Kevin Feige Shoots Down Thought About 'Star Wars' And Marvel Crossover Movie
Probably every company longs to have a charismatic leader with a coherent vision of what should be done and what shouldn’t. Steve Jobs was such a man, Elon Musk may be one of them (at least he’s charismatic), and Kevin Feige is also one of them. As president of Marvel Studios and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment, he is the mastermind behind the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the most successful film franchise in history.
Lucasfilm had such a leader in George Lucas. One can argue about Lucas’ ability (or lack thereof) of giving actors direction (apart from “Faster, more intense!”), but there is no doubt that he had an overarching vision for the direction of the saga, even if this vision may have changed over the years. Now Lucas is gone, and although executives of both Disney and Lucasfilm have said otherwise, there are strong indications that there never was a detailed overarching plan or a storyline for the sequel trilogy.
So when it was reported in autumn 2019 that Kevin Feige had been hired as a co-producer for an upcoming Star Wars film, immediately rumors began to spring on what his role would actually be: From actually producing a movie, to being a creative consultant on how to give Lucasfilm a consolidated vision like the MCU, to replacing Kathleen Kennedy as president of Lucasfilm, or all of the above.
In January of 2021, Deadline reported that Michael Waldron had been hired to write a script for Feige’s Star Wars movie. Waldron is also the writer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness und the upcoming Loki series for Disney+, and the producers seemed to have been that impressed with his work. So, it seems that Feige’s role will be much more hands-on than just a behind-the-scenes consultant (something that was initially intended for George Lucas himself, after the sale of Disney).
We still don’t know when Feige’s/Waldron’s movie will come out, but as Petty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron has a release date of December 2023, and Lucasfilm already confirmed that Taika Waititi will be directing a Star Wars movie (probably for a release in December of 2025), it seems that Feige’s film could take the spot at the end of 2027.
With Feige now having a foot in both franchises, he was recently asked by Yahoo if the MCU could cross over with Star Wars. This was his answer:
"If you’d ask me if anything we’re talking about right now was in the realm of possibility 20 years ago, I would’ve said, ‘I don’t think so.' But I really don’t think so. I don’t think there’s any reason for it."
Of course, such a crossover would be doable – the MCU is comic-based, where anything goes and a lot of the action does take place in outer space while Star Wars is space fantasy. So Captain Marvel could encounter a Star Destroyer. But even without Feige’s statement, there are some strong indications that such a crossover wouldn’t happen:
The Star Wars timeline is “a long time ago.” The Marvel films mainly take place in the current time, with some exceptions such as Captain America: The First Avenger or Captain Marvel. But even then, it is just a matter of decades and not centuries. Star Wars also take place in a “galaxy far, far away”, while the events of the MCU happen in the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
Still, you could work around all this quite easily, as time is relative and Marvel has the multiverse, so the stories could go anywhen and anywhere. But another obstacle is that the MCU films have several times referenced Star Wars as part of modern pop-culture: Peter Parker used The Empire Strikes Back as an inspiration for how to take down Ant-Man in Captain America: Civil War, and he helped his friend Ned build a Lego version of the Death Star in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Star Wars was also included in Steve Rogers' list of modern phenomena to catch up on at the beginning of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Again, all these are not absolute road-blockers, and as Disney owns both Marvel and Star Wars, it’s possible that someone someday could come up with the idea: let’s see what happens if we combine the two biggest franchises in the history of cinema into one movie. While this may be interesting from a pure commercial point of view, writing an appealing story for such an undertaking surely is tricky, and chances are that, in the end, both Marvel and Star Wars fans would be upset with the outcome, because, as Feige has said, “I don’t think there’s any reason for it."
Or, to quote Ghostbusters, "Don't cross the streams."
Source(s): The Direct