I’ve recently come across an interview Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, had with Empire Magazine Online, in which he discusses the release date of CAPTAIN AMERICA 3 and its biggest competition, BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, which is scheduled to premiere on the same day, May 6, 2016. Marvel doesn’t appear to be changing their minds.
Seeing as CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER has had the biggest success of 2014 so far (in terms of comic book films), it would be no surprise Marvel would use this momentum to secure the initial summer slot for 2016. When this was announced, the date was still open for Marvel and had no other (major) films releasing that day. Then, WB and DC decided to slide their Batman/Superman team up movie from 2015 to 2016, on the same day.
This is good that we can get so many comic book movies in one year, but bad in that two huge power house films on the same day could take away from each other. You can count on me being at both films that weekend, but thats not the case for the average film goer. They’ll be able to choose one or the other, and then the chances on seeing that other film slide each week after debut. Its a huge time commitment as well as financial that will benefit one film, but detract from the other.
Read on for the interview from Feige and let us know how you think this situation should be handled. Which movie would you see between the 2?
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“I don’t think it is quite fair to say DC is finally getting their act together,” replied Kevin Feige when Empire said so, and asked the Marvel Studios president/producer how he felt about Warner Bros. releasing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on the very same day as Captain America 3.
“The Dark Knight movies were rather successful and genre-defining, they altered the genre in big ways. So I think there has always been competition that way. I mean Iron Man was the number one movie of 2008 until The Dark Knight came along, and I loved it. frankly. I love that the number 1 and the number 2 movies of that year, and it has happened a number of times since then, being comic-book movies, even if it wasn’t one we made. Here we are now, 14 years since the first Marvel movie I worked on. At that point it had been eight years and for about those eight years people had been asking ‘How much longer gonna last?’ ‘When are people gonna get tired of these movies? And my answer always was ‘People only get tired if a whole slew of terrible ones come out’. And it was our job to make sure that doesn’t happen. If there are other people out there interested in that not happening as well, I’m all for it!”
He continued, “So I continue to be all for quality entertainment for moviegoers to enjoy on weekends. If it is on the same weekend I enjoy it slightly less. But we are doing what we’ve always done, which is sticking to our plan and sticking to our vision for the movies going forward and we have a very large vision that we’re working on for Cap 3 and for all the threes movies and just because another movie plops down onto one of ours doesn’t mean we are going to alter that. Maybe we should, but we’re not going to.” For those who don’t know, both Captain America 3 and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice are currently scheduled for release on May 6, 2016. As for the other Marvel Studios adaptation that’s likely scheduled for release later that year, Feige was asked if Scott Derrickson directing Doctor Strange indicates a horror/supernatural-like direction. “I would say you can certainly look at the past work of the filmmakers we hire as a bit of an indication for the tone of the movie, but not necessary everything,” he said. “The Russos, who are well known for their sitcoms, there is nothing sitcom about The Winter Soldier! No, I wouldn’t say just because he has only done horror movies means that Doctor Strange is going to be a horror movie. It means he is a talented filmmaker who we think could add something unique and very fresh to the particular franchise. But there could be scary moments. There are scary moments in all our movies! There are some scary people that Strange has to deal with, I will say.”[/alert]
