Kevin Feige

Blade, the movie starring Wesley Snipes as the not-quite-a-vampire superhero who protects humans from the befanged and bloodthirsty creatures of the night, was a huge commercial success upon its 1998 release and launched a series that’s garnered a cult following over the years. It doesn’t get the credit it deserves for relaunching big-screen superhero movies, and some fans are hungry for the character’s return. Rumors recently flew on bat-wings about Marvel Studios perhaps planning to reboot the character, but Marvel president Kevin Feige says that probably won’t happen. At least, not on a large scale.

Marvel’s decision to cast a white woman in the role of an Asian character has been just one of many threads in the theme of Hollywood whitewashing this year. In the upcoming ‘Doctor Strange,’ Tilda Swinton will play the Ancient One, originally an Asian character in the comic books. Now Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and ‘Doctor Strange’ director Scott Derrickson have chimed in about their reasons for casting Swinton, and how they might be trying to make up for that by tweaking another role.

There were a ton of rumors leading up to ‘Captain America: Civil War’ that the ending would find some of the Avengers killed, especially Steve Rogers. But after all the fighting, none of the Avengers met their fate, with Rhodey as the only one sustaining a serious injury. So why did all the superheroes survive?

James Gunn recently said that we probably won’t get to see the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 footage from Comic-Con anytime soon, but what about the trailer? Using logic and a little deductive reasoning, the answer seems pretty obvious. Marvel usually drops the first teaser trailer for a new film about six months ahead of its release date; the Guardians sequel hits theaters in May; Doctor Strange hits theaters in November. According to Kevin Feige, we’re probably right about this.

One of the big selling points for Spider-Man: Homecoming was that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be returning Peter Parker to his roots as a high school science nerd. While the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield movies, by the nature of their casting decisions, focused a bit more on Parker’s college and post-college experiences, the Tom Holland-led reboot of the Spider-Man franchise would set out to tell a true superhero coming of age story.

San Diego Comic-Con saved the biggest news for last. Marvel’s panel is the last big film panel in Hall H this year, and we’re bound to get some huge news on everything from ‘Doctor Strange’ to ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ to ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.’

The movie rights for Namor The Sub-Mariner have been up in the air for years now, with confusion over whether he currently resides at Universal, Marvel Studios, or elsewhere. This confusion was seemingly put to an end this week as Joe Quesada asserted that Namor is back home at Marvel Studios --- but just how did the rights for one of Marvel’s oldest characters become so entangled?

Natalie Portman not showing up in the next Thor movie, Thor: Ragnarok, is not news. (Neither is the addition of Tessa Thompson to the cast in her absence.) We’ve known that for a few months now. The explanation for Portman’s absence hasn’t be fully revealed yet, though, and that’s something Marvel Grand Poobah Kevin Feige got into a little bit during his recent appearance on the Empire Film Podcast.

Marvel first announced an Inhumans movie as part of their Phase 3 plan back in 2014, but a subsequent release delay and a lack of updates on the project seemed to signal a bit of trouble — an assumption that proved correct when the studio recently pulled Inhumans from its Phase 3 schedule, leaving us to speculate as to whether the film had simply been delayed again or canceled entirely. According to Kevin Feige, it’s the former, as Marvel is still plotting an Inhumans film…eventually.

To say that Deadpool was a hit because of its rating is a bit reductive, and honestly kind of insulting to the filmmakers, who managed to achieve something special by delivering an entertaining film based on a character whose only previous exposure to audiences left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths. Still, that R-rating drew a fair amount of attention, leading some to wonder if Marvel might take a similar risk. Disney’s Bob Iger previously said that fans shouldn’t count on an R-rated Marvel movie, and Kevin Feige echoes that sentiment while addressing the real reason why Deadpool was so successful.