What’s up with the MCU? A new book chronicles Marvel Studios’ reign and stumbles
After nearly $30 billion in box office grosses, multiple Disney+ shows and untold toy sales, it’s weird to think of the first entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a scrappy independent film.
But that’s kind of what 2008’s “Iron Man” was, with its $140 million production budget and loose, improvisational style, years before the franchise became a multidimensional web of interconnected plotlines and corporate synergy fueling the Walt Disney Co.
In the new book, “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios,” Joanna Robinson (a writer and prolific podcaster for the Ringer), Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards chronicle how a floundering comic book publisher grew into a money-printing movie-making machine.
The book traces the film juggernaut’s origins from Marvel’s bankruptcy in the 1990s, eventually leading up to a pivotal meeting at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where executive David Maisel pitched Marvel’s mercurial chief Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter on the idea to build a true studio. From relatively humble beginnings, the firm elevated its B-list heroes (it didn’t own the film rights to Spider-Man or the X-Men) and became Hollywood’s dominant hitmaker.
Today, Marvel is
