Revealed: How The Marvel Cinematic Universe Almost Never Happened

Even though it’s only been in existence since 2008, it’s now hard to imagine the blockbuster landscape without it.

But the Marvel Cinematic Universe almost never happened, it’s emerged.

The comic book giant was poised to sell off the rights to characters including Captain America and Thor just months before the idea was formulated to turn Marvel into a movie studio.

- Paul Feig slams ‘geek culture’
- Obama gets down with the Stormtroopers on Star Wars Day
- Ted Cruz compares Donald Trump to Biff Tannen

In a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter, movie producer David Maisel, who though working behind the scenes is credited with masterminding the MCU brand as we know it, has revealed how the fortunes of Marvel turned around in just a few years from being a bankrupt publisher to a multi-billion dollar movie studio.

“If I had gotten there three months, six months later, those deals would have been done,” he said.

“And there would be no chance to bring all these characters together.”

Had Captain America been sold to Warner Bros, as was planned, and Thor to Sony, it would have meant the Marvel characters would have been licensed to various studios, and strewn across several Hollywood lots.

Spider-Man was also at Sony, Hulk at Universal and Iron Man at New Line.

New Line, according to Maisel, thought that Tony Stark’s alter ego ‘was a lousy property’.

When Maisel joined Marvel in 2003, the company was worth $400 million, but just six years later, it had been bought by Disney for a staggering $4 billion.

To put this in perspective, just a few years before, in 1996, Marvel had filed for bankruptcy.

To date, the MCU movies have grossed nearly $9.5 billion at the worldwide box office, thanks to movies like ‘Avengers Assemble’, ‘Iron Man’, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’.

Image credits: Disney