Five Questions With Marvel Studios Boss Kevin Feige: ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Superhero Pic Renaissance; Hall H Comic-Con Panel Planned With Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, More

EXCLUSIVE: Not only is it a week and a half to the kickoff of San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, but the fanboy confab coincides with another major pivotal moment this summer: The massive opening weekend of Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine , which is poised to be the biggest R-rated debut of all-time at the domestic box office, beating Deadpool ‘s $132.4M (Previews start on Thursday, July 25).

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The Shawn Levy-directed features reps a new era for Disney’s MCU with edgier adult fare and finally brings together 20th Century Fox’s Marvel stable with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s not often that an MCU movie opens on the same weekend as SDCC, and a galactic boom is about to ensue. Marvel Studios President and Producer Kevin Feige tells Deadline first about what’s in store at Comic-Con — read, fanboys will get two nights of the MCU in Hall H next week — as well as the comeback of superhero pics.

Can you share with us any plans for Hall H?

Yes, I can. I think people know we’re going to be there on Saturday for our traditional Hall H panel with a lot of fun stuff to look at about our upcoming movies. But what I don’t think people know is that we’re also going to be in Hall H on Thursday for the first time ever. Marvel Studios is going to be in Hall H twice during Comic-Con. Thursday, of course, is the opening of Deadpool & Wolverine , so we’re going to be doing a fun Deadpool panel in Hall H to commemorate the opening and Shawn [Levy], Hugh [Jackman], Ryan [Reynolds] and I will be there.

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With Deadpool & Wolverine , is this the beginning of an edgier era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

I think we’ve been edgy in the past, but my favorite thing is that we span all types of genres and tones. I think it gets a lot of attention that this is our first R-rated movie, but it is the third R-rated Deadpool movie, so we wanted to stay true to what Ryan has built over those last couple of movies and we weren’t going to undo that. I will say — Hugh and Ryan have talked about this — and I think people can tell from the trailer and from the press tour so far, yes, it’s R-rated, yes there’s some language and blood, but the film is incredibly emotional. I keep calling it the most wholesome R-rated film that anybody can ever see. It really is a celebration of friendship and family and of found family. I don’t want to overdo it, but for all the R-rated raunchiness that gets attention, when people see the movie, it’s going to be about how heartfelt it is — in my opinion, much more than the first two Deadpool films. That’s what I’m really excited about, once people get past the ‘F’ words and the R-rating, to see how sweet it is.

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 ?

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.

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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?

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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.

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Can you tell us more about Marvel’s plans at San Diego Comic-Con? I understand there’s a new booth. But also, can you speak about the confab’s importance to a motion picture studio? It’s surprising when some studios decide to skip it; that’s a missed opportunity. But San Diego Comic-Con is still a great place to sound a bullhorn for a project in the current social media age particularly at a time when consumers are fiercely making decisions about content.

For Marvel, it’s important on all aspects; it’s important for publishing and for the roots of everything we do. And you’re right, we have a whole brand-new booth this year that we spent a long time designing and trying to make as impressive as possible and diverse as possible with the amount of events going on in that booth, many and most of which relate to the comics and to the artists and to the storylines that we’ve made and of course tapping into games and movies. The entirety of Comic-Con started in the comics, and I love seeing the amount of stuff that C.B. [Cebulski], our editor on the publishing side, is doing each year and every year. On the movie side, which I’m emotionally of course connected to, that’s where everything started for us. I remember showing clips of X-Men 2 for the first time before Hall H existed in San Diego Comic-Con and Sam Raimi with Spider-Man , Spider-Man 2 , Spider-Man 3 and, of course, our Iron Man panel with Favreau and Downey Jr. We build movie schedules oftentimes, and obviously the pandemic and the strike that threw a wrench into it for a few years. But what we’re able to do this time is to get back to literally designing our film schedules around what we would have ready to show at Comic-Con — to announce and set the expectations and the tonality of what’s to come over the next couple of years. And that starts in Hall H. I think Hall H has become such an iconic venue that people who’ve never been to Comic-Con know what Hall H is or know that Hall H stands for the unveiling of important, fun pop culture moments.

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