Authors of ‘MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios’ on Kevin Feige, MCU Horror, and Defending Thanos
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards are co-authors of the new book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, which documents the rise of Marvel from a struggling comics publisher into a powerhouse studio and cultural juggernaut. Joanna and Dave co-host the Ringer podcast Trial By Content, while Gavin is an author and journalist who has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Wired.
In this interview, we chatted about their favorite behind-the-scenes “what ifs”, MCU horror they’d love to see, casting the Ringer crew as X-Men, and much more!
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
1. What’s the origin story of this book?
Joanna: The year was 2019 and there was a sweet little indie movie called Avengers: Endgame in the cinema. It was a big moment for a chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Certainly not the only chapter, but it felt like a huge culmination of what started with Iron Man all the way back at the beginning. Our wonderful publisher Norton reached out to us to see, “Hey, I heard of this Marvel thing. Do you think you maybe want to write a little bit about it?” Dave and I worked on it for a couple years, doing a lot of research on Dave’s part and a lot of interviewing on my part. Then Gavin came on board in the “Avengers Assemble” moment to say “On your left…” and help us put the book together. Gavin has a lot of experience with some wonderful books he’s written, and Dave and I had never written a book before. So Gavin’s like, “Hey guys, this is how you write a book.” And we’re like, “Ohhhh!”
Gavin: I’ve written all these other books and it’s a process of being in your room quietly going insane, so this was so much fun. They came with a mountain of research, so as we wrestled it into shape it was just a joy to have really smart, sparky collaborators and to actually get on Zoom calls to talk about a book. That never happens! So it was a special situation.
2. The book charts the journey of the MCU. What’s an underrated aspect of the MCU’s success?
Gavin: I think early on, Kevin Feige dialed into the fact that part of the appeal of Marvel Comics is the interconnectivity of it all. Stan Lee created the situation where Spider-Man might be swinging across town and he spots Daredevil down below, then he’s going to go by the Baxter building and there’s the Fantastic Four. It doesn’t seem like something you could or should be able to pull off with, you know, multi-million-dollar feature films, but the spirit of it is absolutely there.
And in the early phases of the MCU, it is a huge gift to fans that it feels like at any given moment there might be an Easter egg post-credits scene or someone else is gonna wander in. It ended up being a sly way of saying you want to see them all because it’s all going to be connected. And I think one of the challenges for them right now is making sure you don’t have to feel like you’ve done your homework of having seen 17 movies to understand the latest TV show.
3. What’s your favorite behind-the-scenes “what if” that could have completely altered the direction of the MCU?
Dave: If we would have gotten Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man as part of Phase One. He was part of the very early announcements that Marvel Studios was gonna make its own movies. He had written a script for another studio that had let the rights revert back to Marvel, and Kevin Feige met with Edgar Wright and was like, “Really like your stuff.” And Edgar was like, “Oh, did you read the script I wrote for you guys?” And they had not. So they read it and they’re like, “We love it. Let’s do this. Team Edgar Wright. You’re gonna be with Jon Favreau and help us launch this universe.”
And then things happened—different movies had to be made. And by the time Edgar Wright was ready to come back and make Ant-Man, what they ultimately decided was the universe had moved on so much beyond where Edgar Wright’s idea was. So there is a world where Ant-Man is a founding Avenger in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that we will never get.
4. What was the most challenging chapter to research or write?
Joanna: To be clear, I did not do most of the research. But I will say the story that was hardest to get right came together at the end, which is what happened with Victoria Alonso this year. She was one of the core three creative production minds at Marvel Studios. It’s Kevin Feige at the top and then Lou D’Esposito and Victoria Alonso in the second position parallel to each other underneath him—the three heads of the dragon as I like to say. And when she was fired unceremoniously on a Friday afternoon in March 2023, we scrambled the jets and sort of got everything together to try to make sure that story was accurately told in the book. Not just what Disney’s spin was on it or what her personal spin was on it, but trying to get down to the root of the truth of what happened.
So we were chasing down sources and then trying to work that into an already finished book, to try to make sure the seeds were there so that it doesn’t seem like it comes out of nowhere—the way it sort of felt like it did to me when I read it on Twitter on a Friday afternoon. What we found actually is that the seeds were already there. Once we were looking for them, we saw that they were there—we just had to bump them up with a few adjectives to make sure they catch your notice. We didn’t have to change that much going through the book, but we were able to find space to put that story in there so that when you get it in October 2023, you feel like you’re reading a contemporary story about Marvel Studios.
5. What’s your favorite fan theory related to the MCU?
Dave: This one’s fresh off the old noodle that I’ve been seeing with Loki Season 2 coverage. The line that OB says about how the center of the black hole would turn you into spaghetti is a little bit suspicious because all the imagery around He Who Remains and the center of the Marvel Sacred Timeline is that he could be in the center of a black hole. So don’t trust anything that anyone says in a series that’s like, “We take place outside of time” and their first episode is a race against the clock. They are trying to trick you, so stay sharp-eyed.
Joanna: We also have to shout out Thanus, which was the idea that Ant-Man would defeat Thanos by going small, going in the back door, and then just sort of getting big and exploding Thanos from the inside.
6. Which Infinity Stone would you most want to wield?
Dave: I like the Time Stone. What it does when it allows you to time travel—and apparently somewhat through the quantum realm—is you’re sliding through time, like in Doctor Strange. He stops the city from exploding and just starts it in reverse, so it’s a much more controlled method of time travel that you could use without destroying multiverses, which seems to be a problem when you’re time traveling in most fictional properties.
Gavin: The Reality Stone because it can actually go in my blood and then I won’t lose it. Which is the big problem with the Infinity Stones—“Oh, where did I put it?” The Reality Stone is just in my body and then it’s all gonna be cool.
Joanna: I’m gonna piggyback Dave’s answer and say the Time Stone. But not for the cool, nerdy reasons that Dave said, but because we just got finished writing a book and we had to deal with deadlines, and as a writer on a deadline I could always use a Time Stone.
7. You wake up and learn you’re the new Kevin Feige. What’s the first executive decision you’d make about the future of the MCU?
Gavin: They’re heading this way anyway, so what that shows is Kevin Feige is really good at being Kevin Feige. But the biggest problem they have is that they’ve had too much in the pipeline. When I’m the particularly dogmatic version of this I say, “Get rid of everything in the pipeline and start over.” But in fact, just slowing down goes a long way. If you can just go back to the saner schedule of three movies a year and maybe one TV series, that feels like that is what the Marvel Studios machine is built to do. And I, Kevin Feige, can give attention to all the projects. The thing that brings people back to Marvel is the consistency of “I am entertained, I’m enjoying and getting what I want” as opposed to it feeling like a roll of dice every time I walk into the movie theater or turn on Disney+.
8. What was your favorite Marvel comic as a kid and how did its cinematic rendering stack up to your expectations?
Joanna: Well, much like Kevin Feige, I was not a comic book person as a child. And that’s something I love about Kevin Feige, that he came to comic books sort of later in life and now knows more than any of us do about Marvel comics. But at the time he didn’t and sort of used all of his cinematic know-how to create the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I did grow up on X-Men: The Animated Series and then I did get into Marvel comics in my twenties, and I will say that I have yet to see the cinematic rendering of Gambit that I feel like I deserve. Like, Gambit’s the guy. And I don’t know why—with love and respect to Taylor Kitsch—they haven’t gotten that right or made it a priority.
“If Marvel can just go back to the saner schedule of three movies a year and maybe one TV series, that feels like what the Marvel Studios machine is built to do.”
9. Werewolf By Night ruled. What’s another MCU horror movie you’d like to see?
Dave: Well, I know we’re gonna get the animated zombie series. But I always kind of thought—and this isn’t gonna be super popular—but I really think there’s more for Scarlet Witch. She’s kind of falling into the Jean Grey pocket, but now that we’re actually dealing with multiverses I really think we go like a full House of M and stretch her powers so she reboots the universe for a little bit. When you realize she’s at that level, I think we need to nail that down in people’s minds, if Elizabeth Olson still wants to do it. It was just so thrilling to have Thanos get out of his chair and decimate our Avengers in Infinity War. I would like another “bad guy wins” movie to the extent that it is a horror movie—like Deadpool kills the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but not funny and with Scarlet Witch would be my way to do it. Just pop all the John Krasinski heads across the multiverse.
Joanna: When we originally started this back in 2019 and we were trying to figure out back then how we would end it, Dave was like, “What if we do Blade to Blade? Like it starts with Wesley Snipes’ Blade and then we’re gonna get Mahershala Ali’s Blade and that’s where we’ll end it. Well, we’re still waiting for Blade. We’ve heard a lot of rumors about what that film is gonna look like, whether it’s set in a different time period. I like the idea of it as a period piece in that regard, but why not like period horror? I think that would be great. I’m a huge vampire fan, so I would love to see vampire horror come to the MCU for sure.
Gavin: What I would love to see is X-Men #159, where Storm gets involved in a romance with Dracula and is sort of seduced by him. It’s full-on mutants-meet-vampires, and when I was a kid it was just the scariest thing ever. So that’s what I want: Dracula haunting the X-Mansion.
10. Trial By Content time. What would be your closing argument in defense of Thanos?
Dave: Every single living climate change activists wish they could. There were whales and dolphins back in our cities. Everybody was depressed but they got over it. He really had a point. Thanos did nothing wrong.
Joanna: Wow, Dave didn’t even run out the clock on that one.
11. The Ringer team is cast in the next X-Men movie. Who plays who?
Joanna: Danny Heifetz is Wolverine. Chris Ryan is Professor X and Sean Fennessey as his Magneto. Kitty Pride is a good Mallory Rubin comp. Juliet Litman is Jubilee. Ben Lindbergh is Beast. And Bill Simmons… Dave, who is Bill?
Dave: Legion. Lots of power, not sure what he’s gonna do with it.
12. What would your loved ones say is your superpower?
Dave: I’ve been hearing a lot of this as we’re doing this book tour: I have the capability to turn on and off relentless optimism. I never heard somebody say that being able to turn that off is a power, but apparently it is.
Gavin: My superpower is that I can make any piece of writing shorter. I do this all the time for captions for my wife, who is a museum curator. There’s very limited space sometimes, so there’s a lot of, “Honey, can you get this down to one paragraph?”
Joanna: Mine is either a superpower or like a supervillainy power if you prefer, but the ability to talk endlessly. I do a lot of podcasting. When our publicists were putting together some of our interviews, she was like, “Can you handle this many interviews in one day?” I was like, “Honestly that’s light work for me.” So yeah, I’m happy to keep talking.
+1. What’s your question for us?
Joanna: What was your favorite part of the book we wrote?
(Chad:) I’ve followed the MCU from the beginning just as a fan, but one part that was new to me was Marvel’s writers program early on. It was fascinating that it existed at all, number one, but also what came out of it, like Guardians of the Galaxy and how the writer who initially developed it (Nicole Perlman) was so shocked it was even going to get made and that Marvel was taking it seriously. So that plus watching the MCU slowly evolve from being more loose in the beginning to tightening up over time. It was really a pleasure to read.