Bob Chapek Rumored To Be Feuding With Kevin Feige Over Marvel’s New Woke Strategy
John F. Trent
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The Walt Disney Company’s CEO Bob Chapek is rumored to be feuding with Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige over Marvel’s new woke strategy.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 29: (L-R) Chairman of Disney Studios Content Alan Bergman, Producer, President of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Kevin Feige, and CEO of The Walt Disney Company Bob Chapek attend the Black Widow World Premiere Fan Event at Dolby Theatre on June 29, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
This rumor comes from scooper and YouTuber Overlord DVD in a video titled “Feige Pulling a LAST JEDI with MCU? Chapek & Feige FEUD Over MCU Future!”
In the video, Overlord DVD lays out Feige’s new strategy for the Marvel Cinematic Universe stating, “Kevin is selling all of his new MCU garbage by claiming it will be more economical to use newer and less popular characters like Riri Williams or Kamala Khan than OG characters like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers.”
He continues, “Kevin Feige apparently thinks, ‘Hey, I’m Kevin Feige I can put any crap up there on the screen and it will work great because I am so great. It will be amazing. I know what I am doing.’ All conceits that are belied by the box office failure of Shang-Chi and the huge looming disaster of the Eternals, a film that stinks so badly even the woke friendly, virtue signaling, ass-kissing mainstream critics are slanting it on Rotten Tomatoes.”
“Now, Feige was trying to pitch this crap, hoping that the Disney board was not familiar with the bad sales of characters like Ironheart and Ms. Marvel in the comics. But Bob Chapek was on the ball. He was already aware of Feige’s plans, if this source is correct. He had done his due diligence and knows that this is a losing strategy,” he reports.
Source: Invincible Iron Man #1
Overlord DVD then says, “He called Feige on it, but Feige still had too much juice to be derailed on this disastrous course. But Chapek is, according to sources, taking the long view and playing 4-D chess. Chapek knows that Feige is hoping to use the original heroes to prop up the underperforming third rate heroes that appeal to SJWs and no one else.
He went on, “So apparently Chapek is using the lawsuit, I reported on earlier, to prevent Feige from artificially inflating the success of these projects by incorporating and exploiting the actual star characters, ruining them in the process.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 16: Producer, President of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Kevin Feige attends the “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” World Premiere at El Capitan Theatre on August 16, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
Related: Kevin Feige Announces Ironheart Series, Touts Her Advanced Armor
Overlord DVD then provided an example, “For example, Chapek reportedly doesn’t want to see Tony Stark degraded in an Ironheart series, like Luke Skywalker was degraded in The Last Jedi, in order to artificially boost the status of Riri Williams as a cheap shortcut to popularity. For one reason, it doesn’t work. And for the other reason, it just leaves the original, popular hero degraded, damaged, and devalued.”
He goes on, “And so degrading Tony Stark with a flashback, a hologram, or a simulation to make Riri Williams the bestest Ironheart evar isn’t going to wash with Bob Chapek, if this rumor is true.”
Source: Ironheart #9
“And so being the game master that he is, Bob Chapek has allegedly taken steps to foil Feige by pointing to the recent lawsuit involving copyright ownership of the original Marvel characters to say, ‘No, Kevin, you can’t use the old heroes to prop up the shitty heroes you are bringing into these movies until this copyright lawsuit is settled,” the YouTuber states.
He then claims, “I am informed, as a result of Bob Chapek, though Tony Stark may appear as a hologram in the upcoming Ironheart project under cover of this lawsuit, Feige will not be allowed to actually refer to Tony as Iron Man in any way until the lawsuit is settled.”
Chapek gets cover for what he wants to do, protects the integrity of Iron Man, and foils Feige’s plans to pull a bestest evar over Tony. And thus the feud is allegedly raging on,” Overlord DVD asserts.
Source: Avengers: Infinity War
This rumor flies in the face of Chapek’s numerous public comments about the direction he plans to take Disney.
Back in March 2020 during The Walt Disney Company’s 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, Chapek detailed the company would increase its commitment to LGBT and diverse characters and stories moving forward.
Chapek said, “At Disney we strongly believe we should reflect in our creative content the diversity that we find in our fanbase and our audience. And I believe that will continue with an increased commitment as we move forward.”
He added, “We want to represent our audience. We believe we want to tell stories that our audience wants to hear that reflects their lives.”
Bob Chapek, Alan Bergman, Angelina Jolie and Alan Horn pose at the Premiere of Marvel Studios’ Eternals in Hollywood, CA on Monday, October 18, 2021
(Photo: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages)
A year later at the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, Chapek was asked about the firing of Gina Carano from The Mandalorian.
He responded, “I don’t really see Disney as characterizing itself as left leaning or right leaning. Yet, instead standing for values. Values that are universal. Values of respect. Values of decency. Values of integrity. And values of inclusion.”
“And we seek to have not only how we operate, but the content that we make reflective of the rich diversity of the world we live. And I think that’s a world we all should live in, in harmony and peace,” he added.
Gina Carano is Cara Dune in THE MANDALORIAN, season two, exclusively on Disney+.
During a virtual chat with Indiana University students, Chapek said, “Our content is the biggest way that we have the ability to influence the world around us.”
He added, “Certainly at Disney, I write big checks to good causes but it is not about the big checks. The biggest thing is to make content that is representative of the world around us, to seek out filmmakers that have points of view that not all of us may not have had.”
He went on to say, “We want to ensure our content represents the world, not as people saw it five, 10, 50 years ago, but as people see the world and should see the world more broadly today.”
Source: Eternals
Chapek would go on to detail that the company has deeply invested in affirmative action.
He explained, “Another thing is we created a new council where we work aggressively on that last pillar, the creative one, where we try to inspire people that work in the studios and TV areas, and try to find diverse directors — talent for both the front and back of the camera — so we represent society.”
“I chair the council as CEO along with the head of diversity and inclusion. We meet regularly and tackle tough issues. One of the things we have done at this group is to make the decision that at least 50% of charitable giving goes to diverse sources, diverse organizations. Now that we have that goal, we can hold ourselves accountable and measure progress,” he elaborated.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 29: (L-R) Chairman of Disney Studios Content Alan Bergman, President of Marketing at Disney Studios Content Asad Ayaz, Producer, President of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Kevin Feige, and CEO of The Walt Disney Company Bob Chapek attend the Black Widow World Premiere Fan Event at Dolby Theatre on June 29, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
Related: Disney Announces They Will Reimagine Splash Mountain With ‘The Princess and the Frog’ Theme
Chapek went on to detail how they are changing numerous park attractions to meet this new vision, “We made a decision to change some of our attractions in our parks that have been around for a long time. This goes back to the legacy issue and superfans not wanting anything to change.”
Splash Mountain has been there for over 60 years and you realize it’s based on ‘Song of the South.’ That is based on a story which depicts happy slaves. That is probably not the place we want to be and where Disney wants to be.
You have to have the courage to go ahead and change something that has been pleasing a good number of people and has had high guest ratings for the last 60 years, very high guest ratings. You make the change so that you can not only talk about making a positive change but really get into it and make changes. We will walk the talk and hire people that are diverse — the people working on the conversion of that are very diverse,” he asserted.
Photo Credit: Freddo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Call me skeptical of this rumor. The public evidence points to Chapek fully backing Feige and his new vision for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That vision was recently detailed by Marvel Studios producer Victoria Alonso who stated, “The reason we have that success consistently is because our audience is global. You cannot have a global audience and not somehow start to represent it… For us, it was really, really, really important to have that.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 29: (L-R) Producer, President of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Kevin Feige, EVP of Production at Marvel Studios Victoria Alonso, Co-Producer Brian Chapek, and Executive Producer Brad Winderbaum attend the Black Widow World Premiere Fan Event at Dolby Theatre on June 29, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
What do you make of this rumor that Chapek and Feige are feuding?
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