Kevin Feige’s time heading up Marvel is done, according to Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld, following the release of Captain America: Brave New World.
First up, it’s worth noting there’s history here. Earlier in February, we reported on how Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld has cut his ties with Marvel, following slights he felt during the premiere and release of last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine. That film broke box office records last year, cementing MCU creative overlord Kevin Feige’s status as arguably the most commercially successful movie producer of all time.
Still, the choppy waters Marvel finds itself in continue. The box office numbers for Captain America: Brave New World fell 68 percent on the film’s second weekend – a hefty drop that in Marvel history has only been topped by The Marvels falling by 78 percent.
The problem for Marvel is that a significant second weekend drop is now commonplace. It’s not that Marvel Cinematic Universe films are immune to the second weekend fall, just that it never used to be this big.
Read more: The Marvel factory filmmaking approach has stopped working. Roger Corman can fix it
Rob Liefeld isn’t shy about pointing the finger of blame, taking to his social media account to suggest to Marvel, “get Feige off the mound. He’s spent.”
In a series of posts, he argued that if this were sports and the coach’s results fell away the year after winning a title, a change would be made. It’s not sports of course, but it’s not hard to follow the analogy. In terms of the trend though, he notes that it’s “8 movies crash over the last 3 years. Don’t we want better movies? You get the curiosity crowd then plunge.”
Marvel has two more films coming this year, with Thunderbolts* and reboot The Fantastic Four: First Steps due this summer. Kevin Feige and co will be hoping for better films and better box office performance from them. For now, with new Avengers films about to start shooting, it’s fairly clear where Rob Liefeld stands on the future of Marvel, though.
Image credit: GageSkidmore. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
