David Maisel calls himself a cross between iron man and peter pan

He doesn’t have an assistant lawyer or an agent

But Maisel is a Multimillionaire whose bold idea defined a generation of film.

In.2003, Marvel was getting ready to sell captain America to Warner Brothers and Thor to Sony Pictures.

This is when Maisel stepped in.

Maisel met owners Arad and Perlmutter with a brave plan.

Make the movies yourself

Not only would this give Marvel 100% of the profits

But it would also allow characters to cross over stories just like.

They do in the comics creating the potential for endless sequels

Arad and Perlmutter were eventually convinced but needed the money.

It took until 2005 to get deal.

Marvel inch contributed $525 million

Over seven years allowing Marvel to make any superhero movie they wanted.

But there was one big condition

The collateral was the movie rights to 10 main characters

Marvel studios was all in

Their first order of business was assembling previously sold characters

They managed to reacquire the rights to characters like Black widow

The hulk and of course iron man

From their Marvel studies chose

Self proclaimed comic book kevin Feige as their president

A man passionate about marvel

On May 2nd 2008 iron man hit the big screen the futures of marvel was at stake

It was an instant blockbuster hit

In the first weekend the movie pulled in close $100million

In total the first film made $585million

It was such a massive success that in 2009 at Disney bought Marvel for 4.3$ billion

The rest is history

In total marvel movies have grossed over 14$billion since iron man

That roughly 13% of the total box office since 2008

In July of 2018

Disney shareholders approved the acquisition of 21 st century film and television studios

Fox previously owned the right to xmen fantastic four and Deadpool

You can bet futures movies will be jam packed.

By character spending entire marvel universe, it is next chapter marvel entire takeover over the decade
blockbuster make possible and hard by one men big gamble

That is David Meisel For his efforts, Maisel has a special “thank you” card at the end
of Avengers: Age of Ultron
In 2003, Marvel was getting ready to sell captain America to Warner Brothers and Thor to Sony
Pictures. This is when Maisel stepped in.

Endeavor talent agent David Maisel pitched Marvel a simple, but radical idea:
why continue to give away your best assets to other companies for a paltry fee?
Create your own production studio, develop and produce these titles in house
and retain 100% of the profits.  At the time, Marvel was intrigued but hesitant to
move forward. After about seven years toiling away at profitability in the wake of
their bankruptcy, they were finally starting to see some returns, as small as they
were. Why risk all that on a plan that leave them broke again?

Maisel was persistent; his main argument was that if this deal failed, they were
arguably no worse off than where they currently were, but with a chance to
become their own successful studio and finally in creative and financial control of
their own assets. In 2005, the Marvel board approved Maisel's plan and a seven-
year, $525 million financing deal with Merrill Lynch was announced that would
launch Marvel Studios, an internal production company that would “give Marvel
complete creative control” over their films (an agreement was reached with
Paramount Pictures who would market and distribute the films).

But, to get that $525 million, Marvel had to put something up as collateral: almost
everything they had.

The deal included 10 properties — Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury,
Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, Power
Pack, and Shang-Chi — and if the Marvel Studios plan failed, they would lose the
rights to every single one of those properties. The bank would own them and the
plans for a Marvel Cinematic Universe would be dead.

It was an incredibly risky move. Marvel knew, even at this early point, that they
wanted to build towards an Avengers movie, and if this deal failed, they'd lose
that opportunity. There would be no Avengers and we'd never see Captain
America: The First Avenger, Black Panther, Ant-Man or Shang-Chi (OK, we were
never going to see a Shang-Chi movie anyway).

If Marvel's plan didn't succeed, and succeed right away, they were right back to
square one and with no more movie rights left.

That put a lot of pressure on whatever Marvel's first film would be. And if they got
to this point with a lot of shrewd planning, they'd also need a little luck.

That initial list of Marvel films includes a lot of familiar faces, but is missing one of
their biggest names: Iron Man. At the time, Iron Man was still owned by New Line
Cinema (a subsidiary of Warner Bros.), but their option ran out and just two
months after the above deal was announced, Marvel got the rights back to the
character. But, because Iron Man was not part of their financing deal, they could
not use the money they acquired to make that film. Marvel wanted to launch their
films with a character who had never been in live-action before so, in another
huge gamble, they fully financed the first Iron Man film themselves, with their own
money.

The rest is, as they say, history. The risk Marvel took in putting up The
Avengers as collateral on their new studio worked. Iron Man made over $500
million and Marvel has never looked back, eventually selling to Disney for $4.3
million in 2014. (For his efforts, Maisel has a special “thank you” card at the end
of Avengers: Age of Ultron.)