MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios

by JoAnna Robinson

As in the comics, Thanos would eliminate fifty percent of all life in the universe in a Malthusian coup. The Avengers wouldn’t just lose but would see half their members evaporate into dust. To determine who would get eliminated when Thanos snapped his fingers, Feige convened Markus, McFeely, Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, and executive producer Trinh Tran in a conference room strewn with cards, slightly larger than baseball cards, each with the name and photograph of one of the MCU characters available for the movie (that is, all of them). The back of each card showed the salary and contractual status of the actor who played the character. “We didn’t know how much [money] each actor made, but it had either one dollar sign or up to five dollar signs,” McFeely said. Were the actors already under contract, or would Marvel need to make a new deal to feature them in the movies? Sometimes the cards were shuffled around on a table and sometimes they were tacked up on a whiteboard, but they were used to play just one game, called Who Lives and Who Dies.