Report: Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige was once in serious talks about taking over the DC film division

What if Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige left the Disney empire and ran DC Films for Warner Bros.? It could've happened, according to one of the film industry's top reporters.

The Hollywood Reporter's former editorial director Matthew Belloni, writing for Puck, has stated that he was told Feige was in "pretty serious" talks with Warner Bros. a few years ago about jumping to take over the DC Films group. Although the time isn't specified, Belloni states it was when Feige was "angling to escape the oversight of Marvel's then-madman CEO Ike Perlmutter." Feige eventually won that battle and had Marvel Studios moved out of Perlmutter's Marvel Entertainment banner and over to Walt Disney Studios in October 2019 - a story coincidentally broken by The Hollywood Reporter while Belloni was in charge of the editorial division.

Back in 2013, Feige stated at the time that he was contracted to Marvel Studios through 2018 - which would line up with Warner Bros.'s promotion of Walter Hamada to the newly created position of DC Films president in January 2018, and then DC Films co-chairman Geoff Johns departing later that year. That's also the time period when Disney fired James Gunn from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Warner Bros. snapped him up for The Suicide Squad (although Feige and Marvel Studios eventually re-hired Gunn).

Belloni goes on to state that while Feige didn't sign ultimately on to Warner Bros., the studio has also attempted to hire away Marvel Studios co-president Louis D'Esposito and unnamed "other key Feige deputies, with no luck."

While Kevin Feige seems a Marvel man through and through, remember that Feige broke into the film business thanks to Superman: The Movie director Richard Donner and his producer/wife Laura Shuler Donner. And while Feige is the face of Marvel for most people, so was Stan Lee... and he was once hired to reiminagine the entire DC Universe. And Feige's already moonlighting outside of Marvel Studios on that as-yet-unnamed Star Wars project.