Marvel Studios, LLC originally known as Marvel Films from 1993 to 1996, is an American television and motion picture studio based at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. The studio is a subsidiary of Marvel
Entertainment, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Being a part of the Disney conglomerate, Marvel Studios works in conjunction with The Walt Disney Studios, another Disney unit, for
distribution and marketing. For financial reporting purposes, Marvel Studios is reported as a part of Disney's Studio
Entertainment segment.
Marvel Studios includes numerous units and joint ventures, both operating and defunct: Marvel Television, Marvel Animation, Marvel Music, MVL Productions LLC, and MLG Productions. Among the many animated, television,
feature film and music releases, the studio has been involved in three Marvel-character film franchises to have exceeded one billion dollars in North American revenue: the X-Men, Spider-Man, and Marvel Cinematic Universe multi-film franchises, with X-Men and Spider-Man licensed out to 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures respectively. Marvel Studios' films are currently distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, and by Universal Pictures for the Hulk films.
By 2005, Marvel Studios began planning to independently produce its own films and distribute them through Paramount Pictures. Previously, the studio had co-produced several superhero films with Columbia Pictures, New Line Cinema and others, including a seven-year development deal with 20th Century Fox. Marvel Studios made relatively little profit from its licensing deals with other studios and wanted to get more money out of its films while maintaining artistic control of the projects and
distribution. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige realized that unlike Spider-Man and the X-Men, whose film rights were licensed to Columbia and Fox
respectively, Marvel still owned the rights to the core members of The Avengers. Feige, a self-professed fanboy, envisioned creating a shared universe just as creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done with their comic books
in the early 1960s.
