3. Feige's Feud With Perlmutter
By now, you're probably mighty curious about why this Ike Perlmutter fella is so damn important and the reason Kevin Feige is clashing with him. First, a little backstory. Perlmutter is well known for being extremely frugal, with infamous stories about limiting the numbers of drinks the press are allowed at junkets and placing unreasonable restrictions on the kind of perks actors are given during shoots which come as standard on 99.9% of other blockbusters. As unusual as that may be, it was a method which appeared to work for Marvel Studios for a long time, but as the Marvel Cinematic Universe grew, this started becoming a real problem. It seems like Feige's first big clash with Perlmutter came when the decision was made to have Robert Downey Jr. star in Captain America: Civil War. With an overhaul of the actor's current deal needed, Ike nearly blew the whole thing, refusing to pay the actor and demanding at one point that Downey Jr. be fired altogether. Feige managed to smooth things over, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back, and is what led to Marvel Studios splitting from Marvel and now reporting directly to Disney instead. That's a pretty seismic shift in how business is handled, and The Hollywood Reporter later weighed in with a damning exposé revealing that Ike's constant demands about not spending too much and Marvel's Creative Committee (whose notes may have led to Edgar Wright leaving Ant-Man) are what led to the split. It's a move which means Marvel Studios and Marvel are now completely separate entities, similar in some ways to how Fox and Sony - who own characters like the X-Men and Spider-Man - are able to act autonomously from the parent company who hold all but the film rights to iconic superheroes like the ones mentioned above. On the one hand, this is a good thing; Marvel Studios will now have more freedom and more money to spend, but Phase 3 is going to be a huge test for them as they adjust to what sounds like a drastically different business model. However, it can't be denied that frugality has so far worked well for Marvel, while the Creative Committee have done a lot of good over the years; as well as keeping an eye on continuity, it was Brian Michael Bendis who wrote that scene between Iron Man and Nick Fury which set this Cinematic Universe in motion at the end of the former's first solo outing! At the end of the day, warring executives operating within the same company is not something which is going to end well. If one recent rumour is to be believed, things actually look set to take a very nasty turn as Marvel Studios plan on laying off as many as fifty East Coast staffers who are tied to Perlmutter in some way. There's just no way this story ends up having a happy ending for anyone involved.