Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios is an American television and motion picture studio based in Manhattan Beach, California. Marvel Studios was formed in the late 1980s following Revlon CEO Ronald Perelman's acquisition of parent company Marvel Entertainment. This resulted in the re-entry of Marvel into the motion picture and television business.

Marvel Studios was formerly headed by Avi Arad from May 13, 1993, (as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer), until October 1998, when he took on other duties within the company such as executive producer for the studios’ film output.

Marvel entered into a non-recourse financing structure with Merrill Lynch Commercial Finance Corp. that is collateralized by certain movie rights to a total of 10 characters from Marvel's vast vault. Marvel gets $525 million to make a maximum of 10 movies based on the company's properties over eight years, according to the parameters of the deal with Paramount in September 2004. Those characters were: Ant-Man, The Avengers, Black Panther, Captain America, Cloak & Dagger, Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, Nick Fury, Power Pack, Shang-Chi.

In 2005, Michael Helfant joined the studio as President and Chief Operating Officer. In November 2005, Marvel gained the film rights to Iron Man from New Line Cinema. Marvel revealed that it has regained the film rights to the The Incredible Hulk in 2006. April 2006 Paramount Pictures acquired the rights to Thor from Sony. That year the film was announced to be a Marvel Studios production. Lions Gate Entertainment subsequently dropped the Black Widow motion picture project it had since 2004 giving the rights back to Marvel.

In March 2007, David Maisel was named Chairman and Kevin Feige was named President of Production as Iron Man began filming.[4] In 2008, Marvel Studios signed a lease with Raleigh Studios to host its headquarters and production offices and film the next four movies on the studios’ slate, including Iron Man 2 and Thor, at their Manhattan Beach facilities. In 2009, Marvel attempted to hire a team of writers to help come up with creative ways to launch its lesser-known properties, such as Black Panther, Cable, Iron Fist, Nighthawk, and Vision.

On December 31, 2009, The Walt Disney Company purchased Marvel Studios' parent company Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. Both Marvel and Disney have stated that the merger will not affect any preexisting deals with other film studios for the time being,[7] although Disney said they will consider distributing future Marvel projects with their own studios once the current deals expire.