Marvel's Kevin Feige Had A Sly X-Men Cameo You Would Have Never Noticed
Long before Kevin Feige transformed the blockbuster business via the miraculous 11-year Avengers saga that began with 2008's "Iron Man" and ended with 2019's "Avengers: Endgame," he was an assistant to producer Lauren Shuler Donner on non-superheroic fare like "Volcano" and "You've Got Mail." The USC film school grad had an encyclopedic knowledge of comics and "Star Wars," but everyone's got to start somewhere, and working for the wife of Richard Donner, the man who directed one of the greatest superhero hero movies of all time in 1979's "Superman," was a heck of a lot better than waiting tables at Barney's Beanery.
As fortune would have it, Lauren Shuler Donner had purchased the movie rights to Marvel Comics' ultra-popular X-Men, and, after years of development stumbles and false starts that saw folks as disparate as Russell Crowe, Bob Hoskins, and Glenn Danzig considered for the pivotal role of Wolverine, Donner finally got a big-screen adaptation greenlit at 20th Century Fox with Bryan Singer attached as director. Obviously, this worked out fairly well for all involved, but the most important beneficiary of the film's success might've been Feige.
And while he was still just an assistant during the production, meaning his input was minimal, he did make an onscreen contribution as an actor.
A claw-some performance
During an interview with film critic Leonard Maltin for his Maltin on Movies podcast, Feige revealed that he was given a bit part as a Weapon X technician who serves a crucial function in the creation of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.
As he told Maltin, "I was a Weapon X tech guy pulling Wolverine's claws out of the oven." If you're now thinking about going back to spot the future architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, lower your expectations, because you're not going to see much: The role ended up "on the cutting room floor." But even if it hadn't, you wouldn't have been able to spot Feige — and not just because he wasn't sporting his omnipresent baseball cap. "[I] had a hood and mask ... gloves. Every inch of me was covered."
While Feige's acting career didn't take off, his presence on set as Donner's assistant caught the eye of then-Marvel Entertainment chief Avi Arad. Impressed by his considerable comic book expertise, Arad poached Feige from Donner and installed him as his company's number two. And when Arad resigned his post after a skirmish with COO David Maisel in 2006, the door was left open for Feige to seize the Marvel reins, which he did in 2007.
Now, thanks to Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox (which has since been rebranded to 20th Century Studios), Feige controls the film rights to the X-Men. Perhaps he'll give himself a cameo role in the inevitable new movie, just to bring everything full circle.