In a series of recent interviews, the Russo Brothers, directors of the recent Captain America movies, with Avengers to follow, believe that disagreements over plot points in their Civil War film may have led to the splits within Marvel.

These splits saw Kevin Feige take the movie-making side of the company, Marvel Studios, away from the rest of Marvel so that he reported directly to Disney’s Head Of Studios Alan Horn rather than Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter. This also meant that Captain America: Civil War is the last of the movies to have direct input from Marvel and the Marvel Creative Committee.

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The fact that it seems to have happened just as the final Marvel Studios film that the comic book side of the company had a say was released seems more like a planned hit. And one that Disney has approved of.

I’ve talked to a number of sources who disagree with the Russos’ specific take on the cause of the big split at Marvel. Rather than occurring during Civil War, its origins are with Iron Man 2. And what happened when Marvel executives freaked out after seeing an early cut of the movie. A lot of money had been spent, Marvel wasn’t willing to go back to the drawing board. But changes had to be made.

Do you remember the scenes with a drunken Tony Stark in the suit? Originally, they were far worse. Scenes which showed Stark falling down drunk, and being cruel, demeaning and frankly misogynist to Pepper Potts were cut, reedited and reshot in order keep the character from being totally irredeemable by the end of his first sequel. Though some of the drunkenness still exists in the final cut, in a more comedic fashion.

Kevin Feige encountered opposition by the rest of the Marvel team for a lack of judgement over how he allowed the creative team on the movie to treat Marvel’s up-and-coming franchise. And he was overruled.
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This rift was deepened when Feige seemed to start taking credit for the conceptualising of the Avengers movie, a series of Marvel films that would lead up to that coming together of the characters and the strategy behind that. But when that was being decided, by the likes of high-level executives Isaac Perlmutter, Alan Fine, Avi Arad, David Meisel and others, Kevin Feige wasn’t in the room.

Then in 2012 Alan Horn joined Disney as the Head Of Studios. In this role, he did nothing to smooth out the issues at Marvel, or bring the two slowly fracturing parts of Marvel together. Indeed, he seems to have fostered that split.

He had form in this regard. At Warner Bros, Alan Horn was the man who drove the stake through any remaining connection between DC Comics and WB Studios. Something he seemed he was choosing to do at Marvel as well.

It may be worth pointing out that Horn has never been the best friend to comics. It was his Warners VP meeting a decade ago that saw DC Vertigo forced to change their creator owned contracts to be more restrictive regarding media rights, something that saw Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and others take their projects elsewhere, a creative brain drain that Vertigo never recovered from.
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So while Ike Perlmutter and Kevin Feige have been seen as Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, Alan Horn is seen as playing at Baron Zemo, pulling the strings of the Civil War, pitting Marvel against itself and putting them on a self-destructive path.

So even though the Russos see their movie as what caused the split, it was merely the last straw.

The TV shows, for ABC, Netflix and others, including Agent Carter, Jessica Jones and Agents Of SHIELD are still part of Marvel. Though they have lost alignment and co-ordination between the movies and the TV shows which would otherwise have co-promoted each other. You may have noted that this season’s Agents Of SHIELD had a scene where the cast talked about what was happening in Civil War – basically after the writers had got to see the almost-finished film.

But Doctor Strange in November will be the first Marvel Studios film without the input of Marvel. It will be the first true test of Marvel Studios-without-the-comics.

What’s The Worst That Could Happen Over Marvel Studios/Comics Split?

Yesterday, Bleeding Cool looked at the causes and timeline of the split between Marvel and Marvel Studios at Disney. We tried to ascertain who was really behind the changes at the company, that saw Kevin Feige heading up Marvel Studios, reporting to Disney rather than to the rest of Marvel, and a split between the two sides of the company, as deep as that between Marvel Comics and DC Comics.

But, we’ll still get the comics, the films, the TV shows… so what’s the worst that could happen?

Kevin Feige, a big time fan of the comics, keeper of plenty of fanboy knowledge, and part of the Marvel team that brought many of the successful movies to fruition – won’t be there forever.

Could be a year, could be ten. At some point he will step down or move on.

But Marvel Studios move away from Marvel and towards Disney has guaranteed that when he does move on, that Marvel Studios will continue to be run by Disney, and not by Marvel. The very thing they promised, that Marvel wouldn’t lose control of its characters when Disney bought them out, will be gone.

It was what fans feared back then. It was the thing Joe Quesada said wouldn’t happen.

And now it has.

This was what Isaac Perlmutter was trying to prevent. Kevin Feige, with Alan Horn at Disney, has put Marvel’s autonomy as a comic book company in peril.