Kevin Feige Explains How Marvel Is Dealing With Internet Leaks, Rumors And Misinformation

Its very hard to keep secrets in the age of the internet, especially when it comes to fanboy properties like superhero movies. While talking to Marvel head Kevin Feige and Iron Man 3 writer/director Shane Black, I asked how Marvel Studios is evolving to deal with this growing interest in rumors, leaks and sometimes even misinformation.

Peter Sciretta: You're a very internet-savvy guy and it seems like you're reading everything... There's a lot of sites up there reporting leaks or rumors or sometimes even misinformation. I wanted to get your thoughts on "How does Marvel deal with this" in an age when sharing information on the internet is becoming unstoppable.Kevin Feige: What are you talking about? Latino Review?Nobody specifically. Really just interested in how Marvel Studios is evolving to handle the internet as a whole...

How would you "punish" them if you were us?

Its an interesting question. I think the only thing you could probably do is exclude them — don't give them access. Don't invite them to set visits, to junkets. But I don't know, info is always going to get out there and someones always going to be posting it.

Here's what I will say, since X-men one frankly, where a photo was stolen off a wardrobe thing and it was the very first look of Hugh Jackman in costume as him under flourescents... it looked awful. (Laughs) It was just like "Oh, this is the world we are living in. This is the reality." So we've always just accepted it. Spy pictures will leak and we used to try to run ahead and put out a cool picture first. Now if we have a cool picture we will put it out, but if we don't, that's okay.

Misinformation... You know, it gets a little annoying when somebody is like "This is what's happening! This is what Kevin Feige is doing!" It's annoying when they are right and it's equally annoying when they are wrong, because everybody passes it. "Planet Hulk is the next thing" and everybody talks about it and you're just like "Okay, but you'll be disappointed if you're expecting it."

Shane Black: (smirking) It's like Iron Man flying off to see The Guardians at the end of this one...You read that everywhere.Kevin Feige: Exactly, but then again, nobody knew about Redford until we announced it. Nobody knew about what you know now having seen Iron Man 3, so as long as there are secrets that big that are still being kept, I know it's nobody in the inner circle. Does that make sense?