Marvel’s Kevin Feige responds to Joss Whedon making DC’s Batgirl and more

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

While I'm a fan of the MCU, I honestly only love a handful of the films, and Joss Whedon's masterful (and at the time a huge gamble) superhero team-up movie THE AVENGERS being chief among them. It really can't be understated how unprecedented it felt at the time, and Whedon was able to pull it off with fun characters interactions, awesome action, and memorable moments (honestly, most MCU films I forget the moment I walk out the theater, but I still remember "Puny God!", the iconic 360-degree hero shot, and of course the shawarma end-credits sequence). So I of course was excited for his take on DCEU's BATGIRL film.

So what does Kevin Feige, head hancho at Marvel, and the guy who hired Whedon in the first place, think about all this:

He called. A couple months ago, which he didn't have to do and was super cool of him and super nice of him…And we couldn't be more supportive. We want to see a Joss Whedon Batgirl film be awesome

To be fair, what else was he supposed to say? But it's nice to know that the DC/Marvel rivalry is more talk and bluster, and not actually a thing they really care about. I mean, even comic-book artists switch from company-to-company all the time (hell, Frank Miller got the Batman gigs from his work on Marvel's DAREDEVIL in the '80s), so it makes sense it would happen in the film world as well. If only fanboys could do the same…

Feige also gave a bit more info about the upcoming MCU properties, like the fact Marvel doesn't have any say on Sony's Spidey spin-offs (such as the upcoming animated feature), or that James Gunn could work on GUARDIANS past the already reported third installment. What's most interesting was his views on DEADPOOL, namely its R-Rating and the casting of Josh Brolin as Cable (who is playing Thanos in the MCU):

My takeaway from both of those films is not the R rating, it’s the risk they took, the chances they took, the creative boundaries that they pushed…That should be the takeaway for everyone…[and] we don't have anything written into our contracts about other roles that people can do…Indiana Jones and Han Solo are the same person … it hasn't been a problem. And I think Thanos and Cable are two very different characters.

Honestly, a bit disappointing Feige didn't lose his cool and call Whedon and Brolin traitors and motherfuckers, but that's because it's juicier than "level-headed producer gives level-headed responses".

Either way, no firm release date yet for Whedon's BATGIRL flick, but Feige has a full slate of Marvel films from now till infinite (get it?), with the next MCU film GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 2 hitting theaters May 5th, 2017.