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.
