Let’s face it, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is huge, and with a backlog of exciting comic book characters at the studio’s disposal, it is also constantly expanding. Many action movie fans are wondering who exactly chooses the MCU heroes we get to see on our screens. Well, it turns out that it is all up to the Marvel Studios Parliament of producers and their personal preferences.
During an interview with Murphy’s Multiverse, Jonathan Schwartz (producer of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) revealed that a room full of long-time Marvel producers go around and share what characters excite them the most, and which superheroes will fit best in the overall MCU picture when considering a new project. The bespoke parliament is made up of Schwartz, Nate Moore (Black Panther), Trinh Tran (Avengers: Endgame), Brad Winderbaum (Black Widow), Eric Carroll (Spider-Man: Far From Home), and Stephen Broussard (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania).
“It’s not really a genre thing or a speciality thing. We all sort of go off together and talk about who wants to do what and what’s coming up, and we all kind of end up working on stuff we’re excited about,” Schwartz said.
He went on to explain how the latest fantasy movie Shang-Chi came to be: “I just like martial arts movies, and Shang-Chi felt like the right character to bring a martial arts movie to life, and so that was that. I put my hand up and said I wanted to do Shang-Chi. That’s more or less the way it tends to happen, there’s a character we all want to do, or there’s a character one of us wants to do, and we just talk about it and divide it up, and things generally work out where people get to work on things they’re excited about.”
“There definitely is a camaraderie for a lot of us who have been around for a long time just throwing ideas back and forth,” Schwartz continued. “It’s great when you have people who have been through the process, and who you trust, and whose creative taste you trust, and everyone’s taste is different, and that’s part of what’s really useful about it. Not all of us see movies the same way, so we’re all able to bring something a little bit different.”