You might not know Isaac Perlmutter by name, but you definitely know his work. Perlmutter was responsible for Marvel’s sale to Disney, and without him, things would arguably be very different in the MCU. Regardless, he was let go in March, ostensibly as part of a cost-cutting campaign. However, looks like there was more dissension in the ranks than was previously known.
Per a Marvel Cinematic Universe deep-dive in the New Yorker titled “How the Marvel Cinematic Universe Swallowed Hollywood,” Perlmutter did something very specific to rock the boat at Disney, and it involved creating a sort of internal civil war.
Following the sale to Disney, Perlmutter’s influence at Marvel waned and he hadn’t been involved with a movie since 2015, after he got into a tussle with studio president Kevin Feige over costs, per the New York Times. In 2019, he no longer had any oversight of the TV division, either.
In the end, he was put in charge of comics publishing, and he used that perch to fire back at Feige. Perlmutter “established the Marvel Creative Committee, a group of writers, editors, and allies from Marvel’s New York-based publishing wing.”
This group quickly became a thorn in the side of the movie studio. One former executive said, “It was basically a group that existed to tell the studio that they were doing everything wrong.” For example, on the first day of The Avengers shoot, the committee sent a memo 26 pages long, with the thesis that the whole thing needs to be rewritten.
“It was destructive madness,” the executive said. This back and forth culminated in 2015 and became “almost like an East Coast–West Coast rap battle.” Perlmutter was trying to get Feige fired and Feige was over trying to be controlled. CEO Bob Iger was forced to restructure the chain of command so that Feige would only have to report to studio chairman Alan Horn (which was chalked up to a costs dispute at the time).
Perlmutter denied trying to have Feige fired but said that Marvel’s dependence on him was “unduly risky.” He said he urged Iger to get a backup. That sounds like asking for someone to be fired to me, but I guess it’s semantics.
This wasn’t the only issue with Perlmutter. He also installed 20 cameras to “monitor activities” at Marvel, which were removed by Disney. He also tried to get his friend Nelson Peltz to join the Disney board a total of six times, which were all unsuccessful.
