Kevin Feige Says He Owes His Career to Richard Donner
Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige thanks director Richard Donner for setting the blueprint that became Feige's livelihood. Donner directed Superman in 1978, considered to be the first commercially successful superhero film. On Monday, Donner's wife and co-producer Lauren Shuler Donner announced that Richard Donner passed away. He was 91.
The Donners had given Feige his first movie producer job in 2000 as an associate producer on X-Men after being their production assistant. It would take only seven years for Feige's knowledge of the comic universe to earn him his role as head of Marvel Studios, producing the highest-grossing film franchise in history. As Feige explained before, the MCU team watches Superman before filming any MCU movie, calling it the greatest filmed superhero origin story to this day.
On Twitter, Feige thanked the late Donner for trailblazing the path for the MCU. Not only did Donner's work on Superman pioneer the idea that superhero films weren't niche B movies, but Richard and Lauren kickstarted Feige's career. "I owe my career to the way they took the time to nurture and teach a kid from New Jersey who didn't know how to use a fax machine or make coffee very well," Feige wrote. Read the full remarks below:
Remaining a fan of Donner's work throughout his life, Feige insisted in 2018 that as the DCEU was undergoing massive internal changes, his best "advice" (which he hesitated to call it) would be for the DCEU heads to rewatch Superman. As Feige and Geoff Johns of DC Entertainment noted at a joint speech honoring Donner, the original Superman script was a campy mess, with poor gags and worse writing throughout. It wasn't until Donner threw out that script (by The Godfather's Mario Puzo) and ordered rewrites by Tom Mankiewicz (of the James Bond franchise) that the script came together into being the heralded triumph fans know today. As Donner would claim, he "had to save Superman."
Feige had previously recognized that the word "verisimilitude" wasn't in his lexicon until he read it printed over Donner's office wall, meaning "to maintain honesty" with both the source text and the movie's interaction with the audience. As Feige and Shuler Donner reteam to work on the MCU's X-Men, that standard of honesty remains the backbone of how the MCU maintains its critical and audience fanfare. Feige learned from Richard Donner that for a superhuman to work, both "super" and "human" are vital for audiences to see in the character; Donner's Superman originated and perfected that balance in the film.
Source: Kevin Feige
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