Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige defends sequels as ‘an absolute pillar of the industry’
Over the past 25 years, sequels have gone from being a profitable part of the movie business to being what the movie business relies on to make money. The nine highest-grossing American films of 2024 so far are franchise movies. Arguably no single person has had more to do with that change than Kevin Feige, the Oscar-nominated producer of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In a way, Feige has made nearly 40 film sequels to 2008’s “Iron Man” — the MCU’s latest film, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” is out in theaters now — and become Hollywood’s highest-grossing producer in history by far.
In an interview with Variety on the eve of his receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Feige reflected on his life and career so far. He said that from the time he was a kid, he wanted to be George Lucas and “build universes.”
“I always liked the world-building and being able to return to characters,” Feige said. “I was always excited for sequels. I was never cynical or rolling my eyes the way people still do today for some reason, even though there’ve been sequels since the ’30s and they’re an absolute pillar of the industry. To me, those were always what I enjoyed most, the notion that something I loved was returning and it would expand on what I loved about it.”
Feige is of course correct to point out that sequels have always been part of the business, since “The Fall of a Nation” followed “The Birth of a Nation” in 1916. And the ‘30s, as Feige says, saw the rise of sequels as a major part of the business, with Tarzan and the Thin Man and the Universal monsters. And while sequels have a reputation for creative bankruptcy, it’s not really fair; you can name five franchises off the top of your head where a sequel was better than the original. People love sequels, and no one has understood that better than Feige.
But Feige is conflating criticism of sequels in general, which no reasonable person would argue, with what people are actually cynical about: the cash-grabbing nature of bad sequels that don’t creatively justify their existence. People are unhappy about the stuck culture that endless sequels create, where new ideas get passed over in favor of iterating on old ones, with diminishing returns. Hollywood is not creating new things to make sequels to at a fast enough rate to offset the creative decline of long-running franchises.
Feige plays a role in creating that problem. “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a tribute to the past 25 years of superhero movies that come at a time when superhero movies need to evolve to stay relevant. But it’s going to make that list of 2024’s top 10 grossers (and knock the only current non-sequel movie on the list, “IF,” off of it), so Feige’s universe of returning things will keep expanding. The new X-Men and Fantastic Four movies have to be good, or we’re all in trouble.
“Deadpool & Wolverine” opens in theaters on July 26.
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