Kevin Feige is confident Marvel will pave the way for more female-led comic book films.
Earlier this year (18), Evangeline Lilly shared top billing with Paul Rudd on their joint movie Ant-Man and the Wasp, the follow-up to 2015’s Ant-Man.
And Brie Larson’s hotly-anticipated Captain Marvel hits cinemas in March (19), and Marvel Studios President Kevin is hopeful it’s just the start for women leading films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“With (Ant-Man and The Wasp) and now with Captain Marvel and many movies to be announced in the near future, I’m anxious for the time where it’s not a novelty that there is a female-led superhero movie, but it is a norm,” he commented to Entertainment Weekly. “And it is less a story of, ‘Oh, look, a female hero,’ and it’s more a story of, ‘Oh, what’s this about? Who’s this character? I’m excited to see that.’ And I think we can get there.”
There’s also a planned solo spin-off focused on Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character, which Cate Shortland will be directing.
Asked why the female-driven movies have taken so long, Kevin says it’s hard to pinpoint just one reason.
“I think there are a lot of reasons, the least of which was fighting for many years the erroneous notion that audiences did not want to see a female-led hero (film) because of a slew of films 15 years ago that didn’t work,” he sighed. “And my belief was always that they didn’t work not because they were female-led stories – they didn’t work because they were not particularly good movies.”
Away from Marvel, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, was a massive success for the DC Universe, with the second instalment currently in production.
