengers 5 and 6, and the next live-action X-Men project. But Feige is also a huge toy collector, so we also took a Hail Mary to see what he thought of recently being immortalized in Lego. He didn’t disappoint. Here’s our full chat with Kevin Feige.
Germain Lussier, io9: So 2017, Disney acquires Fox. In 2018, Deadpool 2 came out. What are you thinking watching that movie? Are you thinking, “We’ll never get to use this guy” or “What can we do to use this guy?”
Kevin Feige: I was thinking the same thing I was thinking about the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, that we’d never be able to use them. Yeah. Because that was before the sale you said, right?
io9: The sale was 2017 and it did get finalized a little later, but I figured maybe around that time you started thinking about it.
Feige: I don’t… no, I don’t think so. I think we were in the midst of trying to finish Infinity War and Endgame. And so maybe we knew that those characters might be coming our way sometime, but until something’s actually in our hands, we don’t consider it real. So I remember just watching that movie and having a good time, but not thinking about anything other than Infinity War and Endgame [laughs].
io9: Right, sure. Kind of big. So without spoiling anything, I see in the first 40 minutes of this movie, the movie deals with its links to Logan very early on. So is what happens here in this movie always how that worked out, or were there other versions of how it was going to incorporate it?
Feige: How it was going to incorporate Logan itself?
io9: Yes. The events of Logan.
Feige: There were a lot of incarnations of the movie but, as lots of people have talked about recently, we didn’t want to undo anything from that movie, Logan. We didn’t want to erase it. We didn’t want to, in any way, besmirch the honor of that great feature. So what you see in the movie was always sort of the idea of how to navigate that.
io9: So on a scale of 1-10 in terms of overall MCU impact, if like Endgame is a 10, Infinity War is a 9, what would you give Deadpool & Wolverine and why?
Feige: Infinity War is a 9?
io9: Well, yeah, it’s big, but they’ll come back.
Feige: All right. Well, I was going to say 10, but if Infinity War is a 9, then I don’t know. 8?
io9: Okay. Now with Comic-Con coming up, I know we’ll probably be learning a lot in the coming days in terms of big-picture stuff, but how much would you say that plan has changed since 2022 when you announced Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars?
Feige: I think it’s safe to say it’s changed. And I look forward to sort of clarifying with people how that is.
io9: Okay. This movie is a big multiverse movie and it made me curious about another multiverse movie, Spider-Man. Can you say anything about what’s going on with the next Spider-Man?
Feige: Amy [Pascal] and I are working on it. We have writers who are going to be delivering us a draft relatively soon.
io9: That’s good. Phase Four was largely about introducing new characters to the MCU. And I know with upcoming Avengers movies, we have a chance to see a lot of them. Do you think there are any that we won’t ever see again?
Feige: I rarely speak in absolutes like that, right? The notion of never ever seeing somebody again. We’ve got Tim Blake Nelson in a movie coming up next year, right? So I never talk in absolutes like that. But the truth is, you know, we’re going to tell a story in these Avengers movies, and there won’t be room for 100,000 characters in it. So choices will have to be made, that’s for sure. But that doesn’t mean you won’t ever see anybody ever again.
io9: And obviously, the biggest thing that’s happened since we last spoke is you got your own Lego minifigure [holds up minifigure].
Feige: Yes! [laughs]
io9: So I am wondering, I know you’re a big toy collector. What was this like? Did you have any say in the accessories? How did it all come about?
Feige: I don’t remember if I had a say. I think I’m pretty predictable in my wardrobe. I was very honored though. And I thought it was pretty cool. I will say we have—or at one point in the office in the Marvel Studios offices, we had—the entire Avengers Tower displayed. And they had my little figure in there somewhere holding a shawarma and a hot dog. And I said, “Do I eat that much that I’m holding both those things?” Like I think coffee, I like coffee. But why do I have to have a shawarma and a hot dog? That seemed very gluttonous in my opinion.
io9: Well, thankfully, there’s the coffee. And this is my last thing. I know this movie is going to set up whatever we get to see with the X-Men. So we’ll learn more about that next week and beyond. But that’s a comic that has so many different teams and different tones. How does the decision process go to narrow down, like, what team you’re going to use and what tone you’re going to have?
Feige: There’s a phrase we use often at Marvel, which is “It’s an embarrassment of riches.” Right? And there are a lot of great X-Men characters in the Deadpool & Wolverine film. There are a lot of great X-Men characters in all of the Fox versions of the X-Men films. And there are a lot of great X-Men characters that have never gone on the big screen. So I think as we always try to do as we did when we made the arrangement with Sony for Spider-Man, you probably see a mix of characters you’ve seen before and characters you’ve never seen before. I think the success of X-Men ’97 was really exciting for us to see people revisit and reconnect with that world. And dare I say, the soap opera elements of that world, which is one of the things that’s so exciting to us about jumping into it finally in the MCU.
Deadpool & Wolverine is in theaters July 26.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
